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Eddy’s first published reference to the subject of vaccination was in an 1880 sermon. In 1900, Eddy was consulted by some Christian Science parents, including her son, who wanted to keep their children from school due to their opposition to vaccination laws. But Eddy recommended compliance with the law and affirmed that one could also submit to the providence of God. 

Schoepflin’s review acknowledges the relevance of Rogers’s study of America’s religious exemption from vaccination in light of the then-current 2015 measles outbreak in the United States—even though Rogers primarily uses case studies of Christian Science practice from 30–35 years prior to his study to argue his case that children are harmed by exemption laws. 

Issaoui questions the limits of the legal accommodations that allow Christian Science practitioners and/or parents to rely on spiritual means in treating Christian Scientists. By examining specific cases, she concludes the key issue is finding a balance between the religious right to practice Christian Science healing and the State’s responsibility to prevent child endangerment.

Legal historian Rogers analyzes the legal and constitutional struggle over whether a religious belief may trump a generally applicable and neutral law prohibiting child abuse and neglect. He concludes that when legislators succumb to Christian Science lobbyists advocating a special religious interest or privileging harmful religious conduct, they are guilty of undermining the religious freedom they claim to be protecting.

Campbell seeks to identify and critique three central issues concerning communities who practice Christian healing without medicine: their theological justification for such healing practices, medical practices as morally and metaphysically wrong from their perspectives, and their understanding of theodicy when healing does not occur. But a glaring problem for researchers of Christian Science is Campbell’s lack of distinction between groups.

The question of child-care in the context of serious health conditions always highlights the tension between medical and prayer-based treatments, and this tension usually turns on the First Amendment protection of religious rights. This article, written from the point of view that medicine is always superior to prayer, refers to prayer treatment as religion-based medical neglect.

Dose’s article is an argument opposing religious exemption from medical care for very sick children. Focusing on the Religion Clauses of the First Amendment, she argues why the government should not endorse spiritual treatment. First, the exemptions are not mandated by the Free Exercise Clause, and second, the exemptions are not a permissible accommodation of religion under the Establishment Clause.

In the dispute between state and religion over medical treatment for minors Herrera pleas for reform. Parents whose children need urgent care have few legal guidelines. In an era when physicists and chemists are openly discussing the metaphysical presuppositions of their science, an attempt to deny medicine’s own rituals and even superstitions sounds regressive and inhibits reform.

Hughes argues that faith-based medical neglect is permitted or facilitated by exemption clauses that appear in many state statutes, resulting in the deaths of children. Although most of the article discusses the theology and religious defense of the Faith Assembly, Hughes argues that the source of the religious exemption clauses is the extensive lobbying of the Christian Science Church.

Hardesty’s book is about the Holiness and Pentecostal movements, but because of the similarities between these movements and Christian Science, she identifies a few significant points of comparison. Although both “saw themselves as based in the Bible, following the practice of Jesus, and accomplishing the miraculous” (4), they vehemently opposed each other and sought to distinguish themselves from each other. 

Young’s thesis is that the rhetoric used in support of accommodations for medical exemptions must be exceptionally persuasive. She found that the chief means of persuasion by the Christian Science Church is its identification with two powerful ideas within its culture: science and religion. This rhetoric increases the likelihood that both Christian Scientists and nonbelievers will find common ground and interests.

This article addresses the relationship between the practice of biomedicine and religious beliefs and practices related to children. Christian Scientists are mentioned only in the context of describing the tension between clinicians and faith healers in general. But the article is relevant because of its acknowledgment of both the benefits and challenges to society and to families who practice spiritual healing.

Asser and Swan “evaluate deaths of children from families in which faith healing was practiced in lieu of medical care and to determine if such deaths were preventable.” They studied death records from 1975 through 1995, but dismissed published accounts of healed organic and functional diseases for children in Christian Science as “not [having] been confirmed by scientifically valid measures.”

Johnsen acknowledges the profound and troubling issues of responsibility and conscience some court cases have raised for state legislatures and the Christian Science Church. The Church needs to think through the relation between the deep faith and spiritual commitment that underlie their healing ministry and the essential common sense and common humanity that Mary Baker Eddy identified with this ministry.

Gartrell-Mills’s Part II continues her study of Christian Science in 20th century Britain, examining the initial negative reaction of the public, medical establishment, and Anglican Church. But then she finds ways in which Christian Science eventually contributed to more favorable medical attitudes toward spiritual considerations, and the Anglican Church’s opening up to spiritual forms of healing. 

The authors summarized six cases in the 1980s in which parents were prosecuted for not providing medical care for their children who died under Christian Science treatment. They found ambiguity in state and federal laws, as well as in the Christian Science Church’s claim that the decision to use Christian Science treatment was individual, leaving parents unsupported and vulnerable.

Kondos’s ‘pathfinder’ is a comprehensive collection of resources on Christian Science healing for children and its relation to modern U.S. law. The author attempted to be objective in the presentation and evaluation of the various research materials. Kondos believes that, given the profound religious, legal, and moral questions discussed, firm conclusions should be based on thoroughly informed and balanced judgment.

Johnsen presents a Christian Science point of view in the context of Rita Swan’s work with the CHILD organization. He clarifies that he has no intention to rebut Swan’s painful personal experience, nor does he represent an official church line on health choices, but speaks from his personal experience of  healing which brought about a close relationship with God.

This sourcebook was compiled by the Christian Science Publishing Society as a response to many unanswered questions in public thought regarding Christian Science beliefs and practices in the late 1980s. It includes primary and secondary sources, as well as scholarly analytical work and personal statements of faith.

This book was published by the Christian Science Church in the late 1980s, near the end of the decade of highly publicized losses of children among Christian Scientists. Although Christian Scientists had been practicing spiritual healing over a century, these losses resulted in prosecution of parents and stimulated discussion of religious, ethical, and legal issues. They caused much soul-searching among Christian Scientists.

​​The 1987 death of a young child under spiritual treatment prompted Gottschalk’s clarification of how Christian Science parents approach care for their children. He makes the case that they stand by their commitment to their children’s health as well as their First Amendment right to practice their religious beliefs, because their experience with spiritual healing has proved reliable.

Simultaneous with the interest in spiritual healing among mainstream and fundamentalist Christian denominations in the 1970s and 1980s was the concern about the legal basis for such healing practices. Johnsen addresses these concerns by providing a contextual background of the evolution of the ministry of healing in the Christian Science Church from its founding up to the writer’s day.

Swan, whose young son had recently died of meningitis after being attended by a Christian Science practitioner, argues that the state should not be required to protect the Christian Science health care system. Such treatment is within the state’s realm of comment because Christian Science calls itself an independent system of health, yet it does not conform to state health regulations.

Talbot, an officially recognized Christian Science practitioner, addresses the medical community’s oft-asked questions about what Christian Science treatment is and is not. A key point is that Christian Scientists view disease as mentally caused, and therefore subject to treatment through spiritual means. He addresses common misconceptions about Christian Science treatment, such as Christian Scientists trying to dismiss sickness as an illusion.

The value of this 1960 article lies in its historical evidence of the evolution of the debate over the legal and moral issues related to the medical care of children whose parents practiced spiritual healing based on the teachings of Christian Science. The basic argument was based on the gradual judicial, legislative, and social acceptance of the spread of Christian Science.