Annotations Related to Christian Science Treatment

In 1953, Anglican church leaders created a commission of clergy and doctors seeking a clearer understanding of divine healing, its role in their ministry, and their relationship with medical practitioners. The final report grounded it in the medical sciences and found little common ground between spiritual healing and the Anglican Church’s embedding of its healing ministry in the ritual and creed of the Church.

The Mary Baker Eddy Library examines Eddy’s correspondence and documents related to the 1881 chartering, development and fruition of the Massachusetts Metaphysical College. The College, an institution meant to teach Eddy’s metaphysical healing method, accepted both sexes regardless of age or gender. Eddy intended her students to practice what they learned back in their own communities.

Mary Baker Eddy’s approach to the weather is the topic of research, including stories of how threatening weather and the laws of nature were made subordinate to God’s divine law. One student of Eddy’s explains how she instructed them not to try to control the weather. Rather, their prayers were to affirm that God, not outside influences, governs the weather.

Wadleigh’s purpose is to help foster a rebirth and reform in the practice of Christian Science—a rebirth that self-knowledge could help advance. Looking through the lens of his own experience as a longtime Christian Science practitioner and insider, he takes up an appraisal of the Church and its members’ persistently unexamined, unresolved challenges and mistakes. He especially seeks more compassion.

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. 

The Mary Baker Eddy Library discovered letters to Eddy from student Lucinda Reeves detailing accounts of the healing of Black Americans. Reeves first healed a Black American family and later two other patients. These accounts of healing are significant because they show that Black Americans had encounters with Christian Science earlier than previously thought.

This chapter, written by the Church, provides information that will help health care providers understand the spiritual needs of Christian Scientists in a practical, clinical setting. Besides a background history of Mary Baker Eddy, the formation of the Church, and its foundational teachings, the chapter explains reliance on prayer for healing as an individual choice, and the adherence to law when it comes to infectious diseases.

Steckler and Bartkowski seek to contribute to the scholarly understanding of how religious culture can be transformed through the lived experience of devout adherents. Using theories of subcultural identity and cultural repertoires to understand how Christian Scientists engage social challenges, they conclude that healing treatment options are more flexible and nuanced than often publicized, and other high-tension religions can benefit from a comparison.

The structure of this dissertation is a critical theological conversation between Mary Baker Eddy’s Science and Health and the 2nd-century Christian text, the Secret Revelation of John. It uses methodology from Practical Theology to highlight epistemological contrasts and similarities between the two texts and between their worldviews and orthodox worldviews. A common theological foundation lies beneath healing practices for both texts.

Horton’s page-turner autobiography recounts her courageous experience rising to the highest place of distinction in the Army Chaplain Corps with, as she often heard, two strikes against her: her Christian Science faith tradition and her being among the first few women to enter the chaplain corps.

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. 

Dericquebourg distinguishes those religious expressions where ontological salvation is their primary goal and purpose, from ‘healing churches’ (where he places Christian Science) where ontological salvation is also important, but the healing of mind and body is the heart of their faith and the authentication of their theology. He lists characteristics in common with other healing religions as well as their points of tension.

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.

Kramer’s well-researched critique on Christian Science makes her arguments easier to understand than most critics. She grasps the fundamental teachings and history of the religion well, but she left it for doctrinal reasons. Most of Perfect Peril describes her emotional and intellectual struggles with doctrinal issues. Following a crisis of faith, she concluded that Christian Science is a dangerous mind control. 

This essay on Christian Science is one of many descriptive introductions of various religions and their relation to evangelical Christianity. Simmons notes that the ‘Christian’ element in Christian Science involves a radical reinterpretation of Jesus and his role in the New Testament. Mary Baker Eddy stressed the practical nature of her ‘science’ in human challenges, thus highlighting the focus on healing. 

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.

Steckler, Rebecca. “‘God is my First Aid Kit’: The Negotiation of Health Care Choices Among Christian Scientists.” MA Thesis, University of Texas at San Antonio, 2013. Steckler’s interest in the challenges associated with health care choices for Christian Scientists stems from her own upbringing in Christian Science and her casual conversations among peers who, like her, left the religious practice of their families. She understands and remains interested in the conflict between their families’ religion.

Written by representatives from a wide variety of Christian communions, the essays in this book seek Christian unity in mission. Unity is how diverse churches can agree to a common purpose. Mission is how the church’s purpose is transformational in both personal and social dimensions. The Christian Science chapter is: “Christian Science Christians’ Healing Practice: A Contribution to Christian Pilgrimage.”

​​Hines’s study on the relationship between illness, disability, and sin in the healing theologies of three American-born religions, including Christian Science, highlights the 19th-century context from which they came. Reacting against the prevalent Calvinist notion of illness and disability offering salvific powers, Christian Science argues that sickness is not God-made. But sick people can feel blamed for their infirmities.

The two paragraphs devoted to an explanation of Christian Science healing practices present a view solely from the perspective of medicine. The article argues that Christian Science practitioners cannot perform a number of ordinary medical procedures such as a diagnosis of illness. Butler expresses concern that those who are not healed might become depressed or conclude they are unworthy.

Ruetenik’s unusual suggestion to establish a ‘Church of Christ, Pragmatist,’ envisions an institution based on a pragmatic practice of Christian Science that does not need to be protected or a doctrine that needs to be defended but as a practice that can be modified. It could function as a midway point between optimism (healing always occurs) and pessimism (healing never occurs).

Driessen’s chapter in a book about spiritual perspectives and clinical practices is devoted to the religious background, practice, and ethics of Christian Science treatment. Driessen, an officially recognized Christian Science practitioner, describes the theological foundation of the Christian Science worldview, the resources for healing, and the relationship of Christian Science ethics with the medical world.

As a health communication researcher, Kline focuses this study on Christian Science for several reasons, including the use of health testimonies for examining how prayer affects health, and learning how people communicate about spirituality in their healthcare. Six themes emerged from Kline’s research on testimonials published in Christian Science periodicals in 2008 and 2009, reflecting three general interactive processes involving spirituality and health.

Loue addresses the conflict generated among numerous parties concerned with the death or potential death of a child whose parents rely on religious, non-medical means for healing (including Christian Science). She calls for a systematic study with sufficient scientific rigor of the effects of religious healing, to confirm or refute claims of adherents and opponents of religious healing for children.

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.