Week #19 Church of Christ Scientists

In 1866, Mary Baker Eddy took a pretty bad spill and prayed herself back to heath.  Then, as any logical person would do, she spun that into a book deal and a new religion.  A religion were Jesus is not only the Son of God, he is also a podiatrist, surgeon, gynecologist, and general practitioner.  Impressive right?  We’ll if you’d like to learn how one God can pull all of that off, you can read Mary’s book, Science and Health, I perused it during the service, and let me assure you it is jam packed with science and health.  I now have a solid foundation in quantum mechanics and know the difference between a zygote and a gamete. 

“Christian Science is sometimes confused with Scientology, faith healing, New Age practices, and Eastern religions. It has also been called un-Christian or labeled a cult. Actually, Christian Science is none of the above,” according to their website.  We’ve all seen a four-month-old copy of the Christian Science Monitor in the lobby of a Jiffy Lube or passed by a Christian Science reading room, but we deiced to learn more in week #19 Church of Christ Scientists Fairfax, VA.  

There is an episode of Family Guy where a little boy is visiting Stewie and falls really ill, Lois takes him to the hospital and learns he has some terrible yet curable disease.  When the little boy’s parents hear he is at the hospital they freak out and explain that they are Christian Scientists, and believe they can pray him to health.  Some other stuff happens-maybe Peter fights a giant chicken in a ridiculously extended combat scene or there is a cutaway to a Conway Twitty song.  Regardless, then the Griffin family kidnaps the boy to get him medical care, I think, and in the end Lois convinces the family that God had answered their prayer for their son’s health in the form of modern medicine.  Before today, that is about all we knew of Christian Science. 

The actual principles of the religion make sense.  They believe in the divine love of God, and the power of that love; as well as the concept that the laws of matter yield to the laws of the mind. Sidebar, none of this is new, Hindus came up with this philosophy thousands of years ago, but some white lady says it and Americans fall in line. Christian Science folks also believe that prayer results in healing because everyone is connected with God, and that God is wise and kind and would never cause sickness or sin.  Since God is all-powerful and ever present, why can’t he cure cancer?  It is not that far out there, but that seems to be the issue with a lot of religions.  They take some simple, believable truths (likely stolen from an ancient culture) about the nature of God and our existence and crazy it all up by taking it to the extreme.  I too agree that medicine is handed out like Skittles in the country, and doctors would be better off prescribing broccoli and jogging to 90% of their patients.  Trust me, Brian is so sick of me telling him to drink water every time he complains of a headache, but it works.  I will also never argue with the power of prayer or meditation (hell I’m at yoga four days a week), I think it works…just not on AIDS.  You need drugs to fix AIDS.  Do you think Magic Johnson just prayed more than 80% of the villagers in Zimbabwe…no!  He had money to buy drugs, that is why he now owns a chain of movie theatres and a portion of the LA Dodgers and a whole generation of Africans are dead.  That was harsh, but needed to make a point.  Health may take more than prayer…in our not so ultraistic society health takes money.  Money you can use to buy medicine, vegetables, and LA Fitness memberships. 

The actual service was not that crazy, unfortunately.  There was no new age healing or testimonials of how prayer mended a hernia. It was more a mixture of incredibly boring with a bit of creepy thrown in.  We were a minute or two late because I didn’t realize it took 28 minutes to get there until 25 minutes before the start.  The church was small, with just one aisle and maybe 15 rows of pews that sat about four people on either side.  I would have a better gauge of this, but Brian walked straight up to the second row for no real reason, so it was hard to observe anything going on behind us.  The walls were white and the altar had pillars and a wide podium, giving a 17^th century Puritan feel.  There was an organist who sat facing the altar and 3 other women on the altar, one standing and reading and two sitting in chairs.  All three were dressed in outfits that could safely belong to any of the past 3 decades.  Not in a bad or particularly good way, but in the sense that if I showed you a photo of them with no other context and asked you to guess what year it was taken a fair guess would be anything from 1984 to 1999 to 2013.  For all three of them, that is more the weird part, it was all three.

So when we took our nearly front row seats, the standing woman was readying from the bible.  Once that was done, it was silent prayer time-for a really long time, like long enough that we each looked up twice to make sure it was still silent prayer time, and it was.  That was followed by the Lord’s Prayer with a science twist.  A lot of services say the Lords Prayer, it’s a popular one, but in this service the parishioners would say one line of the prayer in unison and the woman at the altar would then provide the Christian Science translation.  Allow me to paint a literal picture:

All: “Our Father which art in heaven”

Lady in 80’s outfit: “Our Father-Mother God, all-harmonious”

All: “Hallowed be Thy name”

Lady in 80’s outfit: “Adorable One”

All: “Thy kingdom come”

Lady in 80’s outfit: “Thy kingdom is come; thou art ever-present”

… for the rest of the prayer.  It is from as they called her in the service “Ms. Baker Eddy’s” book.  Apparently she translated some parts of the bible. 

The prayer was followed by a hymn; the lady gave us the hymn number, like is typically done, but before the crowd stood to sing, she read the entire first verse.  Like “please open to #431 in your hymnal and now I will recite in a normal non-singing voice the first 10 lines you’re about to sing.”  Then we stood and sang it to traditional church organ music.  This was followed by church announcements, and then of course the weekly solo.  One of the two seated ladies stood from her chair and began an operatic solo in an octave I cannot even name.  She was wearing a knee length long sleeve royal blue knit dress with large gold buttons from the neck to the hem.  She was slender and tall making the dress seem boxy on her frame. As she nearly shattered the windows with each high note, all I could think was, is this dress from Nordstrom’s Spring collection or JC Penny’s Fall 1987 clearance rack…I couldn’t place it.  I know this is shallow, but her passion for the song and my second row seat for it somehow made me uncomfortable, and I deal with my insecurities by judging others so live with it.  Anyway, it was an intense solo, but my favorite part was that once she hit the last note she turned and immediately exited out of a door behind the altar.  She sat there for the first part of the service, preformed the first scene of an opera, and was out; no time for applause.  It was the church equivalent of dramatically dropping the mic, and I’m out! 

Then, I hate to say, it got boring. The Christian Science folks don’t believe there is any need for preaching or sermons apart from what is in the Bible and Mary Baker Eddy’s text, so for the next what felt like 3 hours, the third lady stood beside the other standing lady, and they alternated readings from the bible and Science and Health.  The bible readings focused on the miracle workings of Jesus, the loaves and fishes one, the bringing the man back from the dead…and so on.   There was also a focus on God’s love and all that jazz, but honestly I missed the alternative Christian rock of the local mega church.  I was hoping for something a bit more out there, I wanted some healing, but I guess if healing is just praying, they delivered. 

God’s love is powerful, I’m not denying that, but if I break my arm I’m still going to the hospital, and I’ll pray the ER waiting room is empty and free of TB, but bring on the morphine.  My seven minutes of web research indicates that Mary Barker Eddy would have followed my example. Evidently she was married 3 times, losing one husband to yellow fever, and although she couldn’t keep a husband she could keep down a pill.  Apparently she was addicted to morphine for a good chunk of her life and had her own kid vaccinated.  Even though the idea that Jesus can heal all ills seems to work for her 100,000 or so followers, at one point Mrs. Eddy sued the city where she fell- claiming she was "still suffering from the effects of that fall."  Indicating once again that money has the most healing power of all.  I’m not trying to pass judgment on Christian Science, they obviously have a very successful news publication, I’m just not sure I’d recommend sending your kind to a Christian Science summer camp, he may come home with yellow fever or polio.