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Women & Christian Science

March is Women’s History Month, and as Mary Baker Eddy is a historical figure, we’ve put together a list of popular posts, links and books that help put her in context, as well as contemporary women who are working to share their experiences with Christian Science and help support others.

Contemporary Women who are speaking up and out against Christian Science, sharing their stories and experience and organizing for change!

Katherine Beim-Esche, Director of the Fellowship of Former Christian Scientists

Katherine felt called to reach out to other former Christian Scientists. She realized there was a real need for a ministry working to connect former Christian Scientists and provide resources specifically for people with this background. Members of the Fellowship of former CS are followers of Jesus Christ called to walk together with people with a background in Christian Science.

Peggy Cook, Released: Walking from Blame and Shame into Wholeness

In Released, Peggy gracefully weaves the Christian Science worldview into dialogue as she shares her childhood memories. Christian Scientists believe that the material world is not real, it’s just an illusion. Matter, like our bodies and the world around us, is artificial and not the true reality. Scientists spend copious amounts of time studying the writings of Mary Baker Eddy, the religion’s founder, and denying the existence of the material world around them. They deny the five senses and cling to a theology that only good exists and that everything is God; anything not good is not of God and therefore isn’t real.

Lucia Greenhouse, fathermothergod: My Journey Out of Christian Science

A moving, powerful, and beautifully written work. The author convincingly recreates the bizarre dynamics of a Christian Science household: the jargon with its euphemisms and absolutist declarations of Truth, the denial and suppression of facts and feelings, the secrecy, the mistrust directed toward non-CS family members.

Lauren Hunter, Leaving Christian Science: 10 Stories of New Faith in Jesus Christ

Lauren Hunter grew up in a fourth generation Christian Science home but struggled to understand and implement successful physical healing. Like many who have left Christian Science, she sought out others who had also left to gain clarity. After being out of CS for nearly 20 years, she hoped to help others cross the chasm of leaving this religious cult by sharing her story, as well as the stories of nine others she interviewed.

Linda S. Kramer, Perfect Peril: Christian Science and Mind Control

In this book Linda brings her well-trained scientific mind to the monumental task of reliving and reinterpreting half a lifetime’s experiences and beliefs. Giving full expression to the emotional content while analyzing it with clarity, she has made a powerful case for relegating Christian Science to the category of cults.

Rita Swan, The Last Strawberry

Rita Swan and her husband, Doug, founded the organization Children’s Healthcare Is a Legal Duty (CHILD, www.childrenshealthcare.org) in 1983, which works to stop child abuse and neglect related to religious, cultural, or secular belief systems. Working in coalition with other organizations, CHILD has won improvements in the child-protection laws of more than a dozen states. Rita Swan has testified before legislative committees in fourteen states, spoken at many professional conferences, and published articles in scholarly journals, reference works, and newspapers.

Books by Women that help put things in Historical Perspective

The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy and the History of Christian Science by contemporaries of Eddy, Georgine Milmine and Willa Cather

One of the first major examinations of Eddy’s life and work, along with Sibyl Wilbur’s articles in Human Life magazine, the material initially appeared in McClure’s magazine in 14 installments between January 1907 and June 1908, when Eddy was 85 years old, preceded in December 1906 by a six-page editorial in which McClure’s announced the series as “probably as near absolute accuracy as history ever gets”…. The McClure’s eyewitness accounts and affidavits became key primary sources for many accounts of Eddy and the church’s early history.

Each Mind a Kingdom by Berryl Satter

Satter discusses the social and economic conditions in which these ideas began, and why they were popular with white, upper and middle class women. New Thought provided women a platform with which to make, among other things, social reforms, and economic opportunities through income from faith healing, lectures, pamphlets, and teaching.

God’s Perfect Child by Caroline Fraser

This is the gold standard critique of Christian Science – scholarly, exhaustive, and courageous. Roughly the first half of the book is an unfiltered history Eddy’s life, the early days of the Christian Science movement, and the establishment of the Mother Church. The second half covers the social history of Christian Science in the 20th century, conflicts within the movement, the Board of Directors’ campaigns against dissidents, the censorship and suppression of critical books, the disastrous business decisions made by church executives during the 1980s and 1990s, and the demise of the Monitor, etc., including an unflinching account of the child cases of the 1970s and 1980s and the defensive attitude of the Mother Church. Fraser puts Christian Science in the context of American cultural mythology.

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Love

With Valentine’s Day coming up soon, we share this previously published piece from Emerging Gently on the topic of Love.

This is #10 in a series of posts looking at the 26 Christian Science Weekly Bible Lesson subjects, chosen by Mary Baker Eddy, and rotated twice per year. These lessons are the sermon at each Christian Science church worldwide, and are read by Christian Scientists daily. Today’s subject is “Love”. Look for other posts in the category “Lesson Sermon Subjects“. 

Love…another big subject, sort of like “God”, but not quite so big. Everyone wants and needs it, and there are many different ideas of what “love” exactly is. In reference to the Lesson Sermon subject of the same name, “Love” is a synonym for God (hence my capitalization of the word in keeping with what I call “Christian Science Grammar”). I’ll try to keep this focused on Love, and maybe touch a bit on the Christian Science take on love.Love (with a capital “L”)…

Love in the sense of being a synonym for God means God’s caring about us (humans) who are God’s “children” or “reflections” in Christian Science as I came to see it. In Christian Science we all are often referred to as “reflections of God” as well as his/her “children”. In that sense, we’re almost, but not quite, like God. This is a point of Christian Science theology that causes some controversy between Christian Science and most mainstream Christian faiths–this elevation of human-kind to a level almost equal to God.

“(1) The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.

(2) He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.

(3) He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of rigteousness for his name’s sake.

(4) Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.

(5) Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou annointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.

(6) Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.”
(Psalm 23 ~ King James Version)

Love to me, in the synonymous-with-God sense, means God’s love, caring, and protection of us, and (supposed) healing of us. That’s what it came to mean to me as a Christian Scientist. As you read Psalm 23 above, you’ll get a very true sense of how I came to see this sense of “Love”. It’s a nice, warm kind of love from an benevolent (most of the time, unless you’re a Canaanite or Philistine) almighty being that I don’t necessarily really believe in anymore–well not the Judeo/Christian/Islamic version. I don’t believe in God as a sentient, separate, almighty intelligence, and I’m not really sure how much I ever did accept that sense of God when I was a Christian Scientist. So, while this concept of Love is still a nice one as far as I’m concerned, I don’t really fully accept it anymore. I don’t believe in the “sky” God of the Bible, so I don’t believe there is that being “out there” that loves me or cares for me, and I’m perfectly fine with that. I outgrew my need for imaginary friends many years ago; “God” just took me a bit longer. I believe in the love expressed towards me by my friends and family, and the love I express to them. It’s a positive energy that exists in the universe, and is a part of the fabric thereof. If there is a sense of “God’s love”, if you want to call it that, that I believe in, that would be it.

Love (small “l”)…

What is love (not capitalized) to a Christian Scientist? Pretty much what it is to most people, to be honest. I’m not going to discuss sexuality and Christian Science issues at length here in this post (that’s a quagmire of weirdness I don’t feel like stepping through right now), so don’t bother asking. But love, as in romantic love? For most Christian Scientists, it’s largely what it is to the rest of us, just with a few odd hang-ups around the sex part. While sex is an integral part of romantic love for most people, there are some odd hang-ups there in the Christian Science universe (I knew long-time married couples who proudly stated to anyone who’d listen that they had not had sex in many years). Hard-core Christian Scientists will view sex as an inconvenient part of the procreative process and outside of that purpose will want nothing much to do with it. Mary Baker Eddy had enormous hang-ups regarding sex and romantic relationships, never mind that she was married three times.

Christian Scientists will often tend to put a Christian Science-y spin on love as they will on most issues. To them, love is the love and affection you feel towards another person, although the Christian Scientist will say that it emanates from God, and it is that love of God that is expressed through you to the one you love. This tends to make it somewhat disconcertingly impersonal, and many is the sad tale I’ve heard of people who grew up in Christian Science homes who rarely experienced true love and warmth from their parents. I don’t quite know how us puny humans have this magical ability to channel the almighty God’s love to people we happen to love, but apparently we can. That applies for the non-romantic love you feel for your parents, siblings, or close friends too. It’s all your expression of God’s love. To the Christian Scientist, everything that happens, everything you do, everything others do (as long as it’s good) is God’s action. The bad stuff? It’s all an illusion and it didn’t really happen. How convenient! Nice way to avoid problems–deny them into submissive unreality.

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A Secular Christmas

[Image description: A still life display of several kinds of Christmas cookies on a white plate, surrounded by 2 mugs of steaming tea, a white ceramic Christmas tree, a vase of bright red, green and white flowers, a tall leafed plant, a red and white striped candle, and a crystal lamp that casts rainbows on the table in front of the cookies. The still life display is in front of a window that has a holly berry and pine needle wreath hanging from it.]

By Jodi

Happy December, everyone!

I have written many posts on this blog. Two of the past posts I have done have been about celebrating Christmas or Yule or the Winter Solstice, after leaving Christian Science.

I have talked about how my Christian Science parents taught me that “Santa Claus isn’t real,” because “we don’t lie to our children.” See “Santa Claus Isn’t Coming to Town.” When I was a bona-fide Christian Scientist, I was one of the biggest champions of the message, “Christmas is about Jesus’ birth! Tell everyone!” 

After leaving Christian Science, I thought I became Pagan. I learned of the celebration of “Yule,” on December 21. I have since learned more things and realized I don’t want to celebrate “Yule,” because I think I understand now that it’s a Wiccan thing, and I am not Wiccan. Last year, we celebrated the Winter Solstice, which I will continue to do, and for me, it’s separate from Yule. 

My beliefs have changed many times now, and every year, I sit back and re-evaluate what’s important to me. I have done this annual evaluation – since my kids were younger. We even evaluated which Christmas ornaments we liked in our collection, donating the ones we didn’t like, keeping the ones we did. 

This year, I finalized a divorce from my kids’ dad. Both of my kids are in their late teens and have chosen to stay at their dad’s house due to good Internet access and their friends being there. I could no longer afford rent in that area and have chosen to move to a different state and start a new life where things are much more affordable for me. 

I am flying my kids to see my family in a few days, and we will have an early celebration without a name to it. I will have our little ceramic light-up tree, and stockings I bought for them, filled with things. I am also making all their favorite seasonal cookies. 

My larger family (all Christian Scientists) will be there the next day, and we’ll have a big Christmas celebration, opening gifts to each other and having brunch and a special evening meal after spending a day together. That will be a lot of fun. 

On the actual Christmas Day, I think it will just be my partner and me and my dogs, like it is every other day of the year. I’m expecting we may have a nice meal we think up (for Thanksgiving this year, my partner grilled us nice steaks, and I made us mashed potatoes and cookies). It’s nice to do things simply, and just focus on who you are with and what is going right in our life right now, rather than having to fuss and work and stress about making it a perfect holiday like we remember when we were kids. 

I am making enough Christmas cookies to share with my larger family, my partner’s larger family, and my neighbors. It is fun to just go to homes and wish them a happy day and share cookies. I look forward to doing that with my local neighbors one of these days. 

On the Winter Solstice, I will probably still go out and see the sunset. I live in a tiny house now, and don’t have a fireplace or a firepit. So I’ll probably light a candle and maybe burn some tracing paper that has my wishes on it. We shall see. Fire safety is super important to me, I do not want to start a wildfire, so I am always extremely cautious when lighting a candle or a fire. One year, we whispered our wishes into pine cones and placed the pine cones back where we found them, for fae folk to carry our wishes forward. Maybe I will do that this year, too. Who knows. We shall see. 

I invite you to consider figuring out what works for you each holiday season, and what doesn’t work for you. Do what you love and don’t do so much that you stress badly about it. 

Will you please leave a comment with something you love to do during this season? I would love to see what others do this time of year. 

I send you wonderful light and joy for this holiday season! 

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Thanksgiving 2022

The Thanksgiving Day service is the only ‘special’ service the Christian Science church offers. The readings from the desk include the Presidential proclamation for Thanksgiving, as well as a few passages from The Bible and Science and Health. The service is then opened to the congregation for them to share ‘testimonies of healing and sharing of experiences in Christian Science.’

The following are testimonies from Ex-Christian Scientists, as they give thanks for having left Christian Science. Thank you all for your contributions!

We at The Ex-Christian Scientist offer no readings, or lengthy proclamations, merely our sincerest thanks for everyone who has contributed to our efforts. We do not advocate any one particular path but acknowledge that there are many legitimate pathways that can be personally and spiritually fulfilling.

All Thanksgiving posts are tagged Thanksgiving. Comments are moderated and closed automatically after 30 days.

This “Thanksgiving” (which I now observe as an Indigenous day of mourning), I’m so grateful to live in reality — having escaped from the cult of Christian Science (I was 4th generation) and its toxic, nonsense, magical thinking. Cult recovery and C-PTSD healing are a long road, especially when all my current health problems as an adult are the direct results of childhood medical and emotional neglect and abuse at the hands of my CS parents and grandparents, as well as adults at CS camp, school and boarding house, and my CS ex-spouse. But I’m so thankful now for the ability to see all that horrific abuse for what it was, to know that CS has always been pure evil, and to know it will never again have a place in any part of my life, my heart, or my body — all of which are very real. I only wish I believed in hell, because Mary Baker Eddy certainly deserves to burn for all eternity, but thankfully death and destruction are also real. I hope and pray that CS, TMC, branch churches, camps, schools, “nursing” facilities, etc. all follow her as soon as humanly possible. Amen.

  • EG

There are many things I am grateful for (including the word ‘grateful’ that I am working to reclaim from Christian Science). Among the best decisions I ever made was to finally leave Christian Science after spending the first 42 years of my life swimming around in what I call the ‘Krazy Sauce’. My gratitude for having left Christian Science came clearly into focus during the COVID-19 pandemic. I can’t even begin to imagine the inner conflict I would have felt in having to deal with a pandemic that could not be denied, in the face of a faith that would have demanded that I deny it despite the public health mandates that would have demanded that I acknowledge at least some sort of “pandemic reality”. I am grateful that I effortlessly, and without even a second thought, received an entire course of the COVID-19 vaccine (I have had the initial two shots, plus two boosters). As a Christian Scientist, I would have been in the deepest mental and emotional turmoil even just getting the jab in the arm or wearing a mask. Not having to work through the cognitive dissonance that Christian Science theology imposes while dealing with the undeniable reality of a pandemic, is also something I am tremendously grateful for. I’m also grateful that I do not have to sit in idle boredom, listening to readings from the Bible and Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures anymore.

  • Jeremy

It is wonderful to be a part of this special, annual service. I am so grateful to read all the testimonies from those of us who left Christian Science. It brings me so much joy to find community with folks who have found freedom.

I feel so thankful today for having left Christian Science. My life has become amazing after realizing Christian Science was all an elaborate hoax.

I left Christian Science almost a decade ago now. I launched on a big self-healing journey: I walked away from my god, my church, my friends, my community, my still-in-CS family (thankfully I have mended fences with my family; I love them very much). After that, I walked away from my marriage. I am in a new relationship with MYSELF! I am finally doing things that make me feel happy – like writing books, and cooking good food. I wasn’t able to do those things while trapped in previous circumstances.

I am also finally taking care of my body. I have had to play “catch up” with medical care. Having had zero vaccinations growing up, I have had to go to the local Health Department where I live to get vaccines for all the things. I am so grateful to the health care folks there who can figure out my doses.

I just got my Shingles vaccine, and next week I get my first shot for Polio. I also want to say I am grateful for mundane things that symbolize that I am human and happy – I love my morning cup of black tea with vanilla creamer. I love taking my daily medicines that help control my heart rate and my migraines. I love being able to take pain relief pills when I need them.

I love being in a new relationship with someone who takes care of me when I am sick. I love being in a relationship that gives me all the affection I have been desperate for, my entire life. I get all the hugs and cuddles I ever wanted and never got. My human side is acknowledged every day, and honored for its basic needs. It’s quite fun, being human.

There are times when it’s terrible, too, though. I fight severe anxiety and depression every day. More and more, I am starting to win that battle.

I want to express one more thing I am thankful for – ice cream. I am starting to buy a new flavor every time I need to buy ice cream. I am having so much fun trying all the flavors of ice cream. There are so many – and I love most of them. It is so delightful to take pleasure in a taste. Tasting matter. Matter is real and so enjoyable. There – I said it.

I am so grateful to be finding pleasure and happiness in my life, now that I fully acknowledge that matter is actually real and tangible. Happy Thanksgiving!

  • Just Jodi

It wasn’t until I left CS that I could truly heal and come into my own. I gradually moved away from CS in my early 20s. Finding a (psychological) therapist and going on appropriate medication for me was life-changing. Imagine being able to take Advil for a budding migraine and that migraine not really appear! How wonderful that an SSRI can help with the crippling anxiety that prayer was utterly ineffective against. I now have a wonderful husband, child, and career, and I know I couldn’t have done it with CS! I am so grateful!

  • EQ

I am so grateful for modern medicine. My father had a knee replacement this summer that has allowed him increased mobility and independence as he heals. My meds keep me healthy and sane on a daily basis. My sister and her family are able to travel around the world, because they are protected by the vaccinations and regions specific medications that their doctors were able to give them before they left. My son did not suffer any long-term complications from a head injury this fall, other than a scar on his eyelid! I am always uncomfortable, thinking about how all of these situations would have resolved if we were all still practicing Christian scientists.

  • Wendy

As of this year I’ve been out of CS longer than I was in it. Every time I think I have it all out of my system I find another legacy of the collective make-believe that is CS. As annoying as that is, I’m grateful for the struggle to meet the world as it really is while getting to be and admit who I really am… and for benadryl.

  • Kjestell

Thank you everyone for your Thanksgiving Testimony contributions, this concludes our post. Should inspiration strike, the comment section will remain open for 30 days.

We wish you a wonderful holiday season. The ExCS Admin Team