Category: Christian Science

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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.

Posts

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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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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

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Feeling Emotions

By Jodi, a Blog Contributor

I am positive it’s been said elsewhere on this blog, multiple times, that Christian Science teaches that “there are bad emotions.” I am positive, also, that Christian Science is not the only belief system to teach this. I read an article recently that talked about Mary Baker Eddy being the forerunner of the “Positive Thinking Movement” that still abounds around the country. Christian Science, however, takes this “Positive Thinking” to the absolute most dangerous extreme. Get in a fatal crash? Keep your thoughts positive, and you’ll not only come back from the dead, all by yourself with no help from an ambulance, but you’ll be instantly healed the way Jesus was when he came out of the tomb! Your entire “Being” be glowing!
 
I was hanging a lamp today with a friend, and the heavy chord from the ceiling fixture pulled the entire porcelain fixture on to the floor. It was still encased in the bubble wrap in which it arrived, but it shattered. I stared at it, in disbelief, and my friend so nicely said, “I’m sorry.” (Meaning he knew I was looking forward to this new lamp in my kitchen for so many reasons, and now it was broken.) At his comment of sincere sympathy and kindness, I felt tears well up in my eyes.
 
And those tears in my eyes are what inspired this blog post.
 
I grew up as the daughter of a Christian Scientist perfectionist, and she was also the daughter of a Christian Scientist …. and so it goes back to Mary Baker Eddy’s day, I think. Thankfully, I left. I wish I had left in my 20s the way most of my peers did, but, it just matters that I finally left.
 
I remember one time when I was in college, and my younger brother was probably in grade school. He did something in the kitchen and a glass bowl slipped from his hands and shattered to the floor. My first thought was, “oh no, he is going to be a wreck about this for hours, because he will feel so terrible about having broken this bowl! Then we won’t get anything done!” It turned out, he was so calm about it. Our mom and I praised him to the hilt about being calm in this situation. We cleaned up the broken pieces and went about our day as if nothing had happened.
 
I mean, part of that is good; he wasn’t in any trouble. He just had a little accident and the bowl shattered. He hadn’t done it intentionally. He wasn’t a bad person, and we didn’t want him to feel guilty and incredibly sad as if he was going to be in severe trouble over an accident.
 
That reminds me of the quote from Mary Baker Eddy’s book, “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures.” The quote says: “Accidents are unknown to God.” (Page 424.)
 
I am sure that at the time I was able to do some mental gymnastics that this bowl breaking wasn’t an accident, because “There are no accidents in God’s Kingdom!” Of course, we also probably KNEW that this bowl wasn’t actually real. (I wish that was sarcasm, I’m not sure what to make of that now, but that’s part of the process of being in Christian Science – nothing that has a material presence is real. If you can feel, see, taste, touch or smell it, that proves it’s not real!) So that probably helped with our denial about the whole experience, because something that wasn’t even real couldn’t actually break.
 
What got me today, while we were still dealing with this lamp this morning, is that sadness is actually a normal emotion to feel for accidentally breaking something. We aren’t robots. we are human beings having a human experience. And: emotions are a key part of the human experience. They are as real as music, tree branches, cut grass, cat purrs, perfume, and the sound of the ocean waves.
 
When my brother broke that bowl, our mom and I both immediately remembered that a year before an almost identical situation had occurred, and he had been uncontrollably sad, and crying. He was probably in maybe 2nd grade or something that first time, and maybe he was in 3rd or 4th grade for the second time. He had been nearly inconsolable for a long time. Maybe an hour. Maybe longer. Instead of letting him feel his emotions, I am positive we probably tried to talk him out of having them. We had to teach him that he wasn’t sad, but that he was safe and ok and didn’t need to be sad. The [whatever that broke the first time] wasn’t real and was easily replaced. Because things that are real can’t be hurt or damaged.
 
Wow. The mental gymnastics is mind-boggling to me now. I was seriously brainwashed to believe that all of this gobble-de-gook was true.
 
I remember being taught by my Christian Science Teacher that it was bad to feel emotions other than joy, happiness and gratitude.
 
Getting out of the Christian Science belief system, I learned that emotions are all real. I had a steep learning curve, learning what emotions feel like and how to label them. I learned that it’s important to name each emotion. A basic meditation practice has a person name whatever comes in to their thinking. If they feel anger, they say, “that’s anger,” or acknowledge it in some way and let it go on. I had to identify these emotions I had never been given words for. (See the website link, below, that talks about mindfulness practice.)
 
In therapy, I learned of horrible abuse to someone I love dearly – I learned that something that had happened in the past was actually abuse. This person I loved so much had been abused. And I sat there, with a blank expression on my face. I had no idea what emotion to feel. My therapist said to me, “if that had happened to someone I care so deeply about, I would feel sad.” And I realized it: Yes! I felt sad! I let myself feel sad for as long as I needed to. I think I still feel it now, and it’s been a few years.
 
During those years, I also realized I felt anger about that situation. I have felt more emotions than just sad, too, come to think of it. My emotions have included feeling: frustrated, angry, sad, hateful, depressed, frustration mixed with fury, outrage and even hatred at the abuser. I can’t even go back and fix the situation. It’s all over. The one who was abused has since died and I can’t go hug him and make it all better. This “not being able to go back and fix the situation” brings back the onslaught of emotions.
 
My emotions about something so horrible are perfectly normal. They are reasonable responses to feel in response to a heart-breaking, terrible situation. It is completely ABNORMAL to feel joy and gratitude about an abusive situation!
 
You know what? As I spent decades of my life in Christian Science, I had emotional outbursts at different times. Leonard Nimoy, the actor who played the emotionless “Spock” on Star Trek, struggled to stay constantly in a state of “non-emotion” for his character. He felt strong emotions after months of being this emotionless character. There are videos of him, feeling these strong emotions, in-between takes.
 
A human body needs to feel emotions. Otherwise, they build up to an intense level and come bursting out when it’s inconvenient and out of proportion. That’s why we need to feel the emotions as they happen. Name them. Express them when they are small so they don’t become out of control, strong, and downright frightening.
 
When I was taking photos of the shattered lamp part to send to the company to start the process of getting a replacement, I did shed 2 tears. I brushed them away, and kept working. I know that whatever happens, whether we buy this piece again or if they take pity on us and send us this part as a free replacement, it will work out. I will get the lamp installed and I will love this lamp in my kitchen until I move out of the house. Two tears over a broken lamp isn’t a big deal. It’s a healthy response to a frustrating situation. I feel grateful, actually, to have had this small response to a small broken lamp piece, instead of burying it down inside me to outburst at some later time.
 
My friend called me today to say her dad died. I cried more for that than I did for the broken light bulb. In fact, I felt generally sad for the rest of today, and also planned to take her dinner, a thoughtful potted plant, a bottle of wine, and a bunch of hugs for her whole family. We delivered the meal and sat with her and her family while they talked and hugged us as much as they needed to. I wasn’t an unfeeling robot about it. And I didn’t melt in to an emotional puddle for 24 hours. I’d say I handled the broken lamp piece and my friend’s parent’s death in about the right proportion for each of those circumstances.
 
In the words of a cigarette company from my youth – “We’ve come a long way, Baby.”
 
Additional Reading
 
I found this website which explains “Mindfulness” beautifully, about 3/4ths of the way down. https://medium.com/@SoulGPS/3-steps-to-stop-missing-your-narcissistic-ex-break-the-trauma-bond-and-start-a-new-life-726c5d2dc97a
 
A book I read when I was about to embark on leaving Christian Science, though I didn’t know yet that life circumstances would propel me in this new direction. It took me a long time to get through this book. It helped me learn to feel and name my emotions, and begin on the journey towards balance instead of severe intensity with my emotions. “Discover Your Soul Signature,” by Panache Desai.
 
 
This is one article about Christian Science started the Positive Thinking Movement, but it’s not the one I read. There are probably dozens of these sorts of articles that trace Positivitiy back to Mary Baker Eddy & Christian Science, http://www.chronicresilience.com/2014/02/18/where-did-the-power-of-positive-thinking-come-from/