Category
Believing & Practicing
What it was like to believe in and practice Christian Science, told by people who did.
Chrystal's Story: My Second Lump (Part 2)
Chrystal describes a decade of praying and paying practitioners over a growing lump, the guilt after having it removed by a doctor, and a short first try at Quaker meetings.
Chrystal’s Story – Becoming a Christian Science Practitioner
Chrystal describes Class Instruction and becoming a Journal-listed Christian Science practitioner, including the unpaid work, the costs, and the church’s stance on doctors.
If I would only know the Truth about my sight, I would not need glasses
A former Christian Scientist describes ten years of untreated nearsightedness, a practitioner who told her to know the Truth, and how it limited her as a child.
Christian Science is a culture deeply tied to shame, denial, and secrets.
Former Christian Scientists describe how the church’s teachings kept abuse hidden, put the blame on victims, and made leaving a bad marriage harder.
Lucy's Story
Content warning: child sexual abuse. A former Christian Scientist describes being sexually abused at age five, her mother’s response, and her later work with survivors.
Logical Incoherence in the Theology of Christian Science
A former Christian Scientist, now a born-again Christian, argues that Mary Baker Eddy’s teaching that God is a principle is logically incoherent.
We went to the park
An anonymous former Christian Scientist recalls Sundays at church and Sunday School from birth to age 20, Principia, and Thanksgiving testimonies, and why their children skip it.
"Are Sin Disease and Death Real?" taught us the obvious answer: no.
Former Christian Scientists recall Sunday School, including a child who treated a friend’s father’s death as unreal after a lesson on sin, disease, and death.
I just believed what they told me. Because I was a kid!
A former Christian Scientist recalls their mother’s death from an untreated lung illness and a practitioner who, when they were thirteen, blamed them for the family’s poverty.
Conditions under which a family could possibly bring up happy and healthy children while indoctrinating them with the tenets of Christian Science
A former Christian Scientist lists the conditions under which children might grow up happy and healthy in a Christian Science home, and why her own family turned to doctors.