Our Father-Mother God, all-harmonious

First Church of Christ, Scientist
Haddonfield, NJ
July 29, 2007

I did not attend church – any church – on July 22, 2007. I was in Boston working at a conference. While in Boston, though, I caught a glimpse of the Mother Church of the Church of Christ, Scientist – an impressive structure. I decided then and there to make the local Christian Science church my next visit.

I knew that the founder of the Church of Christ, Scientist was Mary Baker Eddy, who had written Science and Health with a Key to the Scriptures (SHWKS) in the mid-nineteenth century, and I thought I knew that practitioners of Christian Science try to heal themselves of physical illness through prayer or something – that they do not use medicine as most people know it. I knew that lots and lots of Christians do not consider Christian Scientists to be Christian at all (we’ve probably all heard the line that they are neither Christians nor scientists). I knew that the award-winning newspaper, The Christian Science Monitor, was somehow connected to the church, although this seemed strange – I have a hard time imagining the Philadelphia Inquirer connected to the Presbyterian Church, or the New York Times having something or other to do with the American Baptist Convention. How does that work?

So, of course, I went online. From Wikipedia I learned that the core belief of Christian Science seems to be a thoroughgoing non-materialism: “the reality of being and of all existence is spiritual, not material.” The material world, which seems so real, is actually illusory. In their words, There is no life, truth, intelligence, nor substance in matter. All is infinite Mind and its infinite manifestation, for God is All-in-all. Spirit is immortal Truth; matter is mortal error. Spirit is the real and eternal; matter is the unreal and temporal. Spirit is God, and man is His image and likeness. Therefore man is not material; he is spiritual.

Their ideas about medicine follow from this idea about the unreality of matter. Since our bodies are not real, bodily illness cannot be real – it must be the result of fear, ignorance, or sin. We are healed when we reorient our wrong thoughts and realize God’s goodness. According to Wikipedia, Christian Scientists do not forbid people to use physical medicine; they just say that you can choose physical medicine or Christian Science treatment, and you should use only one or the other – not attempt to use both at the same time. Christian Scientists point out that anyone who turns to a religious philosophy for physical healing is blamed when healing does not come, and yet thousands and thousands of people die every year under the care of doctors, with no similar outcry about their failed treatments.

Christian Scientists have been criticized harshly from their earliest days for not seeking medical care. I know a bit about the state of medicine in the mid-nineteenth century, though (it was the subject of my dissertation). Medicine was in such a sorry state during that time that a person might well have received just as much benefit from praying and thinking spiritual thoughts as from seeking the services of a physician – so the effects of eschewing material medicine during Mary Baker Eddy’s lifetime might not have been so dramatic as they are today.

Mark Twain wrote an entire book making fun of Christian Scientists (and he was also harshly critical of physicians). Ironically, his daughter Clara became a Christian Scientist and wrote a book defending and promoting her faith. (Children love to do stuff like that, don’t they?)

At first blush it would seem an easy thing to disprove the theories of this religious group – just knock a Christian Scientist on the head with a stick and ask him if he believes in matter now. On the other hand, monistic idealism has a long history, and you can turn to Plato, to Buddhism, and to idealists such as the philosopher George Berkeley if you want to find others who have held to some sort of non-materialism. I suppose that when I visit the church I’ll be able to find a few people who look ill or disabled, and then I could claim that they don’t seem to be good advertisements for their faith. On the other hand, you could walk into any church and find people who aren’t very good illustrations of their core beliefs.

Christian Scientists today are a smallish group – Wikipedia gives an estimate of between 100,000 and 400,000 members worldwide, with maybe 150,000 in the United States. The estimates are necessarily hazy, because the church forbids publishing membership figures. There may be about 1,000 congregations in the US.

So it is somewhat surprising to see that Christian Scientists are well represented in politics and the arts. There seems to be some kind of odd connection of Christian Scientists to the Watergate scandal – John Erlichman, H.R. Haldeman, and Egil Krogh of Watergate fame were all members of the church. Among the figures in entertainment who were connected to the church (Joan Crawford, Carol Channing, Val Kilmer, Michael Nesmith of the Monkees, Ginger Rogers, and Lionel Hampton).

I was especially surprised to see one of my favorite screenwriters (Horton Foote) and favorite actors (Robert Duvall). Plus Alan Shepard, the first American in space. Just think about that for a moment – the first American in space, a scientist and an adventurous pilot, apparently didn’t believe in the existence of matter! (Well, I don’t know how devout a Christian Scientist he was. Still, it is amazing.)

So what will the church I visit be like?

The Haddonfield Christian Science church is a very attractive old red brick building on the main street, just past the shopping district. I find a parking spot along the street and walk in. Someone hands me a booklet as I enter, and I find a seat in one of the pews. This looks pretty much like an ordinary Protestant church – high ceilings, white walls and wood, tall clear glass windows along the sides, looking out on leafy trees, an American flag in the corner, a flower arrangement in front of the pulpit, impressive golden organ pipes, two very nice chairs to the side of the pulpit. It is squeaky clean, like most churches.

Two things mark this as a different type of church. On the wall to the left is written, in large gold letters, the verse from I John 4:16: “God is love, and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him.” On the right side is written, in large gold letters, “Divine love always has met and always will meet every human need. Mary Baker Eddy”

The copy editor in me mentally adds a couple of commas to that sentence.

The other difference is the pulpit, which is a double pulpit. It is a simple white wooden one, but twice as wide as a normal pulpit, and with two microphones.

The sanctuary seats about 350 people, and four or five rows in the rear have been roped off, which seems to be their way of forcing people to move up toward the front. The organist is playing, and she’s pretty good.

I examine the booklet I was given when I entered. It’s hefty, about 60 pages, and contains weekly Bible lessons for July through September 2007. It seems that all Christian Science congregations follow the same worship schedule, which is printed on the inside of the front cover. (Other churches do much the same thing when they follow the Lectionary.)

An Explanatory Note inside the booklet tells me that the only “sermon” will be readings from the Bible and from the Christian Science textbook. I see that the readings for each week are grouped by themes. In the last few weeks, the themes have been Christian Science, Sacrament, God, and Life. This week the theme is Truth.

Upcoming lesson subjects look interesting, albeit wacky in a kind of old-fashioned way. They include “Ancient and Modern Necromancy, alias Mesmerism and Hypnotism, Denounced,” and “Is the Universe, Including Man, Evolved by Atomic Force?” (I wish that had been today’s topic – I don’t know when I’ve heard a sermon on whether or not the universe evolved by atomic force.)

Suddenly two doors open in the wall behind the pulpit, and three people step out – a man and two women. The man and one of the women step into the double pulpit, while the second woman sits in one of the chairs. We stand to sing the first hymn, to the tune of We Gather Together to Ask the Lord’s Blessing. The hymnal we use is The Christian Science Hymnal, a 1960 version of a 1932 edition. The notation is simple (I’m fairly sure I could play most of these by sight, and I’m a very poor sight reader), and most hymns are only two verses.

There are only fifteen people in the pews, aside from me. Even with such a small group, it is somewhat integrated – there is one black congregant. And there is a range of ages, although I don’t see any children.

The woman in the pulpit reads the scripture selection for the day. This church uses the King James Version of the Bible, which is the version Mary Baker Eddy would have used. There is a moment for silent prayer.

We say the Lord’s Prayer together, but in an odd way. We all say a line from the KJV version together, and then the man and woman in the pulpit take turns adding the “spiritual interpretation” from SHWKS. So, for example, after we all say “Our Father, which art in heaven,” someone from the pulpit adds “Our Father-Mother God, all-harmonious.” Then we say, “Hallowed be Thy name,” and the pulpit reader adds, “Adorable One.” And so it goes.

I might add here that I don't really mind the "father-mother" stuff, odd though it sounds. I'm interpreting it as an attempt to get past seeing God as only and utterly male, which is the way he is presented in most church services. We sometimes say that God is not really male in a human sense, but we rarely act that way. On the other hand, bringing the feminine language into the service also sort of foregrounds the sexual aspect of God's nature, which might be unfortunate if what you are trying to get across is the asexual or nonsexual aspect. It certainly has a destabilizing effect on me, though, which is, after all, one of the reasons I wanted to pursue this crazy project.

There is another hymn, and then the announcements, which are mainly that there is Sunday School available for children through the age of twenty (this seems like an unusually long stint in Sunday School).

Next, the young woman who came out front in the beginning of the service sings a solo. She has a good voice, but she is one of those singers who somehow manage to sound unintelligible. I know that she is singing in English, and I can hear the sounds, but I can barely distinguish a single word. I feel as though I have suddenly become aphasic. This happens with other soloists, too – I wonder how it is that they manage to sing in such a way that I can hardly discern a word.

Now the man and woman at the front let us know that they are about to begin the “lesson-sermon.” Everything they do they are careful to do together, taking turns to share the sentences, and even somehow copying each other’s gestures and smiles to some degree. They explain their system of presenting the lesson-sermon in some detail, and I wonder if they are doing this for my benefit. Surely the other fifteen people in the congregation know how things go around here. But then I notice that the “Explanatory Note” before the lesson-sermon is listed as part of the program, so this must be something they do every week. They are, in fact, doing everything so carefully and precisely that I think perhaps part of the goal of these services is to follow the program with a kind of gentle exactitude.

The method for delivering a lesson-sermon is that the speakers take turns reading passages from the Bible and from SHWKS. There is no commentary on the passages, so that we can hear them “uncontaminated and unfettered by human hypotheses.”

A passage of the Bible has been designated the Golden Text for each Sunday. Today’s is Hebrews 4:12, the passage about the Word of God being a two-edged sword. We do a responsive reading, from I Thessalonians. It’s the part where Paul talks about bringing the gospel to the church not in word only, but in power, and mentions how he and his fellow workers were “gentle among you, even as a nurse cherisheth her children.”

For the next twenty minutes the man reads a Bible passage, and the woman then reads a passage from Mary Baker Eddy’s book, and vice versa. A list of all the passages is set out in the booklet we were given. Every Christian Scientist attending church on this Sunday is hearing these same sets of readings. Both the man and the woman have what seems to me like an oddly robotic style of reading, and even of moving and smiling. Each is careful to watch the other, smiling, when he or she reads. They seem a bit like animatronic figures. Their enunciation is fantastic – I’ve been wonderfully healed of my aphasia.

As I sit in this pleasant space and listen to their almost weirdly clear, slow reading I begin to feel a bit like a child being read to sleep by extremely attentive babysitters. I’m not falling asleep, but the sensation is definitely relaxing, almost hypnotic. I would say that the experience is infantilizing, except that I don’t feel like a baby so much as like a very bright and thoughtful child whose tutors are filled with loving concern and admiration Am I the only one in the building feeling this way? Is this hypnosis? Whatever it is, it’s extremely pleasant.

After the readings are over, there is a collection, another hymn, and a benediction.
In the lobby on my way out of the building I shake hands with several people, including the man who was in the pulpit. Someone asks me if I’d like a couple copies of a magazine, The Christian Science Sentinel, and I take them with thanks. Everyone seems friendly but not pushy. On my way to my car I see a family with several young children exiting from another door, so there must indeed be some kind of Sunday School class.

Epilogue

I didn’t fill out any kind of visitor’s card, so there was no way for anyone to follow up. I did look through some of the materials they had given me, and learned a little more about their style of “lesson-sermons.” It seems that all Christian Scientists are supposed to read the verses for the week throughout the week, and then meet on Wednesday evening to discuss them. The Sunday service is designed to let everyone sit quietly and hear the verses read aloud once again, so that God can speak to you through what you have been meditating on all week long. You don’t need a paid clergy, just readers.

Wouldn’t it be interesting if, say, every Baptist in the country meditated on the same set of verses all week, discussed them on Wednesdays, and then listened to them read slowly and thoughtfully on Sunday morning? No preaching, just thinking about the verses. It would be an interesting experiment.

Obviously I haven’t learned everything about this surprisingly influential offshoot of American religion, but what I have learned has actually made me a bit more sympathetic toward them than I expected to be.