Appendix 3
Christian Science Beliefs:
What is Christian Science? What Do Christian Scientists Believe? How Do Christian Scientists Attempt to Heal Illness by Prayer?*

1. Introductory Summary

The following is a summary of the basic religious beliefs of Christian Science; it is based on an evaluation of the religious text of Christian Science, Science and Health With the Key to Scriptures (1971 edition) by Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of Christian Science:

The physical body is not real; it is merely a false idea, or image of the mind - an "error" of the mind.

The only true reality is "Divine Mind," God, Love. However, according to Christian Science, there is a false state of mind called "mortal mind;" this mortal mind or false consciousness then produces the false belief that the physical world and the physical body are real. There is no reality to physical things; they are merely false thought.

Disease, evil and death are opposite to good or God. Only God is real; therefore, disease, evil and death do not exist - except as false thoughts.

Sickness occurs only because false "mortal mind" believes in the existence of the physical body and that the physical body can become sick. Disease only occurs if we believe it can occur.

Sickness, as a false thought, will cease when a person realizes the thought was false: that there can be no disease because sickness is physical and there is no reality to the physical. The only reality is Spiritual, God; God being perfect can only create perfection; man cannot be sick because sickness is imperfection and God cannot create imperfection. Sickness is a false thought. By giving up the false thought and returning to divine mind, the false thought of mortal mind, i.e. sickness, vanishes.

*NOTE: Recently the Christian Science Church has claimed that its method of healing by prayer alone is equal or superior to medicine in the treatment of childhood illnesses. Because these claims have very serious implications, it is only necessary and fair that Christian Science theory for the claimed effectiveness of spiritual healing be fully examined.

2. Quotations

The following are quotations that further reveal the beliefs and practices of Christian Science. The quotations are from a variety of sources - the preponderance are directly from Christian Science sources. Citations are provided; where the citation is only by page number, the source is Science and Health With the Key to the Scriptures, 1971 edition, by Mary Baker Eddy. Bracketed selections within a series of quotations are used, sparingly, for explanatory purposes.

Christian Scientists believe that God is the very source and substance of man's life and well-being and that disease is mentally caused and stems from an overall human alienation from God.

Committee on Publication for Massachusetts, "Some Facts About Christian Science," The First Church of Christ, Scientist

The following quotations are from Science and Health With the Key to the Scriptures, by Mary Baker Eddy:

Mind governs the body, not partially but wholly. [p. 111]

Mind governs the body, not in one instance, but in every instance. [p. 162]

Christian Science explains all cause and effect as mental, not physical. [p. 114]

Man's belief produces disease and all its symptoms. [p. 159]

Christian Science teaches that matter is the falsity, not the fact of existence; that nerves, brain, stomach, lungs and so forth have, as matter, no intelligence, life, nor sensation. [p. 127]

All disease is the result of education. [that is, knowing about disease and thinking about disease] [p. 176]

Sickness is a growth of error, springing from mortal ignorance or fear. [p. 188]

When fear disappears, the foundation for disease is gone.
[p. 368]

A physical diagnosis of disease, since mortal mind must be the cause of disease, tends to induce disease. [p. 370]

The cause of all so-called disease is mental, a mortal fear, a mistaken belief or conviction of the necessity and power of ill-health… [p. 277]

A May 12, 1990, Boston Globe article reviewed the testimony of Nancy Calkins, the Christian Science practitioner who "treated" Robyn Twitchell:

...as a Christian Scientist she believes physical pain and illness are illusions caused by "errors of the mind," such as fear, hatred, envy and dishonesty. Since it is a law of mortal mind that certain diseases should be regarded as contagious, this law obtains credit through association, calling up the fear that created the image of disease and its consequent manifestations in the body. [p. 154]

...mortal mind, not matter, contains and carries the infection. When this mental contagion is understood, we shall be more careful of our mental conditions, and we shall avoid loquacious tattling about disease… [p. 153]

When there are fewer prescriptions and less thought is given to sanitary subjects, there will be better constitutions and less disease. In old times who ever heard of dyspeptic, cerebrospinal meningitis… [p. 175]

Erring mortal mind confers the power which the drug seems to possess. [Healing from drugs occurs not because of any real action in the drug but only from the belief that the drug will work.] [p. 157]

Because Christian Scientists believe that disease results from a lack of understanding of God's purpose for individuals and the world, they believe that prayer, not medical treatment, is curative. They say that prayer is a process of counteracting that lack of faith and consequently disease. Church members typically do not believe in being treated by doctors.

Elizabeth Neufer, The Boston Globe, July 5, 1990

The following description of the healing practice of Christian Science practitioners appeared in the St. Petersburg Times of Florida, June 4, 1989, in an article titled, "Christian Science on Trial: How Practitioners Heal":

Each described the work a bit differently, but there were some basic similarities. All said their practice is conducted largely by phone, though some patients may request a home or office visit. All said they heal by praying and may suggest some religious reading. All expressed certainty that most of their patients are healed, sometimes in minutes and that any human disease can be healed spiritually.

Science can heal the sick, who are absent from their healers, as well as those present, since space is no obstacle to mind.

[ p. 179]

In the same St. Petersburg Times article cited above, Frederick Hillier, the Christian Science spokesman for Florida and a practitioner was quoted as saying:

And on rare occasions, they claim, Christian Science practitioners bring dead people back to life. My own Christian Science teacher appeared to have passed on because he was hemophiliac and he was brought back by a Christian Science practitioner who was not on the scene at the time. It is rare, but not unheard of. But we don't publicize those because it is so unbelievable. It would only increase the skepticism of what we do. Aging may seem inevitable, but that doesn't have to be the case.

Christian Science "spiritual practitioners" receive no medical training; in fact, their entire formal training for church accreditation consists of a two-week classroom course in metaphysical prayer healing.

Leo Damore, in his book, The Crime of Dorothy Sheridan, described the technique of Christian Science healing as follows:

Christian Science functioned on three levels of practice: the first, and most widely used, specifically "corrected" the belief in disease at its easiest level by verbal confrontation through argument, turning the patient's attention away from his symptoms by "arguing down" the disease's reality. This was usually followed by prayers and readings of the Bible and the Christian Science textbook. But oral prayer was subservient to the second level of practice: the strictly "mental argument" of the silent or metaphysical prayer. Practitioners attained "an absolute source of healing" when they were able to read the human mind and discover the "error" of thinking to be destroyed. The third level of healing was the most radical, that of "impersonal treatment" in which the practitioner did not address the patient at all but gave himself over to "self-correction" and arguments against the false beliefs with which he himself was plagued.

For treatment of children, Christian Science practitioners also focus on the treatment of the false thoughts of the parents, since the minds of children are thought to be heavily influenced by the minds of parents.

Therefore, the efficient remedy [to an illness] is to destroy the patient's belief [in the illness] by both silently and audibly arguing the true facts in regard to harmonious being - representing man as healthy instead of diseased and showing that it is impossible for matter to suffer, to feel pain, to be thirsty or sick. [p. 376]

When the first symptoms of disease appear, dispute the testimony of the material senses with divine science…dismiss it with an abiding conviction that it is illegitimate…meet the incipient stages of disease with as powerful mental opposition as a legislator would employ to defeat the passage of an inhumane law… [p. 390]

Banish the belief that you can possibly entertain a single intruding pain which cannot be ruled out by the might of mind and in this way you can prevent the development of pain in the body…fear is the foundation of a sickness. [p. 391]

If the case to be mentally treated is consumption [tuberculosis], take up the leading points, show that, inflammation, tuberculosis, hemorrhage and decomposition are beliefs, images of mortal thought superimposed on the body, that they should be treated as error and put out of thought, then these illnesses will disappear. [p. 425]

What sets Christian Scientists apart are the extremes to which they carry their faith, to the denial of a physical world, to the contention that any disease is curable, to the belief that medicine is not an aid to spiritual healing but an obstacle, to the idea that your body doesn't have to age.

St. Petersburg Times, "Christian Science on Trial: How Practitioners Heal," June 4, 1989

Dr. Norman Fost, Chairperson of the Bioethics Committee of the American Academy of Pediatrics has observed:

But were smallpox, cholera, eradicated because of prayer? People prayed for centuries without much change.

Perhaps the following quote summarizes the fundamental position of Christian Scientists on this issue:

Insist vehemently on the great fact which covers the whole ground….there is no disease. [p. 142]

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