Christian Scientists use faith to heal ailments

Stacy J. Willis

Wednesday, June 16, 1999 | 11:20 a.m.

In Chronicles of Faith, the Sun is examining the state of religion and spiritual life in the Las Vegas Valley. Stories will appear periodically.

An elderly man hunches in a comfortable chair across an office desk from Christian Science practitioner Margo Johnston.

Something ails him: sickness, old age, fear.

"I don't know what the future holds," he says, head in hands.

"The future is now. That's all we have to think about," she tells him. "God loves you now."

For $15 to $50, followers of the Christian Science faith can visit Johnston -- or one of five other practitioners listed in the Las Vegas Yellow Pages -- to be treated for anything from acute appendicitis and broken legs to depression and marital problems.

Practitioners try to heal people by teaching them how to think about themselves and their ailments using the principles of the Christian Science religion. There is no physical contact and no medicine. "Healing is a fundamental part of the faith," Johnston, who has been a practitioner for 25 years, said. "Everything is mental."

"If a person came in with pneumonia, I wouldn't see pneumonia. I would see the person as the image and likeness of God. Is God pnuemonia? Is God disease? No. I would tell the person a lot of the things I know about God, and I would mentally deny all of the symptoms of pneumonia," Johnston said.

Christian Scientists are best known for this complete rejection of medical science, as well as for their publication of the international Christian Science Monitor newspaper and for the thousands of Christian Science Reading Rooms that speckle the globe.

But the mauve-painted reading room in downtown Las Vegas is not overflowing with visitors lately; frequently it is so quiet that birds chirping in a palm tree outside are the only thing stirring. In spite of a burgeoning national interest in various types of spiritual healing, Christian Science Churches are reportedly declining in membership.

Decline in membership

In 1936, there were an estimated 269,000 Christian Scientists in the United States. By 1990, that number had fallen to 106,000, according to sociologist Rodney Stark in a 1998 article in the Journal of Contemporary Religion. Similarly, the number of licensed practitioners dropped from 11,200 in 1941 to 1,820 in 1995.

Members of the two local churches -- one in Las Vegas and one in Boulder City -- would not provide membership numbers as a matter of church policy.

Religious sociologists speculate that the national decline is because of the church's reserved approach to evangelism, and moreso to the faith's inflexible opposition to modern medicine -- membership requires that one adhere to the notion that Christian Science, not medical science, heals.

But declining numbers hardly make the Church of Christ Scientist a wallflower. It keeps an active stable of lobbyists, both locally and nationally. The devoted core of Christian Scientists sponsors a nationally syndicated church radio program, a host of magazines and other publications in addition to the Monitor, a college in Illinois and dozens of Christian Science nursing homes (in which medicine is not used) across the United States. The closest nursing home to Las Vegas is in Phoenix.

"I love Christian Science. It is a wonderful, positive lifestyle," Marlene Chatterton, a Christian Scientist for more than 40 years, said.

Members of the church do not drink, smoke or gamble, and many have never taken so much as an aspirin nor visited a medical doctor. They believe in the Bible and in a book called "Science and Health, the Key to the Scriptures" written in 1875 by founder Mary Baker Eddy, whom followers refer to as "Mrs. Eddy."

Biographies of Eddy describe a woman plagued with either illness or imagined illness throughout the first half of her life. After experimenting with the era's offerings of medical science, homeopathy, hypnosis and a host of other treatments for her mysterious health problems, Eddy was finally healed of a back injury by reading the Bible's account of Jesus healing the sick. Soon thereafter, she set out to teach others what she had learned about spiritual healing.

Guiding principle

The guiding principle of Christian Science, which is displayed above the pulpits in the church, is "God is Love." By affirming that God is perfect love and the Creator, members believe that sin and sickness are not created by God and therefore don't exist to a spiritually tuned mind.

Members say that the faith appeals to them because of its democratic, "unpretentious" services, its "positive" theology and their own experiences of spiritual healing.

On Sundays passages are read by elected laypeople called "readers" instead of pastors. God is not viewed as vengeful or punishing but wholly benevolent. And by embracing the principles of healing, many report that not only illness but their attitudes about their day-to-day lives have been improved.

"This is a demonstrable faith. The foundation of the church is the individual study and and the expectancy to be healed," Jennifer Stringfellow, a lifelong member, said. "That's what Christian Scientists are really seeking -- something demonstrable. That's what they're basing their life on."

"When I began to study 'Science and Health,' I saw that Christian Science is a church without doctrine. God is love and loves everybody equally, the Christ is the understanding that comes to man from God. That makes sense to me," Chatterton, the Las Vegas church's current lobbyist, said.

"I wanted a religion that can demonstrate," said Las Vegan Ross Benson, who has been a member since he was a teenager 40 years ago.

"I have had healing experiences. For example, for 10 years I had panic attacks and claustrophobia. I talked to a practitioner. I finally realized that God is Mind. I worked and prayed to see that my body didn't have any intelligence, and gradually turned away from the symptoms my body was claiming. It all just evaporated and disappeared."

The church was founded in 1879 in Brookline, Mass., shortly after Eddy's book was published.

Forming in Las Vegas

By 1926, a group of Christian Scientists had formed in Las Vegas and was meeting on Sunday mornings in a room above a casino on Fremont Street. Before services, some of the members would clear the previous night's beer bottles away from the foot of the stairs so that church members could enter for Scripture readings.

In 1945, the group had grown large enough to warrant the construction of the chalet-style church that still stands on the corner of Bridger and 7th streets downtown.

Every free-standing Christian Science Church is required to have a reading room, where members of the public as well as of the church are welcome to borrow or buy Christian Science literature.

All reading rooms contain leather-bound volumes of thousands of testimonies of those who have been healed: some 50,000 or more passages such as this one from Miss G.W. of Brookline, Mass.

"I was healed of spinal trouble; and nervousness and weakness faded away and were replaced by health and strength. A larger sense of joy and gratitude did much towards overcoming indigestion, which had caused suffering for a number of years. A sprained ankle was cured in a few hours by applying what I understood of Christian Science, and by holding steadfastly to the statement our Leader makes ... that 'God never punishes man for doing right, for honest labor, or for deed of kindness.' "

The religion is structured under the precepts of another book written by Eddy, with the "Mother Church" in Massachusetts making theological decisions and establishing a Sunday reading that every church worldwide will follow on the same date.

Practitioners are laypeople who have chosen to spend extra time studying healing thought in order to become "journal-listed," or recognized by the church as competent healers. In order to be a practitioner, one has to produce testimony from those who have been healed.

Johnston's first patient was herself.

Before joining the church, she worked in the medical field as an X-ray technician.

"Then I became quite ill with heart and lung problems, and doctors told me I wouldn't get better... I just started reading 'Science and Health.' The more I read, the more I had faith in the laws of God. I stopped taking medicine and stopped going to doctors and started feeling better," she said.

"I had been a Methodist, but as I came to understand that we are not miserable, sinful children and that everyone is inseparable from God, I turned to Christian Science."

Today, Johnston carries a cell phone for practitioner emergencies -- members have called her for the birth of babies and car accidents.

"I start praying for them right away ... I treat everything the same. If someone came in that had been in a car accident, we would decide that God didn't create it. Nothing bad is ever created by God," she said. However, Christian Scientists understand that "the pain is real to those who say it is," and do not claim to be immune from suffering.

"We all go through difficult times, and they result in some of our most satisfying healings," said Chatterton. "They force us to say to God, who am I and who are you? We dig our heels in and understand that God is Truth and I don't have to settle for anything less."

Another reason the church's membership is not flourishing may be the publicity it has received.

In the early 1990s the church became the subject of many national articles and television shows. The theme of most, including "60 Minutes" and "Nightline" segments, was: Are the children of Christian Scientists being neglected or abused because they are not getting medical care?

In a 1995 article in the Atlantic Monthly, journalist Caroline Fraser, who was raised in a Christian Science family but no longer practices the faith, wrote that it was by sheer "luck" that she and her siblings made it through their childhood illnesses alive. The attitude toward sickness, she said, was that it was the fault of the person who was sick for allowing herself to perceive sickness.

Afraid to be sick

For example, the young Fraser was prone to become carsick. She recalled:

"I prayed frantically, saying over and over to myself, 'I am God's perfect child, I am God's perfect child ... ' I was afraid to admit feeling ill because even when I was 4 or 5, I knew that my father viewed sickness as a sign of weakness, of sin, of disobedience ... When I threw up in the backseat, as I always did, my father would berate me, yelling over his shoulder, 'You're going to have to learn not to do that.' My father was a particularly zealous Christian Scientist."

Author Spalding Gray also has written about being raised by Christian Scientists -- his mother belonged to the church: "Fixated on their rote readings and prayers, Christian Science parents and practitioners are apt to be unmoved by the visible signs of any disease or accident."

But church members dispute claims that their children are not well cared for.

Stringfellow, a lifelong member of the church, is raising her two children in the Las Vegas church. A large Sunday school room in the church is filled with Tinker Toys and Bible storybooks, and children may attend from "the time they can sit in a chair" until they are 19, Stringfellow said. Stringfellow said that her children's best interests are served by the church's teachings. In fact, she said, she has had instances in child-rearing in which it was Christian Science and not medical science that healed her children.

A few years ago a baby sitter called Stringfellow to inform her that her infant daughter appeared to be ill. Stringfellow left work and picked up the child, who, she recalled, "was glassy eyed, had a fever and was not herself."

"As I was driving home with her, I was thinking that I had been a bad parent. But suddenly I realized that I didn't really believe that at all -- because my daughter had never been outside of a concept of a perfectly made world.

"I started praying deeply to rid myself of matter-based thinking, to rid myself of the belief that all of these symptoms are real and have a firm basis.

"I knew that the Father made a perfect world, and perfect creations, and fear could not tempt me to believe something less than that of myself or my daughter.

"By the time we got home, she was totally fine. Her glassy eyes and fever were gone. We had a great afternoon. But more importantly, I had very firmly established my role as a parent."

Because of the well-organized Christian Science lobby, it is legal in Nevada as well as most states for people to choose not to take their children in for immunizations and other preventive medical care on the basis of religion.

However, there have been cases in several states where Christian Science parents have been criminally prosecuted when failing to take their children to doctors resulted in a death.

At least two sets of Christian Science parents in California were convicted of manslaughter in the 1990s because they allowed their children to die without medical care.

Practitioner Johnston said she, too, has raised two children in the faith. Her children received no medical care, no pain relievers, no inoculations and are now healthy adults.

"But if a parent brought their child into my office for (an illness), I wouldn't tell them not to go to a doctor. I wouldn't tell them to go or not to go. It's their decision," Johnston said.

The future

While avoiding discussion of the membership at Christian Science churches, local Christian Scientists remain optimistic that the teachings of Mary Baker Eddy have infiltrated popular thought and therefore will continue to proliferate.

Chatterton said that members of the church take heart in the interest among nonmembers in Christian Science principles, if not in church attendance.

"As long as our textbooks get out there, that's OK," she said. "There is a difference now from 20 years ago -- other churches are now stressing that God is love -- so whatever is happening to our membership, at least the Christ is out. The Word is permeating human thought."

Lifelong Christian Scientist Darrell D. Luce, who has seen the Las Vegas church through both expansion and decline, said that healing is not owned by Christian Scientists, but it is for anyone to study.

"Although Christian Science has taken a leadership role in healing through prayer, you don't have to be a Christian Scientist to be healed through prayer," Luce said. "We don't feel we have any exclusivity on this. "Mrs. Eddy had no intention of starting a church when she wrote 'Science and Health,' " Luce said.

"She thought that once she had a book, people would adopt the teachings into their lives. But then she recognized that in order to protect the book, she would have to start a church.

"Now, people are buying the book who aren't a part of the church. Last year 9 million copies were sold. We're glad that the message is out there, regardless of what happens to the church."

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