Christian Science Healing: Practitioners, Medicine and the Law

Christian Science healing is the practice, taught by Mary Baker Eddy in Science and Health (1875), of treating illness through prayer that seeks to understand God as wholly good and the human being as God's perfect spiritual likeness, rather than through medicine. It is carried out by members themselves and by full-time Christian Science practitioners, with non-medical care given by Christian Science nurses. Its reliance on prayer instead of medical treatment has made it the subject of more than a century of legal and public debate, above all over the deaths of children whose illnesses went medically untreated.

Healing in Christian Science Teaching§

For Christian Scientists healing is not an optional addition to religion but evidence of its truth. Mary Baker Eddy, whose life is described in Mary Baker Eddy and Science and Health, taught that God, who is infinite Mind, Spirit and Love, is the only reality, and that matter, sin, sickness and death have no true existence. Illness is a false belief held in what she called "mortal mind"; when that belief is corrected by an understanding of the spiritual reality, the body is expected to reflect the correction.

Christian Scientists therefore distinguish their practice sharply from faith healing, which they understand as reliance on belief or emotion, and from the mental suggestion of mesmerism and of the mind-cure movement described in Mesmerism and Animal Magnetism. A Christian Science "treatment" is a form of prayer: an affirmation of spiritual truths and a denial of the reality of the disease, carried out silently, often at a distance, and usually without any physical examination. Members point to the healings of Jesus, such as those in Matthew 9, as the model they seek to follow, and the church's periodicals have published tens of thousands of testimonies of healing since the 1880s.

Eddy did not forbid all contact with medicine. In Science and Health she advised that until the world accepted the power of Mind, it was "better for Christian Scientists to leave surgery and the adjustment of broken bones and dislocations to the fingers of a surgeon". She allowed a physician to administer pain relief in cases of severe suffering, and in 1901 she advised members to submit to vaccination where the law required it. Obstetric help in childbirth was also widely used. The church has always said that the choice of treatment rests with the individual, though historians note that in the movement's classic period, turning to doctors was often regarded within congregations as a failure of understanding.

Practitioners, Teachers and Christian Science Nurses§

A Christian Science practitioner is a member who devotes full time to the healing ministry. To be listed in the monthly Christian Science Journal, which Eddy founded in 1883, a practitioner must have taken Class Instruction, a two-week course from an authorised teacher, and must give evidence of successful healing work. Practitioners are not clergy, and the church has no ordained ministry. They set their own fees, which patients pay privately; for many years these fees were accepted as deductible medical expenses by the US tax authorities and were reimbursed by some insurance plans.

Christian Science nurses provide practical care such as cleaning and dressing wounds, feeding, bathing and moving patients, while avoiding medication or medical diagnosis. The church's governing Manual provides for them, and a number of residential facilities, once called sanatoriums, offer such care. In the United States, Medicare and Medicaid long covered care in these facilities; after a federal court in 1996 found the arrangement to be an unconstitutional preference for one religion, Congress in 1997 rewrote the law to cover any "religious nonmedical health care institution" meeting neutral criteria.

Early Controversies: Doctors, Courts and Critics§

From the 1880s Christian Science provoked opposition from the medical profession, which was at that very time consolidating its own authority through licensing laws. Physicians and legislators in several states tried to bring practitioners under medical practice acts; Christian Scientists lobbied successfully for exemptions that recognised prayer-based care as religious practice rather than medicine. The historian Rennie Schoepflin has described this as a long contest between two claims to "science" over the body.

Deaths under Christian Science treatment attracted press attention. In 1898 the American novelist Harold Frederic died in England while being treated by a Christian Science practitioner; she and Frederic's companion were tried for manslaughter and acquitted, but the case damaged the movement's reputation in Britain. Critics in print included Mark Twain, whose satirical Christian Science (1907) mocked Eddy's authority while taking the movement's growth seriously, and the hostile biography by Georgine Milmine, serialised in McClure's Magazine and published as a book in 1909, much of it written by Willa Cather.

Religious Exemptions and the Deaths of Children§

The most serious conflicts arose over children. In 1974 a federal regulation required American states, as a condition of receiving child-abuse prevention funds, to provide that parents who relied on spiritual treatment would not for that reason alone be considered neglectful. Most states adopted such religious exemption clauses, in part through the efforts of Christian Science representatives.

In 1983 Rita and Doug Swan, former Christian Scientists whose son Matthew had died of meningitis in 1977, founded the organisation Children's Healthcare Is a Legal Duty (CHILD) to campaign against these exemptions. A series of prosecutions followed:

• In California, after the death of a four-year-old girl from meningitis in 1984, the state supreme court ruled in Walker v. Superior Court (1988) that the religious exemption did not protect a parent from a manslaughter charge.
• In Massachusetts, David and Ginger Twitchell were convicted of involuntary manslaughter in 1990 after their two-year-old son Robyn died of a bowel obstruction in 1986; the conviction was overturned in 1993, in Commonwealth v. Twitchell, because the parents had been misled by an official opinion on the exemption, but the court affirmed that parents could be held criminally responsible.
• In Minnesota, after an eleven-year-old boy, Ian Lundman, died of untreated diabetes in 1989, criminal charges were dismissed on due-process grounds, but a civil suit by his father produced a substantial damages award against his mother, stepfather and others involved in his care, part of which was later reversed on appeal.

A widely cited study by Seth Asser and Rita Swan, published in the journal Pediatrics in 1998, examined 172 child deaths between 1975 and 1995 in families from a number of faith-healing groups, Christian Scientists among them, and concluded that most of the conditions were usually treatable. The church and its defenders challenged aspects of such studies and argued that its members' children were cared for lovingly and that cases were rare; critics replied that any preventable death of a child was too many. The federal funding requirement was withdrawn in 1983, and in the following decades a number of states, including Oregon after deaths in another faith-healing church, repealed or narrowed their exemptions.

Public health questions arose as well. In 1985 an outbreak of measles at Principia College in Illinois, a college for Christian Scientists, caused three deaths, and Christian Science communities have been linked to several later outbreaks of preventable disease. The broader history of how new religions come into conflict with the state is considered in Studying New Religious Movements.

Christian Science Healing Today§

Membership of the Church of Christ, Scientist has fallen substantially since its peak in the mid-twentieth century, and Reading Rooms and branch churches have closed in many towns. In the twenty-first century church spokespeople have stressed that members are free to use medical care without censure and that the church respects their choices, while continuing to teach that spiritual healing is effective and to publish testimonies. Practitioners now offer treatment by telephone and online, and the church's media, including the Christian Science Monitor, founded by Eddy in 1908, remain prominent.

Scholarly assessments differ. Stephen Gottschalk's The Emergence of Christian Science in American Religious Life (1973) and Robert Peel's Health and Medicine in the Christian Science Tradition (1988), both by authors close to the church, present healing as a coherent religious practice rooted in Eddy's theology. Caroline Fraser's God's Perfect Child (1999), written by a former member, is sharply critical, and Shawn Francis Peters's When Prayer Fails (2008) examines the legal history across several faith-healing traditions. Historians generally place Christian Science within the wider American movement of mental and spiritual healing discussed in Christian Science and New Thought and The New Thought Movement, while noting that its theology of the unreality of matter sets it apart.

Frequently asked questions§

What does a Christian Science practitioner do?§

A practitioner is a church member who devotes full time to healing through prayer. Patients contact a practitioner, who gives "treatment" by praying about their situation, often without meeting them in person, and charges a fee; practitioners are not clergy and do not diagnose or prescribe.

Are Christian Scientists forbidden to see doctors?§

No formal rule forbids it, and the church says members are free to choose medical care. Traditionally, however, most committed members relied on prayer alone, and Eddy's teaching presents medicine and spiritual healing as fundamentally different approaches.

Is Christian Science the same as faith healing?§

Christian Scientists say it is not, because healing in their view comes from spiritual understanding of God's law rather than from faith or emotion. Legal and medical writers often group it with faith healing because both rely on prayer instead of medicine.

Sources and further reading§

• Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures — Mary Baker Eddy, 1875
• Christian Science — Mark Twain, 1907
• The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy and the History of Christian Science — Georgine Milmine, 1909
• The Emergence of Christian Science in American Religious Life — Stephen Gottschalk, 1973
• Health and Medicine in the Christian Science Tradition: Principle, Practice, and Challenge — Robert Peel, 1988
• God's Perfect Child: Living and Dying in the Christian Science Church — Caroline Fraser, 1999
• Christian Science on Trial: Religious Healing in America — Rennie B. Schoepflin, 2003
• When Prayer Fails: Faith Healing, Children, and the Law — Shawn Francis Peters, 2008