Christian Science
Posted by:
Cosmophilospher
()
Date: June 08, 2005 06:23PM
(Mark Twain)
[www.gutenberg.org]
Largely speaking, I have read acres of what purported to be Mrs. Eddy's
writings, in the past two months. I cannot know, but I am convinced,
that the circumstantial evidence shows that her actual share in the work
of composing and phrasing these things was so slight as to be
inconsequential. Where she puts her literary foot down, her trail across
her paid polisher's page is as plain as the elephant's in a Sunday-school
procession. Her verbal output, when left undoctored by her clerks, is
quite unmistakable It always exhibits the strongly distinctive features
observable in the virgin passages from her pen already quoted by me:
Desert vacancy, as regards thought.
Self-complacency.
Puerility.
Sentimentality.
Affectations of scholarly learning.
Lust after eloquent and flowery expression.
Repetition of pet poetic picturesquenesses.
Confused and wandering statement.
Metaphor gone insane.
Meaningless words, used because they are pretty, or showy, or unusual.
Sorrowful attempts at the epigrammatic.
Destitution of originality.
The fat volume called Miscellaneous Writings of Mrs. Eddy contains
several hundred pages. Of the five hundred and fifty-four pages of prose
in it I find ten lines, on page 319, to be Mrs. Eddy's; also about a page
of the preface or "Prospectus"; also about fifteen pages scattered along
through the book. If she wrote any of the rest of the prose, it was
rewritten after her by another hand. Here I will insert two-thirds of
her page of the prospectus. It is evident that whenever, under the
inspiration of the Deity, she turns out a book, she is always allowed to
do some of the preface. I wonder why that is? It always mars the work.
I think it is done in humorous malice I think the clerks like to see her
give herself away. They know she will, her stock of usable materials
being limited and her procedure in employing them always the same,
substantially. They know that when the initiated come upon her first
erudite allusion, or upon any one of her other stage-properties, they can
shut their eyes and tell what will follow.
...It is not believable that the hand that wrote those clumsy and affected
sentences wrote the smooth English of Science and Health.
My readings of Mrs. Eddy's uninspired miscellaneous literary efforts have
convinced me of several things:
1. That she did not write Science and Health.
2. That the Deity did (or did not) write it.
3. That She thinks She wrote it.
4. That She believes She wrote it under the Deity's inspiration.
5. That She believes She is a Member of the Holy Family.
6. That She believes She is the equal of the Head of it.
Finally, I think She is now entitled to the capital S--on her own
evidence.
[www.gutenberg.org]
Largely speaking, I have read acres of what purported to be Mrs. Eddy's
writings, in the past two months. I cannot know, but I am convinced,
that the circumstantial evidence shows that her actual share in the work
of composing and phrasing these things was so slight as to be
inconsequential. Where she puts her literary foot down, her trail across
her paid polisher's page is as plain as the elephant's in a Sunday-school
procession. Her verbal output, when left undoctored by her clerks, is
quite unmistakable It always exhibits the strongly distinctive features
observable in the virgin passages from her pen already quoted by me:
Desert vacancy, as regards thought.
Self-complacency.
Puerility.
Sentimentality.
Affectations of scholarly learning.
Lust after eloquent and flowery expression.
Repetition of pet poetic picturesquenesses.
Confused and wandering statement.
Metaphor gone insane.
Meaningless words, used because they are pretty, or showy, or unusual.
Sorrowful attempts at the epigrammatic.
Destitution of originality.
The fat volume called Miscellaneous Writings of Mrs. Eddy contains
several hundred pages. Of the five hundred and fifty-four pages of prose
in it I find ten lines, on page 319, to be Mrs. Eddy's; also about a page
of the preface or "Prospectus"; also about fifteen pages scattered along
through the book. If she wrote any of the rest of the prose, it was
rewritten after her by another hand. Here I will insert two-thirds of
her page of the prospectus. It is evident that whenever, under the
inspiration of the Deity, she turns out a book, she is always allowed to
do some of the preface. I wonder why that is? It always mars the work.
I think it is done in humorous malice I think the clerks like to see her
give herself away. They know she will, her stock of usable materials
being limited and her procedure in employing them always the same,
substantially. They know that when the initiated come upon her first
erudite allusion, or upon any one of her other stage-properties, they can
shut their eyes and tell what will follow.
...It is not believable that the hand that wrote those clumsy and affected
sentences wrote the smooth English of Science and Health.
My readings of Mrs. Eddy's uninspired miscellaneous literary efforts have
convinced me of several things:
1. That she did not write Science and Health.
2. That the Deity did (or did not) write it.
3. That She thinks She wrote it.
4. That She believes She wrote it under the Deity's inspiration.
5. That She believes She is a Member of the Holy Family.
6. That She believes She is the equal of the Head of it.
Finally, I think She is now entitled to the capital S--on her own
evidence.
Christian Science
Posted by:
Cosmophilospher
()
Date: June 08, 2005 06:57PM
(Mark Twain)
Readers are not allowed to copy out passages and read them from the
manuscript in the pulpit; they must read from Mrs. Eddy's book itself.
She is right. Slight changes could be slyly made, repeated, and in time
get acceptance with congregations. Branch sects could grow out of these
practices. Mrs. Eddy knows the human race, and how far to trust it. Her
limit is not over a quarter of an inch. It is all that a wise person
will risk.
Mrs. Eddy's inborn disposition to copyright everything, charter
everything, secure the rightful and proper credit to herself for
everything she does, and everything she thinks she does, and everything
she thinks, and everything she thinks she thinks or has thought or
intends to think, is illustrated in Sec. 5 of Art. IV., defining the
duties of official Readers--in church:
"Naming Book and Author. The Reader of Science and Health, with Key to
the Scriptures, before commencing to read from this book, shall
distinctly announce its full title and give the author's name."
Otherwise the congregation might get the habit of forgetting who
(ostensibly) wrote the book.
She knows that
if you wish to confer upon a human being something which he is not sure
he wants, the best way is to make it apparently difficult for him to get
it--then he is no son of Adam if that apple does not assume an interest
in his eyes which it lacked before. In time this interest can grow into
desire. Mrs. Eddy knows that when you cannot get a man to try--free of
cost--a new and effective remedy for a disease he is afflicted with, you
can generally sell it to him if you will put a price upon it which he
cannot afford.
Mrs. Eddy has only to say a member is guilty--that is all. That ends it.
It is not a case of he "may" be cut off from Christian Science salvation,
it is a case of he "shall" be. Her serfs must see to it, and not say a
word.
Does the other Pope possess this prodigious and irresponsible power?
Certainly not in our day.
Some may be curious to know how Mrs. Eddy finds out that a member is
practicing hypnotism, since no one is allowed to come before her throne
and accuse him. She has explained this in Christian Science History,
first and second editions, page 16:
"I possess a spiritual sense of what the malicious mental practitioner is
mentally arguing which cannot be deceived; I can discern in the human
mind thoughts, motives, and purposes, and neither mental arguments nor
psychic power can affect this spiritual insight."
A marvelous woman; with a hunger for power such as has never been seen in
the world before. No thing, little or big, that contains any seed or
suggestion of power escapes her avaricious eye; and when once she gets
that eye on it, her remorseless grip follows. There isn't a Christian
Scientist who isn't ecclesiastically as much her property as if she had
bought him and paid for him, and copyrighted him and got a charter. She
cannot be satisfied when she has handcuffed a member, and put a leg-chain
and ball on him and plugged his ears and removed his thinker, she goes on
wrapping needless chains round and round him, just as a spider would.
For she trusts no one, believes in no one's honesty, judges every one by
herself. Although we have seen that she has absolute and irresponsible
command over her spectral Boards and over every official and servant of
her Church, at home and abroad, over every minute detail of her Church's
government, present and future, and can purge her membership of guilty or
suspected persons by various plausible formalities and whenever she will,
she is still not content, but must set her queer mind to work and invent
a way by which she can take a member--any member--by neck and crop and
fling him out without anything resembling a formality at all.
She is sole accuser and sole witness, and her testimony is final and
carries uncompromising and irremediable doom with it.
The Sole-Witness Court! It should make the Council of Ten and the
Council of Three turn in their graves for shame, to see how little they
knew about satanic concentrations of irresponsible power. Here we have
one Accuser, one Witness, one Judge, one Headsman--and all four bunched
together in Mrs. Eddy, the Inspired of God, His Latest Thought to His
People, New Member of the Holy Family, the Equal of Jesus.
When a Member is not satisfactory to Mrs. Eddy, and yet is blameless in
his life and faultless in his membership and in his Christian Science
walk and conversation, shall he hold up his head and tilt his hat over
one ear and imagine himself safe because of these perfections? Why, in
that very moment Mrs. Eddy will cast that spiritual X-ray of hers through
his dungarees and say:
"I see his hypnotism working, among his insides--remove him to the
block!"
What shall it profit him to know it isn't so? Nothing. His testimony is
of no value. No one wants it, no one will ask for it. He is not present
to offer it (he does not know he has been accused), and if he were there
to offer it, it would not be listened to.
It was out of powers approaching Mrs. Eddy's--though not equalling them
--that the Inquisition and the devastations of the Interdict grew. She
will transmit hers. The man born two centuries from now will think he
has arrived in hell; and all in good time he will think he knows it.
Vast concentrations of irresponsible power have never in any age been
used mercifully, and there is nothing to suggest that the Christian
Science Papacy is going to spend money on novelties.
Several Christian Scientists have asked me to refrain from prophecy.
There is no prophecy in our day but history. But history is a
trustworthy prophet. History is always repeating itself, because
conditions are always repeating themselves. Out of duplicated conditions
history always gets a duplicate product.
CHAPTER VIII
I think that any one who will carefully examine the By-laws (I have
placed all of the important ones before the reader), will arrive at the
conclusion that of late years the master-passion in Mrs. Eddy's heart is
a hunger for power and glory; and that while her hunger for money still
remains, she wants it now for the expansion and extension it can furnish
to that power and glory, rather than what it can do for her towards
satisfying minor and meaner ambitions.
I wish to enlarge a little upon this matter. I think it is quite clear
that the reason why Mrs. Eddy has concentrated in herself all powers, all
distinctions, all revenues that are within the command of the Christian
Science Church Universal is that she desires and intends to devote them
to the purpose just suggested--the upbuilding of her personal glory
--hers, and no one else's; that, and the continuing of her name's glory
after she shall have passed away. If she has overlooked a single power,
howsoever minute, I cannot discover it. If she has found one, large or
small, which she has not seized and made her own, there is no record of
it, no trace of it. In her foragings and depredations she usually puts
forward the Mother-Church--a lay figure--and hides behind it. Whereas,
she is in manifest reality the Mother-Church herself. It has an
impressive array of officials, and committees, and Boards of Direction,
of Education, of Lectureship, and so on--geldings, every one, shadows,
spectres, apparitions, wax-figures: she is supreme over them all, she can
abolish them when she will; blow them out as she would a candle. She is
herself the Mother-Church.
Readers are not allowed to copy out passages and read them from the
manuscript in the pulpit; they must read from Mrs. Eddy's book itself.
She is right. Slight changes could be slyly made, repeated, and in time
get acceptance with congregations. Branch sects could grow out of these
practices. Mrs. Eddy knows the human race, and how far to trust it. Her
limit is not over a quarter of an inch. It is all that a wise person
will risk.
Mrs. Eddy's inborn disposition to copyright everything, charter
everything, secure the rightful and proper credit to herself for
everything she does, and everything she thinks she does, and everything
she thinks, and everything she thinks she thinks or has thought or
intends to think, is illustrated in Sec. 5 of Art. IV., defining the
duties of official Readers--in church:
"Naming Book and Author. The Reader of Science and Health, with Key to
the Scriptures, before commencing to read from this book, shall
distinctly announce its full title and give the author's name."
Otherwise the congregation might get the habit of forgetting who
(ostensibly) wrote the book.
She knows that
if you wish to confer upon a human being something which he is not sure
he wants, the best way is to make it apparently difficult for him to get
it--then he is no son of Adam if that apple does not assume an interest
in his eyes which it lacked before. In time this interest can grow into
desire. Mrs. Eddy knows that when you cannot get a man to try--free of
cost--a new and effective remedy for a disease he is afflicted with, you
can generally sell it to him if you will put a price upon it which he
cannot afford.
Mrs. Eddy has only to say a member is guilty--that is all. That ends it.
It is not a case of he "may" be cut off from Christian Science salvation,
it is a case of he "shall" be. Her serfs must see to it, and not say a
word.
Does the other Pope possess this prodigious and irresponsible power?
Certainly not in our day.
Some may be curious to know how Mrs. Eddy finds out that a member is
practicing hypnotism, since no one is allowed to come before her throne
and accuse him. She has explained this in Christian Science History,
first and second editions, page 16:
"I possess a spiritual sense of what the malicious mental practitioner is
mentally arguing which cannot be deceived; I can discern in the human
mind thoughts, motives, and purposes, and neither mental arguments nor
psychic power can affect this spiritual insight."
A marvelous woman; with a hunger for power such as has never been seen in
the world before. No thing, little or big, that contains any seed or
suggestion of power escapes her avaricious eye; and when once she gets
that eye on it, her remorseless grip follows. There isn't a Christian
Scientist who isn't ecclesiastically as much her property as if she had
bought him and paid for him, and copyrighted him and got a charter. She
cannot be satisfied when she has handcuffed a member, and put a leg-chain
and ball on him and plugged his ears and removed his thinker, she goes on
wrapping needless chains round and round him, just as a spider would.
For she trusts no one, believes in no one's honesty, judges every one by
herself. Although we have seen that she has absolute and irresponsible
command over her spectral Boards and over every official and servant of
her Church, at home and abroad, over every minute detail of her Church's
government, present and future, and can purge her membership of guilty or
suspected persons by various plausible formalities and whenever she will,
she is still not content, but must set her queer mind to work and invent
a way by which she can take a member--any member--by neck and crop and
fling him out without anything resembling a formality at all.
She is sole accuser and sole witness, and her testimony is final and
carries uncompromising and irremediable doom with it.
The Sole-Witness Court! It should make the Council of Ten and the
Council of Three turn in their graves for shame, to see how little they
knew about satanic concentrations of irresponsible power. Here we have
one Accuser, one Witness, one Judge, one Headsman--and all four bunched
together in Mrs. Eddy, the Inspired of God, His Latest Thought to His
People, New Member of the Holy Family, the Equal of Jesus.
When a Member is not satisfactory to Mrs. Eddy, and yet is blameless in
his life and faultless in his membership and in his Christian Science
walk and conversation, shall he hold up his head and tilt his hat over
one ear and imagine himself safe because of these perfections? Why, in
that very moment Mrs. Eddy will cast that spiritual X-ray of hers through
his dungarees and say:
"I see his hypnotism working, among his insides--remove him to the
block!"
What shall it profit him to know it isn't so? Nothing. His testimony is
of no value. No one wants it, no one will ask for it. He is not present
to offer it (he does not know he has been accused), and if he were there
to offer it, it would not be listened to.
It was out of powers approaching Mrs. Eddy's--though not equalling them
--that the Inquisition and the devastations of the Interdict grew. She
will transmit hers. The man born two centuries from now will think he
has arrived in hell; and all in good time he will think he knows it.
Vast concentrations of irresponsible power have never in any age been
used mercifully, and there is nothing to suggest that the Christian
Science Papacy is going to spend money on novelties.
Several Christian Scientists have asked me to refrain from prophecy.
There is no prophecy in our day but history. But history is a
trustworthy prophet. History is always repeating itself, because
conditions are always repeating themselves. Out of duplicated conditions
history always gets a duplicate product.
CHAPTER VIII
I think that any one who will carefully examine the By-laws (I have
placed all of the important ones before the reader), will arrive at the
conclusion that of late years the master-passion in Mrs. Eddy's heart is
a hunger for power and glory; and that while her hunger for money still
remains, she wants it now for the expansion and extension it can furnish
to that power and glory, rather than what it can do for her towards
satisfying minor and meaner ambitions.
I wish to enlarge a little upon this matter. I think it is quite clear
that the reason why Mrs. Eddy has concentrated in herself all powers, all
distinctions, all revenues that are within the command of the Christian
Science Church Universal is that she desires and intends to devote them
to the purpose just suggested--the upbuilding of her personal glory
--hers, and no one else's; that, and the continuing of her name's glory
after she shall have passed away. If she has overlooked a single power,
howsoever minute, I cannot discover it. If she has found one, large or
small, which she has not seized and made her own, there is no record of
it, no trace of it. In her foragings and depredations she usually puts
forward the Mother-Church--a lay figure--and hides behind it. Whereas,
she is in manifest reality the Mother-Church herself. It has an
impressive array of officials, and committees, and Boards of Direction,
of Education, of Lectureship, and so on--geldings, every one, shadows,
spectres, apparitions, wax-figures: she is supreme over them all, she can
abolish them when she will; blow them out as she would a candle. She is
herself the Mother-Church.
Christian Science
Posted by:
Cosmophilospher
()
Date: June 08, 2005 08:36PM
The respectable cult
[archive.salon.com]
----------------------------
Like Jonestown in slow motion
Caroline Fraser, author of "God's Perfect Child," talks about the casualties of Christian Science's belief in the power of prayer and the media's soft spot for the church.
[archive.salon.com]
Could you review, briefly, your arguments challenging the testimonials, that is, the accounts of healings that the Christian Science Church uses to bolster claims for the legitimacy of its treatment? Zaleski is not the first to accept the church's statement that they've been "corroborated."
Christian Science testimonies that are published in the church periodicals are "corroborated" (or "verified," in the church's words) only by three other friends or family members (usually Scientists themselves) "who can vouch for the integrity of the testifier or know of the healing." As sociologists have noted, these testimonies are brief, anecdotal accounts, often of "healings" that took place years, if not decades, ago. (And some healings, significantly, are reported to have taken a long time, sometimes years.) Many of the healings are of self-diagnosed conditions that undoubtedly corrected themselves on their own (warts, bumps, scratches, pains, minor burns, relationship problems, job problems, etc.). Some contain allusions to diagnoses by medical professionals, but no medical or hospital records, physicians' names or specific data accompany the published testimonies, so it is impossible to verify them independently. Some testimonies contain misleading or false information.
Moreover, and perhaps most damningly, the church keeps no records of the deaths of Christian Scientists, children or adults, and it publishes no testimonies about Christian Science failures (some of which are documented in my book), so the church's loss rate is impossible to calculate. And it has never allowed any independent researcher to study Christian Science. So, from a scientific point of view, these anecdotal, self-selected and self-reported accounts are meaningless. As I say in the book, they are testimonies of faith, of religious belief. They are not evidence.
How would you prefer to see the illnesses of Christian Science children handled? Would you favor government intervention, and to what degree?
What I'd like to see is the removal of religious exemption laws from all state statutes. This special class of laws protecting faith-healers from the consequences of their actions endangers children and seems to be a clear violation of the First Amendment. I see no reason why a system similar to those in place in Canada, England and other European countries wouldn't work here. In those countries, parents are required to provide their kids with routine medical care, and, from what I hear, doctors have been quite flexible in working with parents to provide the least aggressive or intrusive forms of care.
No one, including me, is arguing that Scientists should stop taking their kids to Sunday school or teaching them about their religious heritage or beliefs. They absolutely have a right to do that. But they don't have the right to martyr their kids. The church's refusal to consider any kind of compromise or to engage in discussion about the rights of their children seems deeply unreasonable to me. I once asked a Christian Scientist who had worked for the Committee on Publication why American Scientists are so vehemently opposed to any system that would require medical care for children. He said it was because Christian Science branch churches in countries with such requirements had been weakened by them. His answer, and the church's policies over the past century, indicate that Scientists value the health of their church over the health of their children. In my view, if Christian Scientists really want to practice the love that they preach, they should reconsider their position on this.
[archive.salon.com]
----------------------------
Like Jonestown in slow motion
Caroline Fraser, author of "God's Perfect Child," talks about the casualties of Christian Science's belief in the power of prayer and the media's soft spot for the church.
[archive.salon.com]
Could you review, briefly, your arguments challenging the testimonials, that is, the accounts of healings that the Christian Science Church uses to bolster claims for the legitimacy of its treatment? Zaleski is not the first to accept the church's statement that they've been "corroborated."
Christian Science testimonies that are published in the church periodicals are "corroborated" (or "verified," in the church's words) only by three other friends or family members (usually Scientists themselves) "who can vouch for the integrity of the testifier or know of the healing." As sociologists have noted, these testimonies are brief, anecdotal accounts, often of "healings" that took place years, if not decades, ago. (And some healings, significantly, are reported to have taken a long time, sometimes years.) Many of the healings are of self-diagnosed conditions that undoubtedly corrected themselves on their own (warts, bumps, scratches, pains, minor burns, relationship problems, job problems, etc.). Some contain allusions to diagnoses by medical professionals, but no medical or hospital records, physicians' names or specific data accompany the published testimonies, so it is impossible to verify them independently. Some testimonies contain misleading or false information.
Moreover, and perhaps most damningly, the church keeps no records of the deaths of Christian Scientists, children or adults, and it publishes no testimonies about Christian Science failures (some of which are documented in my book), so the church's loss rate is impossible to calculate. And it has never allowed any independent researcher to study Christian Science. So, from a scientific point of view, these anecdotal, self-selected and self-reported accounts are meaningless. As I say in the book, they are testimonies of faith, of religious belief. They are not evidence.
How would you prefer to see the illnesses of Christian Science children handled? Would you favor government intervention, and to what degree?
What I'd like to see is the removal of religious exemption laws from all state statutes. This special class of laws protecting faith-healers from the consequences of their actions endangers children and seems to be a clear violation of the First Amendment. I see no reason why a system similar to those in place in Canada, England and other European countries wouldn't work here. In those countries, parents are required to provide their kids with routine medical care, and, from what I hear, doctors have been quite flexible in working with parents to provide the least aggressive or intrusive forms of care.
No one, including me, is arguing that Scientists should stop taking their kids to Sunday school or teaching them about their religious heritage or beliefs. They absolutely have a right to do that. But they don't have the right to martyr their kids. The church's refusal to consider any kind of compromise or to engage in discussion about the rights of their children seems deeply unreasonable to me. I once asked a Christian Scientist who had worked for the Committee on Publication why American Scientists are so vehemently opposed to any system that would require medical care for children. He said it was because Christian Science branch churches in countries with such requirements had been weakened by them. His answer, and the church's policies over the past century, indicate that Scientists value the health of their church over the health of their children. In my view, if Christian Scientists really want to practice the love that they preach, they should reconsider their position on this.
Christian Science
Posted by:
Cosmophilospher
()
Date: June 11, 2005 02:42AM
[www.culteducation.com]
Unfortunately, Eddy's forceful personality sometimes turned downright bizarre. She lied freely about her education, her age, her marriages, her role in the emancipation of slaves. She believed that she could control the weather (''I have heard our Leader describe in a number of instances how she has dissipated a thundercloud by simply looking upon it,'' one employee reported). She spoke to followers in what Fraser calls ''oracular biblical patois,'' channeling messages from the Almighty that confirmed her holy mission: ''Oh, blessed daughter of Zion, I am with thee. . . . Thou art my chosen, to bear my Truth to the nations.'' A host of fears and hatreds -- of sex, weakness a d death, of Catholics and Jews -- consumed her, apotheosized in her terror of ''malicious animal magnetism,'' an invisible, poisonous force that befouled her food, impaired her health and, in the form of ''mesmeric magnetism,'' was used by her enemies to murder her third husband.
What of the intellectual integrity of Eddy's teaching? Fraser argues, with some success, that Christian Science is neither Christian nor scientific. Eddy gave Christian doctrine several novel twists: Jesus is not the second person of the Trinity, but rather ''the most scientific man that ever trod the globe''; the ''Comforter'' that Jesus promised to send after his death is not the Holy Spirit, but rather Christian Science itself. According to official church literature, Eddy believed herself to be the ''God-anointed'' messenger of the age; she even rewrote the Lord's Prayer in a Christian Science idiom.
More controversial, however, has been Eddy's claim of elevating spiritual healing to the level of a science. The dreadful result, Fraser w ites, has been the needless death of hundreds of patients -- many of them children -- while under the care of Christian Scientists. Herein lies the principal source of the negative media image of Christian Science and the consequent downturn in its fortunes. The story is all too familiar: a child falls sick; the parents spurn conventional medical treatment and instead turn to prayer; the child dies. Behind this obstinate rejection of orthodox medicine lies Eddy's doctrine of ''radical reliance,'' the belief that only ''divine Mind'' can cure. ''It is impossible,'' Eddy writes, ''to gain control of the body in any other way. On this fundamental point, timid conservatism is absolutely inadmissible.'' Recently government has struck back, and Christian Scientists have been brought to trial on charges of manslaughter or third-degree murder.
Unfortunately, Eddy's forceful personality sometimes turned downright bizarre. She lied freely about her education, her age, her marriages, her role in the emancipation of slaves. She believed that she could control the weather (''I have heard our Leader describe in a number of instances how she has dissipated a thundercloud by simply looking upon it,'' one employee reported). She spoke to followers in what Fraser calls ''oracular biblical patois,'' channeling messages from the Almighty that confirmed her holy mission: ''Oh, blessed daughter of Zion, I am with thee. . . . Thou art my chosen, to bear my Truth to the nations.'' A host of fears and hatreds -- of sex, weakness a d death, of Catholics and Jews -- consumed her, apotheosized in her terror of ''malicious animal magnetism,'' an invisible, poisonous force that befouled her food, impaired her health and, in the form of ''mesmeric magnetism,'' was used by her enemies to murder her third husband.
What of the intellectual integrity of Eddy's teaching? Fraser argues, with some success, that Christian Science is neither Christian nor scientific. Eddy gave Christian doctrine several novel twists: Jesus is not the second person of the Trinity, but rather ''the most scientific man that ever trod the globe''; the ''Comforter'' that Jesus promised to send after his death is not the Holy Spirit, but rather Christian Science itself. According to official church literature, Eddy believed herself to be the ''God-anointed'' messenger of the age; she even rewrote the Lord's Prayer in a Christian Science idiom.
More controversial, however, has been Eddy's claim of elevating spiritual healing to the level of a science. The dreadful result, Fraser w ites, has been the needless death of hundreds of patients -- many of them children -- while under the care of Christian Scientists. Herein lies the principal source of the negative media image of Christian Science and the consequent downturn in its fortunes. The story is all too familiar: a child falls sick; the parents spurn conventional medical treatment and instead turn to prayer; the child dies. Behind this obstinate rejection of orthodox medicine lies Eddy's doctrine of ''radical reliance,'' the belief that only ''divine Mind'' can cure. ''It is impossible,'' Eddy writes, ''to gain control of the body in any other way. On this fundamental point, timid conservatism is absolutely inadmissible.'' Recently government has struck back, and Christian Scientists have been brought to trial on charges of manslaughter or third-degree murder.
Christian Science
Posted by:
Cosmophilospher
()
Date: June 11, 2005 04:02AM
I just finished reading Mark Twains Christian Science, and i would recommend that anyone involved with ANY type of cult, or cultish leader, read that book. Its only about 100 small pages. This book should be required reading for any cult watcher.
Every cult needs a Mark Twain to take them apart, and show how the cult operates.
Here is the entire book FOR FREE. It can be posted on any of your websites for free.
[www.gutenberg.org]
[www.gutenberg.org]
It is a devastating, brilliant, and hilarious expose' of Mary Baker Eddy, which would apply to most leaders of this type.
The only errors he makes are that he thought CS would take over the world, but thankfully, it seems to be dying.
The other error he makes is that he is not able to prove that Eddy stole her ideas from Quimby. But that is because The Quimby Manuscripts were not yet published.
In the Appendix, he reprints Eddy and you can just see the BLATANT LIES being told, when referring to Quimby.
Just look how she is saying that the Manuscripts of Quimby, which were not yet published, were HERS. The ruthlessness of her lies are beyond the pale of reality.
She states:
"I restored some patients of his that he failed to heal, and left in his
possession some manuscripts of mine containing corrections of his
desultory pennings, which I am informed at his decease passed into the
hands of a patient of his, now residing in Scotland"
[www.gutenberg.org]
Mark Twain explains the business/financial structure of CS, and also deconstructs Eddy's personality like a genius. You have to read this.
In the end, when one thinks of the HUNDREDS of children, and others, who have DIED in horrible suffering due to the insanity being sold by Christian Science, one can see what a truly damaging cult this is.
The police move in when cult leaders, or parents are accused of abusing children, never mind KILLING them.
The Christian Science beliefs that forbid medical treatment are nothing less than severe child neglect, child abuse, and even child murder and manslaughter.
The more one looks at Christian Science, and looks how it is structured, and looks at how it operates, the more one sees what a horrendus enterprise it is. It is able to hide behind the CS Monitor, and other fig-leafs.
But the bottom line is that they are causing the horrible and painful deaths of hundreds of children.
Is there any other mainstream religious group that one can think of that is doing as much damage of this kind as Christian Science?
It is one of the WORST out there.
In my opinion, they are nothing less than child-torturers and child-killers from medical neglect.
Every cult needs a Mark Twain to take them apart, and show how the cult operates.
Here is the entire book FOR FREE. It can be posted on any of your websites for free.
[www.gutenberg.org]
[www.gutenberg.org]
It is a devastating, brilliant, and hilarious expose' of Mary Baker Eddy, which would apply to most leaders of this type.
The only errors he makes are that he thought CS would take over the world, but thankfully, it seems to be dying.
The other error he makes is that he is not able to prove that Eddy stole her ideas from Quimby. But that is because The Quimby Manuscripts were not yet published.
In the Appendix, he reprints Eddy and you can just see the BLATANT LIES being told, when referring to Quimby.
Just look how she is saying that the Manuscripts of Quimby, which were not yet published, were HERS. The ruthlessness of her lies are beyond the pale of reality.
She states:
"I restored some patients of his that he failed to heal, and left in his
possession some manuscripts of mine containing corrections of his
desultory pennings, which I am informed at his decease passed into the
hands of a patient of his, now residing in Scotland"
[www.gutenberg.org]
Mark Twain explains the business/financial structure of CS, and also deconstructs Eddy's personality like a genius. You have to read this.
In the end, when one thinks of the HUNDREDS of children, and others, who have DIED in horrible suffering due to the insanity being sold by Christian Science, one can see what a truly damaging cult this is.
The police move in when cult leaders, or parents are accused of abusing children, never mind KILLING them.
The Christian Science beliefs that forbid medical treatment are nothing less than severe child neglect, child abuse, and even child murder and manslaughter.
The more one looks at Christian Science, and looks how it is structured, and looks at how it operates, the more one sees what a horrendus enterprise it is. It is able to hide behind the CS Monitor, and other fig-leafs.
But the bottom line is that they are causing the horrible and painful deaths of hundreds of children.
Is there any other mainstream religious group that one can think of that is doing as much damage of this kind as Christian Science?
It is one of the WORST out there.
In my opinion, they are nothing less than child-torturers and child-killers from medical neglect.
Christian Science
Posted by:
Cosmophilospher
()
Date: June 11, 2005 04:38AM
[Mark Twain is my new genius hero of skeptical, fact-based, satirical cult-busting. He knew exactly how to let them hang themselves with their own words]
[www.gutenberg.org]
MRS. EDDY IN ERROR
I feel almost sure that Mrs. Eddy's inspiration--works are getting out of
repair. I think so because they made some errors in a statement which
she uttered through the press on the 17th of January. Not large ones,
perhaps, still it is a friend's duty to straighten such things out and
get them right when he can. Therefore I will put my other duties aside
for a moment and undertake this helpful service. She said as follows:
"In view of the circulation of certain criticisms from the pen of Mark
Twain, I submit the following statement:
"It is a fact, well understood, that I begged the students who first gave
me the endearing appellative 'mother' not to name me thus. But, without
my consent, that word spread like wildfire. I still must think the name
is not applicable to me. I stand in relation to this century as a
Christian discoverer, founder, and leader. I regard self-deification as
blasphemous; I may be more loved, but I am less lauded, pampered,
provided for, and cheered than others before me--and wherefore? Because
Christian Science is not yet popular, and I refuse adulation.
"My visit to the Mother-Church after it was built and dedicated pleased
me, and the situation was satisfactory. The dear members wanted to greet
me with escort and the ringing of bells, but I declined, and went alone
in my carriage to the church, entered it, and knelt in thanks upon the
steps of its altar. There the foresplendor of the beginnings of truth
fell mysteriously upon my spirit. I believe in one Christ, teach one
Christ, know of but one Christ. I believe in but one incarnation, one
Mother Mary, and know I am not that one, and never claimed to be. It
suffices me to learn the Science of the Scriptures relative to this
subject.
"In the aforesaid article, of which I have seen only extracts, Mark
Twain's wit was not wasted In certain directions. Christian Science
eschews divine rights in human beings. If the individual governed human
consciousness, my statement of Christian Science would be disproved, but
to understand the spiritual idea is essential to demonstrate Science and
its pure monotheism--one God, one Christ, no idolatry, no human
propaganda. Jesus taught and proved that what feeds a few feeds all.
His life-work subordinated the material to the spiritual, and He left
this legacy of truth to mankind. His metaphysics is not the sport of
philosophy, religion, or Science; rather it is the pith and finale of
them all.
"I have not the inspiration or aspiration to be a first or second
Virgin-Mother--her duplicate, antecedent, or subsequent. What I am
remains to be proved by the good I do. We need much humility, wisdom,
and love to perform the functions of foreshadowing and foretasting heaven
within us. This glory is molten in the furnace of affliction."
She still thinks the name of Our Mother not applicable to her; and she is
also able to remember that it distressed her when it was conferred upon
her, and that she begged to have it suppressed. Her memory is at fault
here. If she will take her By-laws, and refer to Section 1 of Article
XXII., written with her own hand--she will find that she has reserved
that title to herself, and is so pleased with it, and so--may we say
jealous?--about it, that she threatens with excommunication any sister
Scientist who shall call herself by it. This is that Section 1:
"The Title of Mother. In the year 1895 loyal Christian Scientists had
given to the author of their text-book, the Founder of Christian Science,
the individual, endearing term of Mother. Therefore, if a student of
Christian Science shall apply this title, either to herself or to others,
except as the term for kinship according to the flesh, it shall be
regarded by the Church as an indication of disrespect for their Pastor
Emeritus, and unfitness to be a member of the Mother-Church."
Mrs. Eddy is herself the Mother-Church--its powers and authorities are in
her possession solely--and she can abolish that title whenever it may
please her to do so. She has only to command her people, wherever they
may be in the earth, to use it no more, and it will never be uttered
again. She is aware of this.
It may be that she "refuses adulation" when she is not awake, but when
she is awake she encourages it and propagates it in that museum called
"Our Mother's Room," in her Church in Boston. She could abolish that
institution with a word, if she wanted to. She is aware of that. I will
say a further word about the museum presently.
Further down the column, her memory is unfaithful again:
"I believe in . . . but one Mother Mary, and know I am not that one,
and never claimed to be."
At a session of the National Christian Science Association, held in the
city of New York on the 27th of May, 1890, the secretary was "instructed
to send to our Mother greetings and words of affection from her assembled
children."
Her telegraphic response was read to the Association at next day's
meeting:
"All hail! He hath filled the hungry with good things and the sick hath
He not sent empty away.--MOTHER MARY."
Which Mother Mary is this one? Are there two? If so, she is both of
them; for, when she signed this telegram in this satisfied and
unprotesting way, the Mother-title which she was going to so strenuously
object to, and put from her with humility, and seize with both hands, and
reserve as her sole property, and protect her monopoly of it with a stern
By-law, while recognizing with diffidence that it was "not applicable" to
her (then and to-day)--that Mother--title was not yet born, and would not
be offered to her until five years later. The date of the above "Mother
Mary" is 1890; the "individual, endearing title of Mother" was given her
"in 1895"--according to her own testimony. See her By-law quoted above.
In his opening Address to that Convention of 1890, the President
recognized this Mary--our Mary-and abolished all previous ones. He said:
"There is but one Moses, one Jesus; and there is but one Mary."
The confusions being now dispersed, we have this clarified result:
Were had been a Moses at one time, and only one; there had been a Jesus
at one time, and only one; there is a Mary and "only one." She is not a
Has Been, she is an Is--the "Author of Science and Health; and we cannot
ignore her."
1. In 1890, there was but one Mother Mary. The President said so.
2. Mrs. Eddy was that one. She said so, in signing the telegram.
3. Mrs. Eddy was not that one for she says so, in her Associated Press
utterance of January 17th.
4. And has "never claimed to be that one"--unless the signature to the
telegram is a claim.
Thus it stands proven and established that she is that Mary and isn't,
and thought she was and knows she wasn't. That much is clear.
She is also "The Mother," by the election of 1895, and did not want the
title, and thinks it is not applicable to her, end will excommunicate any
one that tries to take it away from her. So that is clear.
I think that the only really troublesome confusion connected with these
particular matters has arisen from the name Mary. Much vexation, much
misunderstanding, could have been avoided if Mrs. Eddy had used some of
her other names in place of that one. "Mother Mary" was certain to stir
up discussion. It would have been much better if she had signed the
telegram "Mother Baker"; then there would have been no Biblical
competition, and, of course, that is a thing to avoid. But it is not too
late, yet.
To return to the Claim. I find myself greatly embarrassed by Mrs. Eddy's
remark: "I regard self-deification as blasphemous." If she is right
about that, I have written a half-ream of manuscript this past week which
I must not print, either in the book which I am writing, or elsewhere:
for it goes into that very matter with extensive elaboration, citing, in
detail, words and acts of Mrs. Eddy's which seem to me to prove that she
is a faithful and untiring worshipper of herself, and has carried
self-deification to a length which has not been before ventured in ages.
If ever. There is not room enough in this chapter for that Survey, but I
can epitomize a portion of it here.
With her own untaught and untrained mind, and without outside help, she
has erected upon a firm and lasting foundation the most minutely perfect,
and wonderful, and smoothly and exactly working, and best safe-guarded
system of government that has yet been devised in the world, as I
believe, and as I am sure I could prove if I had room for my documentary
evidences here.
It is a despotism (on this democratic soil); a sovereignty more absolute
than the Roman Papacy, more absolute than the Russian Czarship; it has
not a single power, not a shred of authority, legislative or executive,
which is not lodged solely in the sovereign; all its dreams, its
functions, its energies, have a single object, a single reason for
existing, and only the one--to build to the sky the glory of the
sovereign, and keep it bright to the end of time.
Mrs. Eddy is the sovereign; she devised that great place for herself, she
occupies that throne.
In 1895, she wrote a little primer, a little body of autocratic laws,
called the Manual of The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and put those
laws in force, in permanence. Her government is all there; all in that
deceptively innocent-looking little book, that cunning little devilish
book, that slumbering little brown volcano, with hell in its bowels. In
that book she has planned out her system, and classified and defined its
purposes and powers.
MAIN PARTS OF THE MACHINE
A Supreme Church. At Boston.
Branch Churches. All over the world
One Pastor for the whole of them: to wit, her book, Science and Health.
Term of the book's office--forever.
In every C.S. pulpit, two "Readers," a man and a woman. No talkers, no
preachers, in any Church-readers only. Readers of the Bible and her
books--no others. No commentators allowed to write or print.
A Church Service. She has framed it--for all the C.S. Churches
--selected its readings, its prayers, and the hymns to be used, and has
appointed the order of procedure. No changes permitted.
A Creed. She wrote it. All C.S. Churches must subscribe to it. No
other permitted.
A Treasury. At Boston. She carries the key.
A C.S. Book--Publishing House. For books approved by her. No others
permitted.
Journals and Magazines. These are organs of hers, and are controlled by
her.
A College. For teaching C.S.
DISTRIBUTION OF THE MACHINE'S POWERS AND DIGNITIES
Supreme Church.
Pastor Emeritus--Mrs. Eddy.
Board of Directors.
Board of Education.
Board of Finance.
College Faculty.
Various Committees.
Treasurer.
Clerk.
First Members (of the Supreme Church).
Members of the Supreme Church.
It looks fair, it looks real, but it is all a fiction.
Even the little "Pastor Emeritus" is a fiction. Instead of being merely
an honorary and ornamental official, Mrs. Eddy is the only official in
the entire body that has the slightest power. In her Manual, she has
provided a prodigality of ways and forms whereby she can rid herself of
any functionary in the government whenever she wants to. The officials
are all shadows, save herself; she is the only reality. She allows no
one to hold office more than a year--no one gets a chance to become
over-popular or over-useful, and dangerous. "Excommunication" is the
favorite penalty-it is threatened at every turn. It is evidently the pet
dread and terror of the Church's membership.
The member who thinks, without getting his thought from Mrs. Eddy before
uttering it, is banished permanently. One or two kinds of sinners can
plead their way back into the fold, but this one, never. To think--in
the Supreme Church--is the New Unpardonable Sin.
To nearly every severe and fierce rule, Mrs. Eddy adds this rivet: "This
By-law shall not be changed without the consent of the Pastor Emeritus."
Mrs. Eddy is the entire Supreme Church, in her own person, in the matter
of powers and authorities.
Although she has provided so many ways of getting rid of unsatisfactory
members and officials, she was still afraid she might have left a
life-preserver lying around somewhere, therefore she devised a rule to
cover that defect. By applying it, she can excommunicate (and this is
perpetual again) every functionary connected with the Supreme Church, and
every one of the twenty-five thousand members of that Church, at an
hour's notice--and do it all by herself without anybody's help.
By authority of this astonishing By-law, she has only to say a person
connected with that Church is secretly practicing hypnotism or mesmerism;
whereupon, immediate excommunication, without a hearing, is his portion!
She does not have to order a trial and produce evidence--her accusation
is all that is necessary.
Where is the Pope? and where the Czar? As the ballad says:
"Ask of the winds that far away
With fragments strewed the sea!"
The Branch Church's pulpit is occupied by two "Readers." Without them
the Branch Church is as dead as if its throat had been cut. To have
control, then, of the Readers, is to have control of the Branch Churches.
Mrs. Eddy has that control--a control wholly without limit, a control
shared with no one.
1. No Reader can be appointed to any Church in the Christian Science
world without her express approval.
2. She can summarily expel from his or her place any Reader, at home or
abroad, by a mere letter of dismissal, over her signature, and without
furnishing any reason for it, to either the congregation or the Reader.
Thus she has as absolute control over all Branch Churches as she has over
the Supreme Church. This power exceeds the Pope's.
In simple truth, she is the only absolute sovereign in all Christendom.
The authority of the other sovereigns has limits, hers has none, none
whatever. And her yoke does not fret, does not offend. Many of the
subjects of the other monarchs feel their yoke, and are restive under it;
their loyalty is insincere. It is not so with this one's human property;
their loyalty is genuine, earnest, sincere, enthusiastic. The sentiment
which they feel for her is one which goes out in sheer perfection to no
other occupant of a throne; for it is love, pure from doubt, envy,
exaction, fault-seeking, a love whose sun has no spot--that form of love,
strong, great, uplifting, limitless, whose vast proportions are
compassable by no word but one, the prodigious word, Worship. And it is
not as a human being that her subjects worship her, but as a supernatural
one, a divine one, one who has comradeship with God, and speaks by His
voice.
Mrs. Eddy has herself created all these personal grandeurs and
autocracies--with others which I have not (in this article) mentioned.
They place her upon an Alpine solitude and supremacy of power and
spectacular show not hitherto attained by any other self-seeking enslaver
disguised in the Christian name, and they persuade me that, although she
may regard "self-deification as blasphemous," she is as fond of it as I
am of pie.
She knows about "Our Mother's Room" in the Supreme Church in Boston
--above referred to--for she has been in it. In a recently published
North American Review article, I quoted a lady as saying Mrs. Eddy's
portrait could be seen there in a shrine, lit by always-burning lights,
and that C.S. disciples came and worshiped it. That remark hurt the
feelings of more than one Scientist. They said it was not true, and
asked me to correct it. I comply with pleasure. Whether the portrait
was there four years ago or not, it is not there now, for I have
inquired. The only object in the shrine now, and lit by electrics--and
worshiped--is an oil-portrait of the horse-hair chair Mrs. Eddy used to
sit in when she was writing Science and Health! It seems to me that
adulation has struck bottom, here.
Mrs. Eddy knows about that. She has been there, she has seen it, she has
seen the worshippers. She could abolish that sarcasm with a word. She
withholds the word. Once more I seem to recognize in her exactly the
same appetite for self-deification that I have for pie. We seem to be
curiously alike; for the love of self-deification is really only the
spiritual form of the material appetite for pie, and nothing could be
more strikingly Christian-Scientifically "harmonious."
I note this phrase:
"Christian Science eschews divine rights in human beings."
"Rights" is vague; I do not know what it means there. Mrs. Eddy is not
well acquainted with the English language, and she is seldom able to say
in it what she is trying to say. She has no ear for the exact word, and
does not often get it. "Rights." Does it mean "honors?" "attributes?"
"Eschews." This is another umbrella where there should be a torch; it
does not illumine the sentence, it only deepens the shadows. Does she
mean "denies?" "refuses?" "forbids?" or something in that line? Does she
mean:
"Christian Science denies divine honors to human beings?" Or:
"Christian Science refuses to recognize divine attributes in human
beings?" Or:
"Christian Science forbids the worship of human beings?"
The bulk of the succeeding sentence is to me a tunnel, but, when I emerge
at this end of it, I seem to come into daylight. Then I seem to
understand both sentences--with this result:
"Christian Science recognizes but one God, forbids the worship of human
beings, and refuses to recognize the possession of divine attributes by
any member of the race."
I am subject to correction, but I think that that is about what Mrs. Eddy
was intending to convey. Has her English--which is always difficult to
me--beguiled me into misunderstanding the following remark, which she
makes (calling herself "we," after an old regal fashion of hers) in her
preface to her Miscellaneous Writings?
"While we entertain decided views as to the best method for elevating the
race physically, morally, and spiritually, and shall express these views
as duty demands, we shall claim no especial gift from our divine organ,
no supernatural power."
Was she meaning to say:
"Although I am of divine origin and gifted with supernatural power, I
shall not draw upon these resources in determining the best method of
elevating the race?"
If she had left out the word "our," she might then seem to say:
"I claim no especial or unusual degree of divine origin--"
Which is awkward--most awkward; for one either has a divine origin or
hasn't; shares in it, degrees of it, are surely impossible. The idea of
crossed breeds in cattle is a thing we can entertain, for we are used to
it, and it is possible; but the idea of a divine mongrel is unthinkable.
Well, then, what does she mean? I am sure I do not know, for certain.
It is the word "our" that makes all the trouble. With the "our" in, she
is plainly saying "my divine origin." The word "from" seems to be
intended to mean "on account of." It has to mean that or nothing, if
"our" is allowed to stay. The clause then says:
"I shall claim no especial gift on account of my divine origin."
And I think that the full sentence was intended to mean what I have
already suggested:
"Although I am of divine origin, and gifted with supernatural power, I
shall not draw upon these resources in determining the best method of
elevating the race."
When Mrs. Eddy copyrighted that Preface seven years ago, she had long
been used to regarding herself as a divine personage. I quote from Mr.
F. W. Peabody's book:
"In the Christian Science Journal for April, 1889, when it was her
property, and published by her, it was claimed for her, and with her
sanction, that she was equal with Jesus, and elaborate effort was made to
establish the claim."
"Mrs. Eddy has distinctly authorized the claim in her behalf, that she
herself was the chosen successor to and equal of Jesus."
The following remark in that April number, quoted by Mr. Peabody,
indicates that her claim had been previously made, and had excited
"horror" among some "good people":
"Now, a word about the horror many good people have of our making the
Author of Science and Health 'equal with Jesus.'"
Surely, if it had excited horror in Mrs. Eddy also, she would have
published a disclaimer. She owned the paper; she could say what she
pleased in its columns. Instead of rebuking her editor, she lets him
rebuke those "good people" for objecting to the claim.
These things seem to throw light upon those words, "our [my] divine
origin."
It may be that "Christian Science eschews divine rights in human beings,"
and forbids worship of any but "one God, one Christ"; but, if that is the
case, it looks as if Mrs. Eddy is a very unsound Christian Scientist,
and needs disciplining. I believe she has a serious malady
--"self-deification"; and that it will be well to have one of the
experts demonstrate over it.
Meantime, let her go on living--for my sake. Closely examined,
painstakingly studied, she is easily the most interesting person on the
planet, and, in several ways, as easily the most extraordinary woman that
was ever born upon it.
P.S.--Since I wrote the foregoing, Mr. McCrackan's article appeared (in
the March number of the North American Review). Before his article
appeared--that is to say, during December, January, and February--I had
written a new book, a character-portrait of Mrs. Eddy, drawn from her own
acts and words, and it was then--together with the three brief articles
previously published in the North American Review--ready to be delivered
to the printer for issue in book form. In that book, by accident and
good luck, I have answered the objections made by Mr. McCrackan to my
views, and therefore do not need to add an answer here. Also, in it I
have corrected certain misstatements of mine which he has noticed, and
several others which he has not referred to. There are one or two
important matters of opinion upon which he and I are not in disagreement;
but there are others upon which we must continue to disagree, I suppose;
indeed, I know we must; for instance, he believes Mrs. Eddy wrote Science
and Health, whereas I am quite sure I can convince a person unhampered by
predilections that she did not.
As concerns one considerable matter I hope to convert him. He believes
Mrs. Eddy's word; in his article he cites her as a witness, and takes her
testimony at par; but if he will make an excursion through my book when
it comes out, and will dispassionately examine her testimonies as there
accumulated, I think he will in candor concede that she is by a large
percentage the most erratic and contradictory and untrustworthy witness
that has occupied the stand since the days of the lamented Ananias.
CONCLUSION
Broadly speaking, the hostiles reject and repudiate all the pretensions
of Christian Science Christianity. They affirm that it has added nothing
new to Christianity; that it can do nothing that Christianity could not
do and was not doing before Christian Science was born.
In that case is there no field for the new Christianity, no opportunity
for usefulness, precious usefulness, great and distinguished usefulness?
I think there is. I am far from being confident that it can fill it, but
I will indicate that unoccupied field--without charge--and if it can
conquer it, it will deserve the praise and gratitude of the Christian
world, and will get it, I am sure.
The present Christianity makes an excellent private Christian, but its
endeavors to make an excellent public one go for nothing, substantially.
This is an honest nation--in private life. The American Christian is a
straight and clean and honest man, and in his private commerce with his
fellows can be trusted to stand faithfully by the principles of honor and
honesty imposed upon him by his religion. But the moment he comes
forward to exercise a public trust he can be confidently counted upon to
betray that trust in nine cases out of ten, if "party loyalty" shall
require it.
If there are two tickets in the field in his city, one composed of honest
men and the other of notorious blatherskites and criminals, he will not
hesitate to lay his private Christian honor aside and vote for the
blatherskites if his "party honor" shall exact it. His Christianity is
of no use to him and has no influence upon him when he is acting in a
public capacity. He has sound and sturdy private morals, but he has no
public ones. In the last great municipal election in New York, almost a
complete one-half of the votes representing 3,500,000 Christians were
cast for a ticket that had hardly a man on it whose earned and proper
place was outside of a jail. But that vote was present at church next
Sunday the same as ever, and as unconscious of its perfidy as if nothing
had happened.
Our Congresses consist of Christians. In their private life they are
true to every obligation of honor; yet in every session they violate them
all, and do it without shame; because honor to party is above honor to
themselves. It is an accepted law of public life that in it a man may
soil his honor in the interest of party expediency--must do it when
party expediency requires it. In private life those men would bitterly
resent--and justly--any insinuation that it would not be safe to leave
unwatched money within their reach; yet you could not wound their
feelings by reminding them that every time they vote ten dollars to the
pension appropriation nine of it is stolen money and they the marauders.
They have filched the money to take care of the party; they believe it
was right to do it; they do not see how their private honor is affected;
therefore their consciences are clear and at rest. By vote they do
wrongful things every day, in the party interest, which they could not be
persuaded to do in private life. In the interest of party expediency
they give solemn pledges, they make solemn compacts; in the interest of
party expediency they repudiate them without a blush. They would not
dream of committing these strange crimes in private life.
Now then, can Christian Science introduce the Congressional Blush? There
are Christian Private Morals, but there are no Christian Public Morals,
at the polls, or in Congress or anywhere else--except here and there and
scattered around like lost comets in the solar system. Can Christian
Science persuade the nation and Congress to throw away their public
morals and use none but their private ones henceforth in all their
activities, both public and private?
I do not think so; but no matter about me: there is the field--a grand
one, a splendid one, a sublime one, and absolutely unoccupied. Has
Christian Science confidence enough in itself to undertake to enter in
and try to possess it?
Make the effort, Christian Science; it is a most noble cause, and it
might succeed. It could succeed. Then we should have a new literature,
with romances entitled, How To Be an Honest Congressman Though a
Christian; How To Be a Creditable Citizen Though a Christian.
End of Project Gutenberg's Christian Science, by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
[www.gutenberg.org]
MRS. EDDY IN ERROR
I feel almost sure that Mrs. Eddy's inspiration--works are getting out of
repair. I think so because they made some errors in a statement which
she uttered through the press on the 17th of January. Not large ones,
perhaps, still it is a friend's duty to straighten such things out and
get them right when he can. Therefore I will put my other duties aside
for a moment and undertake this helpful service. She said as follows:
"In view of the circulation of certain criticisms from the pen of Mark
Twain, I submit the following statement:
"It is a fact, well understood, that I begged the students who first gave
me the endearing appellative 'mother' not to name me thus. But, without
my consent, that word spread like wildfire. I still must think the name
is not applicable to me. I stand in relation to this century as a
Christian discoverer, founder, and leader. I regard self-deification as
blasphemous; I may be more loved, but I am less lauded, pampered,
provided for, and cheered than others before me--and wherefore? Because
Christian Science is not yet popular, and I refuse adulation.
"My visit to the Mother-Church after it was built and dedicated pleased
me, and the situation was satisfactory. The dear members wanted to greet
me with escort and the ringing of bells, but I declined, and went alone
in my carriage to the church, entered it, and knelt in thanks upon the
steps of its altar. There the foresplendor of the beginnings of truth
fell mysteriously upon my spirit. I believe in one Christ, teach one
Christ, know of but one Christ. I believe in but one incarnation, one
Mother Mary, and know I am not that one, and never claimed to be. It
suffices me to learn the Science of the Scriptures relative to this
subject.
"In the aforesaid article, of which I have seen only extracts, Mark
Twain's wit was not wasted In certain directions. Christian Science
eschews divine rights in human beings. If the individual governed human
consciousness, my statement of Christian Science would be disproved, but
to understand the spiritual idea is essential to demonstrate Science and
its pure monotheism--one God, one Christ, no idolatry, no human
propaganda. Jesus taught and proved that what feeds a few feeds all.
His life-work subordinated the material to the spiritual, and He left
this legacy of truth to mankind. His metaphysics is not the sport of
philosophy, religion, or Science; rather it is the pith and finale of
them all.
"I have not the inspiration or aspiration to be a first or second
Virgin-Mother--her duplicate, antecedent, or subsequent. What I am
remains to be proved by the good I do. We need much humility, wisdom,
and love to perform the functions of foreshadowing and foretasting heaven
within us. This glory is molten in the furnace of affliction."
She still thinks the name of Our Mother not applicable to her; and she is
also able to remember that it distressed her when it was conferred upon
her, and that she begged to have it suppressed. Her memory is at fault
here. If she will take her By-laws, and refer to Section 1 of Article
XXII., written with her own hand--she will find that she has reserved
that title to herself, and is so pleased with it, and so--may we say
jealous?--about it, that she threatens with excommunication any sister
Scientist who shall call herself by it. This is that Section 1:
"The Title of Mother. In the year 1895 loyal Christian Scientists had
given to the author of their text-book, the Founder of Christian Science,
the individual, endearing term of Mother. Therefore, if a student of
Christian Science shall apply this title, either to herself or to others,
except as the term for kinship according to the flesh, it shall be
regarded by the Church as an indication of disrespect for their Pastor
Emeritus, and unfitness to be a member of the Mother-Church."
Mrs. Eddy is herself the Mother-Church--its powers and authorities are in
her possession solely--and she can abolish that title whenever it may
please her to do so. She has only to command her people, wherever they
may be in the earth, to use it no more, and it will never be uttered
again. She is aware of this.
It may be that she "refuses adulation" when she is not awake, but when
she is awake she encourages it and propagates it in that museum called
"Our Mother's Room," in her Church in Boston. She could abolish that
institution with a word, if she wanted to. She is aware of that. I will
say a further word about the museum presently.
Further down the column, her memory is unfaithful again:
"I believe in . . . but one Mother Mary, and know I am not that one,
and never claimed to be."
At a session of the National Christian Science Association, held in the
city of New York on the 27th of May, 1890, the secretary was "instructed
to send to our Mother greetings and words of affection from her assembled
children."
Her telegraphic response was read to the Association at next day's
meeting:
"All hail! He hath filled the hungry with good things and the sick hath
He not sent empty away.--MOTHER MARY."
Which Mother Mary is this one? Are there two? If so, she is both of
them; for, when she signed this telegram in this satisfied and
unprotesting way, the Mother-title which she was going to so strenuously
object to, and put from her with humility, and seize with both hands, and
reserve as her sole property, and protect her monopoly of it with a stern
By-law, while recognizing with diffidence that it was "not applicable" to
her (then and to-day)--that Mother--title was not yet born, and would not
be offered to her until five years later. The date of the above "Mother
Mary" is 1890; the "individual, endearing title of Mother" was given her
"in 1895"--according to her own testimony. See her By-law quoted above.
In his opening Address to that Convention of 1890, the President
recognized this Mary--our Mary-and abolished all previous ones. He said:
"There is but one Moses, one Jesus; and there is but one Mary."
The confusions being now dispersed, we have this clarified result:
Were had been a Moses at one time, and only one; there had been a Jesus
at one time, and only one; there is a Mary and "only one." She is not a
Has Been, she is an Is--the "Author of Science and Health; and we cannot
ignore her."
1. In 1890, there was but one Mother Mary. The President said so.
2. Mrs. Eddy was that one. She said so, in signing the telegram.
3. Mrs. Eddy was not that one for she says so, in her Associated Press
utterance of January 17th.
4. And has "never claimed to be that one"--unless the signature to the
telegram is a claim.
Thus it stands proven and established that she is that Mary and isn't,
and thought she was and knows she wasn't. That much is clear.
She is also "The Mother," by the election of 1895, and did not want the
title, and thinks it is not applicable to her, end will excommunicate any
one that tries to take it away from her. So that is clear.
I think that the only really troublesome confusion connected with these
particular matters has arisen from the name Mary. Much vexation, much
misunderstanding, could have been avoided if Mrs. Eddy had used some of
her other names in place of that one. "Mother Mary" was certain to stir
up discussion. It would have been much better if she had signed the
telegram "Mother Baker"; then there would have been no Biblical
competition, and, of course, that is a thing to avoid. But it is not too
late, yet.
To return to the Claim. I find myself greatly embarrassed by Mrs. Eddy's
remark: "I regard self-deification as blasphemous." If she is right
about that, I have written a half-ream of manuscript this past week which
I must not print, either in the book which I am writing, or elsewhere:
for it goes into that very matter with extensive elaboration, citing, in
detail, words and acts of Mrs. Eddy's which seem to me to prove that she
is a faithful and untiring worshipper of herself, and has carried
self-deification to a length which has not been before ventured in ages.
If ever. There is not room enough in this chapter for that Survey, but I
can epitomize a portion of it here.
With her own untaught and untrained mind, and without outside help, she
has erected upon a firm and lasting foundation the most minutely perfect,
and wonderful, and smoothly and exactly working, and best safe-guarded
system of government that has yet been devised in the world, as I
believe, and as I am sure I could prove if I had room for my documentary
evidences here.
It is a despotism (on this democratic soil); a sovereignty more absolute
than the Roman Papacy, more absolute than the Russian Czarship; it has
not a single power, not a shred of authority, legislative or executive,
which is not lodged solely in the sovereign; all its dreams, its
functions, its energies, have a single object, a single reason for
existing, and only the one--to build to the sky the glory of the
sovereign, and keep it bright to the end of time.
Mrs. Eddy is the sovereign; she devised that great place for herself, she
occupies that throne.
In 1895, she wrote a little primer, a little body of autocratic laws,
called the Manual of The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and put those
laws in force, in permanence. Her government is all there; all in that
deceptively innocent-looking little book, that cunning little devilish
book, that slumbering little brown volcano, with hell in its bowels. In
that book she has planned out her system, and classified and defined its
purposes and powers.
MAIN PARTS OF THE MACHINE
A Supreme Church. At Boston.
Branch Churches. All over the world
One Pastor for the whole of them: to wit, her book, Science and Health.
Term of the book's office--forever.
In every C.S. pulpit, two "Readers," a man and a woman. No talkers, no
preachers, in any Church-readers only. Readers of the Bible and her
books--no others. No commentators allowed to write or print.
A Church Service. She has framed it--for all the C.S. Churches
--selected its readings, its prayers, and the hymns to be used, and has
appointed the order of procedure. No changes permitted.
A Creed. She wrote it. All C.S. Churches must subscribe to it. No
other permitted.
A Treasury. At Boston. She carries the key.
A C.S. Book--Publishing House. For books approved by her. No others
permitted.
Journals and Magazines. These are organs of hers, and are controlled by
her.
A College. For teaching C.S.
DISTRIBUTION OF THE MACHINE'S POWERS AND DIGNITIES
Supreme Church.
Pastor Emeritus--Mrs. Eddy.
Board of Directors.
Board of Education.
Board of Finance.
College Faculty.
Various Committees.
Treasurer.
Clerk.
First Members (of the Supreme Church).
Members of the Supreme Church.
It looks fair, it looks real, but it is all a fiction.
Even the little "Pastor Emeritus" is a fiction. Instead of being merely
an honorary and ornamental official, Mrs. Eddy is the only official in
the entire body that has the slightest power. In her Manual, she has
provided a prodigality of ways and forms whereby she can rid herself of
any functionary in the government whenever she wants to. The officials
are all shadows, save herself; she is the only reality. She allows no
one to hold office more than a year--no one gets a chance to become
over-popular or over-useful, and dangerous. "Excommunication" is the
favorite penalty-it is threatened at every turn. It is evidently the pet
dread and terror of the Church's membership.
The member who thinks, without getting his thought from Mrs. Eddy before
uttering it, is banished permanently. One or two kinds of sinners can
plead their way back into the fold, but this one, never. To think--in
the Supreme Church--is the New Unpardonable Sin.
To nearly every severe and fierce rule, Mrs. Eddy adds this rivet: "This
By-law shall not be changed without the consent of the Pastor Emeritus."
Mrs. Eddy is the entire Supreme Church, in her own person, in the matter
of powers and authorities.
Although she has provided so many ways of getting rid of unsatisfactory
members and officials, she was still afraid she might have left a
life-preserver lying around somewhere, therefore she devised a rule to
cover that defect. By applying it, she can excommunicate (and this is
perpetual again) every functionary connected with the Supreme Church, and
every one of the twenty-five thousand members of that Church, at an
hour's notice--and do it all by herself without anybody's help.
By authority of this astonishing By-law, she has only to say a person
connected with that Church is secretly practicing hypnotism or mesmerism;
whereupon, immediate excommunication, without a hearing, is his portion!
She does not have to order a trial and produce evidence--her accusation
is all that is necessary.
Where is the Pope? and where the Czar? As the ballad says:
"Ask of the winds that far away
With fragments strewed the sea!"
The Branch Church's pulpit is occupied by two "Readers." Without them
the Branch Church is as dead as if its throat had been cut. To have
control, then, of the Readers, is to have control of the Branch Churches.
Mrs. Eddy has that control--a control wholly without limit, a control
shared with no one.
1. No Reader can be appointed to any Church in the Christian Science
world without her express approval.
2. She can summarily expel from his or her place any Reader, at home or
abroad, by a mere letter of dismissal, over her signature, and without
furnishing any reason for it, to either the congregation or the Reader.
Thus she has as absolute control over all Branch Churches as she has over
the Supreme Church. This power exceeds the Pope's.
In simple truth, she is the only absolute sovereign in all Christendom.
The authority of the other sovereigns has limits, hers has none, none
whatever. And her yoke does not fret, does not offend. Many of the
subjects of the other monarchs feel their yoke, and are restive under it;
their loyalty is insincere. It is not so with this one's human property;
their loyalty is genuine, earnest, sincere, enthusiastic. The sentiment
which they feel for her is one which goes out in sheer perfection to no
other occupant of a throne; for it is love, pure from doubt, envy,
exaction, fault-seeking, a love whose sun has no spot--that form of love,
strong, great, uplifting, limitless, whose vast proportions are
compassable by no word but one, the prodigious word, Worship. And it is
not as a human being that her subjects worship her, but as a supernatural
one, a divine one, one who has comradeship with God, and speaks by His
voice.
Mrs. Eddy has herself created all these personal grandeurs and
autocracies--with others which I have not (in this article) mentioned.
They place her upon an Alpine solitude and supremacy of power and
spectacular show not hitherto attained by any other self-seeking enslaver
disguised in the Christian name, and they persuade me that, although she
may regard "self-deification as blasphemous," she is as fond of it as I
am of pie.
She knows about "Our Mother's Room" in the Supreme Church in Boston
--above referred to--for she has been in it. In a recently published
North American Review article, I quoted a lady as saying Mrs. Eddy's
portrait could be seen there in a shrine, lit by always-burning lights,
and that C.S. disciples came and worshiped it. That remark hurt the
feelings of more than one Scientist. They said it was not true, and
asked me to correct it. I comply with pleasure. Whether the portrait
was there four years ago or not, it is not there now, for I have
inquired. The only object in the shrine now, and lit by electrics--and
worshiped--is an oil-portrait of the horse-hair chair Mrs. Eddy used to
sit in when she was writing Science and Health! It seems to me that
adulation has struck bottom, here.
Mrs. Eddy knows about that. She has been there, she has seen it, she has
seen the worshippers. She could abolish that sarcasm with a word. She
withholds the word. Once more I seem to recognize in her exactly the
same appetite for self-deification that I have for pie. We seem to be
curiously alike; for the love of self-deification is really only the
spiritual form of the material appetite for pie, and nothing could be
more strikingly Christian-Scientifically "harmonious."
I note this phrase:
"Christian Science eschews divine rights in human beings."
"Rights" is vague; I do not know what it means there. Mrs. Eddy is not
well acquainted with the English language, and she is seldom able to say
in it what she is trying to say. She has no ear for the exact word, and
does not often get it. "Rights." Does it mean "honors?" "attributes?"
"Eschews." This is another umbrella where there should be a torch; it
does not illumine the sentence, it only deepens the shadows. Does she
mean "denies?" "refuses?" "forbids?" or something in that line? Does she
mean:
"Christian Science denies divine honors to human beings?" Or:
"Christian Science refuses to recognize divine attributes in human
beings?" Or:
"Christian Science forbids the worship of human beings?"
The bulk of the succeeding sentence is to me a tunnel, but, when I emerge
at this end of it, I seem to come into daylight. Then I seem to
understand both sentences--with this result:
"Christian Science recognizes but one God, forbids the worship of human
beings, and refuses to recognize the possession of divine attributes by
any member of the race."
I am subject to correction, but I think that that is about what Mrs. Eddy
was intending to convey. Has her English--which is always difficult to
me--beguiled me into misunderstanding the following remark, which she
makes (calling herself "we," after an old regal fashion of hers) in her
preface to her Miscellaneous Writings?
"While we entertain decided views as to the best method for elevating the
race physically, morally, and spiritually, and shall express these views
as duty demands, we shall claim no especial gift from our divine organ,
no supernatural power."
Was she meaning to say:
"Although I am of divine origin and gifted with supernatural power, I
shall not draw upon these resources in determining the best method of
elevating the race?"
If she had left out the word "our," she might then seem to say:
"I claim no especial or unusual degree of divine origin--"
Which is awkward--most awkward; for one either has a divine origin or
hasn't; shares in it, degrees of it, are surely impossible. The idea of
crossed breeds in cattle is a thing we can entertain, for we are used to
it, and it is possible; but the idea of a divine mongrel is unthinkable.
Well, then, what does she mean? I am sure I do not know, for certain.
It is the word "our" that makes all the trouble. With the "our" in, she
is plainly saying "my divine origin." The word "from" seems to be
intended to mean "on account of." It has to mean that or nothing, if
"our" is allowed to stay. The clause then says:
"I shall claim no especial gift on account of my divine origin."
And I think that the full sentence was intended to mean what I have
already suggested:
"Although I am of divine origin, and gifted with supernatural power, I
shall not draw upon these resources in determining the best method of
elevating the race."
When Mrs. Eddy copyrighted that Preface seven years ago, she had long
been used to regarding herself as a divine personage. I quote from Mr.
F. W. Peabody's book:
"In the Christian Science Journal for April, 1889, when it was her
property, and published by her, it was claimed for her, and with her
sanction, that she was equal with Jesus, and elaborate effort was made to
establish the claim."
"Mrs. Eddy has distinctly authorized the claim in her behalf, that she
herself was the chosen successor to and equal of Jesus."
The following remark in that April number, quoted by Mr. Peabody,
indicates that her claim had been previously made, and had excited
"horror" among some "good people":
"Now, a word about the horror many good people have of our making the
Author of Science and Health 'equal with Jesus.'"
Surely, if it had excited horror in Mrs. Eddy also, she would have
published a disclaimer. She owned the paper; she could say what she
pleased in its columns. Instead of rebuking her editor, she lets him
rebuke those "good people" for objecting to the claim.
These things seem to throw light upon those words, "our [my] divine
origin."
It may be that "Christian Science eschews divine rights in human beings,"
and forbids worship of any but "one God, one Christ"; but, if that is the
case, it looks as if Mrs. Eddy is a very unsound Christian Scientist,
and needs disciplining. I believe she has a serious malady
--"self-deification"; and that it will be well to have one of the
experts demonstrate over it.
Meantime, let her go on living--for my sake. Closely examined,
painstakingly studied, she is easily the most interesting person on the
planet, and, in several ways, as easily the most extraordinary woman that
was ever born upon it.
P.S.--Since I wrote the foregoing, Mr. McCrackan's article appeared (in
the March number of the North American Review). Before his article
appeared--that is to say, during December, January, and February--I had
written a new book, a character-portrait of Mrs. Eddy, drawn from her own
acts and words, and it was then--together with the three brief articles
previously published in the North American Review--ready to be delivered
to the printer for issue in book form. In that book, by accident and
good luck, I have answered the objections made by Mr. McCrackan to my
views, and therefore do not need to add an answer here. Also, in it I
have corrected certain misstatements of mine which he has noticed, and
several others which he has not referred to. There are one or two
important matters of opinion upon which he and I are not in disagreement;
but there are others upon which we must continue to disagree, I suppose;
indeed, I know we must; for instance, he believes Mrs. Eddy wrote Science
and Health, whereas I am quite sure I can convince a person unhampered by
predilections that she did not.
As concerns one considerable matter I hope to convert him. He believes
Mrs. Eddy's word; in his article he cites her as a witness, and takes her
testimony at par; but if he will make an excursion through my book when
it comes out, and will dispassionately examine her testimonies as there
accumulated, I think he will in candor concede that she is by a large
percentage the most erratic and contradictory and untrustworthy witness
that has occupied the stand since the days of the lamented Ananias.
CONCLUSION
Broadly speaking, the hostiles reject and repudiate all the pretensions
of Christian Science Christianity. They affirm that it has added nothing
new to Christianity; that it can do nothing that Christianity could not
do and was not doing before Christian Science was born.
In that case is there no field for the new Christianity, no opportunity
for usefulness, precious usefulness, great and distinguished usefulness?
I think there is. I am far from being confident that it can fill it, but
I will indicate that unoccupied field--without charge--and if it can
conquer it, it will deserve the praise and gratitude of the Christian
world, and will get it, I am sure.
The present Christianity makes an excellent private Christian, but its
endeavors to make an excellent public one go for nothing, substantially.
This is an honest nation--in private life. The American Christian is a
straight and clean and honest man, and in his private commerce with his
fellows can be trusted to stand faithfully by the principles of honor and
honesty imposed upon him by his religion. But the moment he comes
forward to exercise a public trust he can be confidently counted upon to
betray that trust in nine cases out of ten, if "party loyalty" shall
require it.
If there are two tickets in the field in his city, one composed of honest
men and the other of notorious blatherskites and criminals, he will not
hesitate to lay his private Christian honor aside and vote for the
blatherskites if his "party honor" shall exact it. His Christianity is
of no use to him and has no influence upon him when he is acting in a
public capacity. He has sound and sturdy private morals, but he has no
public ones. In the last great municipal election in New York, almost a
complete one-half of the votes representing 3,500,000 Christians were
cast for a ticket that had hardly a man on it whose earned and proper
place was outside of a jail. But that vote was present at church next
Sunday the same as ever, and as unconscious of its perfidy as if nothing
had happened.
Our Congresses consist of Christians. In their private life they are
true to every obligation of honor; yet in every session they violate them
all, and do it without shame; because honor to party is above honor to
themselves. It is an accepted law of public life that in it a man may
soil his honor in the interest of party expediency--must do it when
party expediency requires it. In private life those men would bitterly
resent--and justly--any insinuation that it would not be safe to leave
unwatched money within their reach; yet you could not wound their
feelings by reminding them that every time they vote ten dollars to the
pension appropriation nine of it is stolen money and they the marauders.
They have filched the money to take care of the party; they believe it
was right to do it; they do not see how their private honor is affected;
therefore their consciences are clear and at rest. By vote they do
wrongful things every day, in the party interest, which they could not be
persuaded to do in private life. In the interest of party expediency
they give solemn pledges, they make solemn compacts; in the interest of
party expediency they repudiate them without a blush. They would not
dream of committing these strange crimes in private life.
Now then, can Christian Science introduce the Congressional Blush? There
are Christian Private Morals, but there are no Christian Public Morals,
at the polls, or in Congress or anywhere else--except here and there and
scattered around like lost comets in the solar system. Can Christian
Science persuade the nation and Congress to throw away their public
morals and use none but their private ones henceforth in all their
activities, both public and private?
I do not think so; but no matter about me: there is the field--a grand
one, a splendid one, a sublime one, and absolutely unoccupied. Has
Christian Science confidence enough in itself to undertake to enter in
and try to possess it?
Make the effort, Christian Science; it is a most noble cause, and it
might succeed. It could succeed. Then we should have a new literature,
with romances entitled, How To Be an Honest Congressman Though a
Christian; How To Be a Creditable Citizen Though a Christian.
End of Project Gutenberg's Christian Science, by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
Christian Science
Posted by:
Cosmophilospher
()
Date: June 13, 2005 02:16AM
[www.culteducation.com]
The Suffering of Children
Imagine those children at home, being told by their parents that their illness is not real and that the pain they feel is not a part of the real world--God's world. Imagine yourself at six or nine or twelve being very sick and hearing your parents read to you Eddy's definition of man, which begins, "Man is not matter; he is not made up of brain, blood, bones, and other material elements." Imagine what happens to a child when her cancer goes untreated for months. And then imagine how it feels. If you can bear to imagine that, you will be imagining what actually happened to Ashley King. Ashley King died in 1988. She was twelve years old, and she had bone cancer. The only child of John King, a real estate executive in Phoenix, Arizona, and his wife, Catherine, both Christian Scientists, she was withdrawn from school in November of 1987 because of "a problem with her leg." Officials at Cocopah Middle School, in Scottsdale, agreed to arrange for Ashley's teacher, Tammy Van Denberg, to see her at home.
According to court records, in February of 1988 Van Denberg came to the Kings' home for a visit but was not allowed to see Ashley. She kept coming, hoping to see the child. Catherine King repeatedly reassured her until, in April, she met Van Denberg at the door and said, "We finally have come to the point where you place God before your own life." School authorities called Child Protective Services.
On May 5 Detective Edwin Boehm, of the Paradise Valley Police Department, came to the house; he believes himself to have been the first person other than her parents to see Ashley in months. When I reached Boehm recently and asked him if he remembered Ashley King, he said, "You work on a case like that, you don't forget it." He said it had taken some time before he "gained entry," because Catherine King at first refused to answer the door. He described seeing Ashley: "I knew first thing looking at her that she was dying." He couldn't see her leg, because "she had a pillow on it under the covers--she was hiding it." He would eventually tell a grand jury, "She was extremely white, ashen colored--to be specific, death color." The next day Child Protective Services received a court order allowing them temporary custody of Ashley for the purpose of medical examination.
Judging by photographs taken a year or so before her death, Ashley King was a beautiful girl, with long, straight dark-brown hair and high cheekbones. When she was taken to Phoenix Children's Hospital, she had a tumor on her right leg that was forty-one inches in circumference.
Her hemoglobin count, according to Paul Baranko, the physician who examined her, was "almost incompatible with life." Her heart was enlarged from the burden of pumping blood to the tumor, her pulse was twice normal, the cancer had spread to her lungs, and she was in immediate danger of dying from congestive heart failure. Immobilized by the tumor, she had been lying in the same position for months. Her buttocks and genitals were covered with bedsores.
Nurses who testified before the grand jury said that Ashley had told them, "I'm in so much pain" and "You don't know how I have suffered." Baranko, who estimated that Ashley would have had a 55 to 60 percent chance of recovery if she had had timely, proper medical treatment, recommended that her leg be amputated to reduce her pain in the time she had remaining; the Kings declined. He later said, "This has to be the most disturbing, depressing case I have ever seen in my twenty five years as a physician."
Ashley stayed in the hospital for only six days. Officials with Child Protective Services reached an agreement with her parents whereby Ashley would be transferred to Upward View, a Christian Science nursing home. At Upward View, a facility that was not state-licensed and was staffed by Christian Science nurses, who provide only nonmedical care, Ashley lay in bed in conditions that must have been similar to those she had endured at home. When she cried out, a nurse reminded her to remember the feelings of the other "visitors." She died on June 5, 1988.
...
In 1989, a year after their indictment, John and Catherine King each pleaded no contest to one charge of reckless endangerment--a misdemeanor in this case. After their sentencing to three years' probation, the couple held a press conference at which Catherine King displayed a number of large cardboard cutouts of her daughter, which she had made out of enlarged photographs. She told reporters that her daughter had been terrified not by her disease or her pain but by the doctors who examined her: "The only analogy I can use to describe the terror, resistance, and sense of injustice Ashley felt is to compare it to what it must have been like for Anne Frank to be taken to the prison camp in Nazi Germany." King also said, "I know I was a good mother, and no judge or jury in the country can convince me otherwise."
....
Telling me about her work as a practitioner, Shepard had to stop twice to compose herself. "I know that no one actually died when I was praying for them," she said. "But I know that people suffered terribly and had malformations as a result of having no medical treatment, especially in the cases of cuts, deep wounds, and burns." She remembers two children in particular. The parents of a six-year-old girl called to ask her to pray for the child because she had fallen and bruised her arm. The girl herself later called Shepard, crying uncontrollably. Shepard drove to her home and found her alone, lying on the floor with a protruding broken collarbone. Her parents had gone to work and left her on the floor with the telephone. On another occasion a mother called and described her child as having a sore throat. Three days later Shepard visited the child and found that he had swallowed lye and had a hole in his throat.
The Suffering of Children
Imagine those children at home, being told by their parents that their illness is not real and that the pain they feel is not a part of the real world--God's world. Imagine yourself at six or nine or twelve being very sick and hearing your parents read to you Eddy's definition of man, which begins, "Man is not matter; he is not made up of brain, blood, bones, and other material elements." Imagine what happens to a child when her cancer goes untreated for months. And then imagine how it feels. If you can bear to imagine that, you will be imagining what actually happened to Ashley King. Ashley King died in 1988. She was twelve years old, and she had bone cancer. The only child of John King, a real estate executive in Phoenix, Arizona, and his wife, Catherine, both Christian Scientists, she was withdrawn from school in November of 1987 because of "a problem with her leg." Officials at Cocopah Middle School, in Scottsdale, agreed to arrange for Ashley's teacher, Tammy Van Denberg, to see her at home.
According to court records, in February of 1988 Van Denberg came to the Kings' home for a visit but was not allowed to see Ashley. She kept coming, hoping to see the child. Catherine King repeatedly reassured her until, in April, she met Van Denberg at the door and said, "We finally have come to the point where you place God before your own life." School authorities called Child Protective Services.
On May 5 Detective Edwin Boehm, of the Paradise Valley Police Department, came to the house; he believes himself to have been the first person other than her parents to see Ashley in months. When I reached Boehm recently and asked him if he remembered Ashley King, he said, "You work on a case like that, you don't forget it." He said it had taken some time before he "gained entry," because Catherine King at first refused to answer the door. He described seeing Ashley: "I knew first thing looking at her that she was dying." He couldn't see her leg, because "she had a pillow on it under the covers--she was hiding it." He would eventually tell a grand jury, "She was extremely white, ashen colored--to be specific, death color." The next day Child Protective Services received a court order allowing them temporary custody of Ashley for the purpose of medical examination.
Judging by photographs taken a year or so before her death, Ashley King was a beautiful girl, with long, straight dark-brown hair and high cheekbones. When she was taken to Phoenix Children's Hospital, she had a tumor on her right leg that was forty-one inches in circumference.
Her hemoglobin count, according to Paul Baranko, the physician who examined her, was "almost incompatible with life." Her heart was enlarged from the burden of pumping blood to the tumor, her pulse was twice normal, the cancer had spread to her lungs, and she was in immediate danger of dying from congestive heart failure. Immobilized by the tumor, she had been lying in the same position for months. Her buttocks and genitals were covered with bedsores.
Nurses who testified before the grand jury said that Ashley had told them, "I'm in so much pain" and "You don't know how I have suffered." Baranko, who estimated that Ashley would have had a 55 to 60 percent chance of recovery if she had had timely, proper medical treatment, recommended that her leg be amputated to reduce her pain in the time she had remaining; the Kings declined. He later said, "This has to be the most disturbing, depressing case I have ever seen in my twenty five years as a physician."
Ashley stayed in the hospital for only six days. Officials with Child Protective Services reached an agreement with her parents whereby Ashley would be transferred to Upward View, a Christian Science nursing home. At Upward View, a facility that was not state-licensed and was staffed by Christian Science nurses, who provide only nonmedical care, Ashley lay in bed in conditions that must have been similar to those she had endured at home. When she cried out, a nurse reminded her to remember the feelings of the other "visitors." She died on June 5, 1988.
...
In 1989, a year after their indictment, John and Catherine King each pleaded no contest to one charge of reckless endangerment--a misdemeanor in this case. After their sentencing to three years' probation, the couple held a press conference at which Catherine King displayed a number of large cardboard cutouts of her daughter, which she had made out of enlarged photographs. She told reporters that her daughter had been terrified not by her disease or her pain but by the doctors who examined her: "The only analogy I can use to describe the terror, resistance, and sense of injustice Ashley felt is to compare it to what it must have been like for Anne Frank to be taken to the prison camp in Nazi Germany." King also said, "I know I was a good mother, and no judge or jury in the country can convince me otherwise."
....
Telling me about her work as a practitioner, Shepard had to stop twice to compose herself. "I know that no one actually died when I was praying for them," she said. "But I know that people suffered terribly and had malformations as a result of having no medical treatment, especially in the cases of cuts, deep wounds, and burns." She remembers two children in particular. The parents of a six-year-old girl called to ask her to pray for the child because she had fallen and bruised her arm. The girl herself later called Shepard, crying uncontrollably. Shepard drove to her home and found her alone, lying on the floor with a protruding broken collarbone. Her parents had gone to work and left her on the floor with the telephone. On another occasion a mother called and described her child as having a sore throat. Three days later Shepard visited the child and found that he had swallowed lye and had a hole in his throat.
Christian Science
Posted by:
frogs25
()
Date: June 13, 2005 07:59AM
This is the worst part about Christian Science.
I grew up in CS and have no knowlege about my family's medical history. Not that I really want to know, however, just a head's up would be nice so I can seek preventitive methods early, because essentially, matter is matter is matter!
Since my mother has passed, My father is totally CS brainwashed and like many CS parent to child relationships, you just don't talk about or question this aspect of life.
I visited my primary care physician for the first time recently and he asked all the traditional family health related questions and I told him straight up, I don't know and I'll never know. Then he remarked...You must have been raised in a CS family.
So what am I to do? Pay a researcher to search out my parents medical records in order to find out? Dad was originally a catholic and was in the marines, my mother was baptist, and other than that I know nothing else, I don't even know my mothers parents.
any thoughts?
I grew up in CS and have no knowlege about my family's medical history. Not that I really want to know, however, just a head's up would be nice so I can seek preventitive methods early, because essentially, matter is matter is matter!
Since my mother has passed, My father is totally CS brainwashed and like many CS parent to child relationships, you just don't talk about or question this aspect of life.
I visited my primary care physician for the first time recently and he asked all the traditional family health related questions and I told him straight up, I don't know and I'll never know. Then he remarked...You must have been raised in a CS family.
So what am I to do? Pay a researcher to search out my parents medical records in order to find out? Dad was originally a catholic and was in the marines, my mother was baptist, and other than that I know nothing else, I don't even know my mothers parents.
any thoughts?
Christian Science
Posted by:
Cosmophilospher
()
Date: June 13, 2005 11:55AM
People who are adopted, or come from broken families, etc, also have this problem.
I have this medical problem myself, not being able to access much famly medical info. I don't know my grandparents info, and they are long gone.
Frankly, i don't worry about it.
I just get a check-up once a year, monitor my blood pressure when i give blood, and try to monitor my health.
If you get a GOOD check-up each year or so, and follow general guidelines for pap smears, breast exams, blood tests, and all that stuff, then you should be ok.
Speak to your MD about that.
There are also good websites about health.
[www.webmd.com]
[www.mayoclinic.com]
You could TRY to access some health records, but it might be hard to do. Ask your doctor if they think that is worth a try.
Our genetics and family history are not absolute, but as you know, it can help narrow things down if there are problems.
By the way, did you read that book, "Gods Perfect Child"?
[www.godsperfectchild.com]
The articles from that author are very well done.
My little research on CS has been very enlightening.
Many of the errors of CS apply to many other sects of this nature.
But it must be very bizarre to grow up in a CS house. Mary Baker Eddy in my view was an outright charlatan, and Mark Twain told it all very clearly. The damage and death caused by that woman are truly incalculable.
For people to still be trapped in that antiscientific, prehistoric view of human health here in the 21st Century is a terrifying thought. Its madness.
To throw away what advanced medical science has given us, and go back to NO HEALTH CARE at all, is literally insanity to me.
Coz
I have this medical problem myself, not being able to access much famly medical info. I don't know my grandparents info, and they are long gone.
Frankly, i don't worry about it.
I just get a check-up once a year, monitor my blood pressure when i give blood, and try to monitor my health.
If you get a GOOD check-up each year or so, and follow general guidelines for pap smears, breast exams, blood tests, and all that stuff, then you should be ok.
Speak to your MD about that.
There are also good websites about health.
[www.webmd.com]
[www.mayoclinic.com]
You could TRY to access some health records, but it might be hard to do. Ask your doctor if they think that is worth a try.
Our genetics and family history are not absolute, but as you know, it can help narrow things down if there are problems.
By the way, did you read that book, "Gods Perfect Child"?
[www.godsperfectchild.com]
The articles from that author are very well done.
My little research on CS has been very enlightening.
Many of the errors of CS apply to many other sects of this nature.
But it must be very bizarre to grow up in a CS house. Mary Baker Eddy in my view was an outright charlatan, and Mark Twain told it all very clearly. The damage and death caused by that woman are truly incalculable.
For people to still be trapped in that antiscientific, prehistoric view of human health here in the 21st Century is a terrifying thought. Its madness.
To throw away what advanced medical science has given us, and go back to NO HEALTH CARE at all, is literally insanity to me.
Coz
Quote
frogs25
This is the worst part about Christian Science.
I grew up in CS and have no knowlege about my family's medical history. Not that I really want to know, however, just a head's up would be nice so I can seek preventitive methods early, because essentially, matter is matter is matter!
Since my mother has passed, My father is totally CS brainwashed and like many CS parent to child relationships, you just don't talk about or question this aspect of life.
I visited my primary care physician for the first time recently and he asked all the traditional family health related questions and I told him straight up, I don't know and I'll never know. Then he remarked...You must have been raised in a CS family.
So what am I to do? Pay a researcher to search out my parents medical records in order to find out? Dad was originally a catholic and was in the marines, my mother was baptist, and other than that I know nothing else, I don't even know my mothers parents.
any thoughts?
Christian Science
Posted by:
PennyBright
()
Date: June 17, 2005 07:16AM
"But it must be very bizarre to grow up in a CS house."
It is. You're taught this nearly irreconciliable combination of superiority complex (we're so much better then everyone else because we know the Truth and they don't) and complete self loathing (everything that is wrong is all my fault because I have failed to know the Truth and if I only work harder/study more/believe better everything would be fine).
I have to say I amazed this thread is still active after all this time.
Penny
It is. You're taught this nearly irreconciliable combination of superiority complex (we're so much better then everyone else because we know the Truth and they don't) and complete self loathing (everything that is wrong is all my fault because I have failed to know the Truth and if I only work harder/study more/believe better everything would be fine).
I have to say I amazed this thread is still active after all this time.
Penny
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