Article June 19, 1915 Issue

The Christian Science church is not a healing cult;...

Dr. C. S. Carr

Columbus (Ohio) Citizen

The Christian Science church is not a healing cult; it is a religious denomination, and healing is incidental. Exactly as Jesus went about teaching spiritual truths in Palestine and incidentally healed many people who came to him, so the Christian Scientists, in bringing their spiritual gospel into the world, incidentally heal a great many people. The Christian Scientists are asking the legislature, through a very brief bill, simply to leave them out of all legislation referring to the practice of medicine or the practice of the healing arts. In listening to the arguments against the Christian Science people at the meeting in the legislative rooms, it was apparent that no one who spoke on that occasion really understood the attitude of the Christian Scientist.

To heal a man, according to Christian Science, is simply to set him right spiritually before God. The man who believes that God has allowed evil things to come into the world, or else that God is not able to prevent evil things, such as sin and sickness, that man, according to Christian Science, needs to be corrected. His thinking ought to be revolutionized. Once corrected, his sin leaves him, his sickness leaves him, and he is restored to health. That is the Christian Science proposition. It is not a healing proposition per se. Healing is incidental, to be sure; so is financial prosperity. Continued health is incidental. Social decency, the dropping off of bad habits, —all these are incidental to the great central purpose of Christian Science to bring to every man and woman a recognition that God is all powerful and that God is good, hence any belief in evil is absolute error.

To require of a Christian Science practitioner a knowledge of physiology, pathology, anatomy, physical diagnosis, is exactly the same as if such requirements should be exacted of the clergyman, for healing sometimes occurs as incidental to his visitations, prayer, and preaching. The spiritual things of the gospel frequently heal the sick. If it be true that the gospel which the Christian Scientists bring to the sin-sick world heals people of their physical maladies oftener than the gospel brought by other denominations, this furnishes no reason why they should be regarded as a healing cult, and especially no reason why they should be subjected to examinations as if they were proposing to begin the practice of medicine. It is tyrannical, it is subjected to require those who do not believe in disease, to be subjected to an examination the same as if they held the ordinary beliefs concerning disease, the same as if they were proposing to practise medicine.

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