Article October 17, 1925 Issue

Extracts from Reports of Christian Science Committees on Publication for the Year Ended September 30, 1924

The most outstanding feature of the press work during the year has been the controversy aroused over the question of what its advocates term faith or spiritual healing. At the Lambeth Conference in 1920 a resolution was passed that a committee should be appointed "to consider and report ... upon the use with prayer of the laying on of hands, of the unction of the sick, and other spiritual means of healing."

The report stated as one of its conclusions that the "church must sanction methods of religious treatment of bodily disease, but in doing so must give full weight to the scientific discoveries of those who are investigating the interrelation of spirit, mind, and body." A further conclusion was that "it is not the function of the church to apply its means of restoration if no higher end is sought than the recovery of bodily health. ... No sick person must look to the clergyman to do what it is the physician's or surgeon's duty to do."

Most of these exponents of spiritual healing acknowledge that Christian Science has awakened the church to a neglected duty. It is obvious, however, that their methods are contrary to the teaching and practice of Christian Science. Two interesting points in this report are that investigating the Biblical authority for spiritual healing they have taken St. James rather than Christ Jesus, and have classified Christian Science as devotional and sacramental, not as material or physical. A further consequence of the report of the committee is to be found in a sermon preached by the Archbishop of York before the members of the British Medical Association, in which he stated that he felt the time had come when "high medical authority, say the Council of the British Medical Association, should inaugurate a full and impartial inquiry into the relations of body, mind, and spirit, in the cure of disease. ..." "What I plead for," he continued, "is cooperation, not merely the respect of religion and science for each other, but that science itself shall discover and set forth and explain the place of the spirit in the healing and strengthening of the body." It is probably a cause for gratitude that, after a discussion, the following statement was issued: "The Council of the British Medical Association has had before it the report of the preliminary investigations of a committee recently appointed to inquire in what way, if any, the association might be of assistance in the elucidation of what has been described as 'spiritual healing,' or the 'ministry of healing.' The Council believes that the difficulties with which the matter is at present surrounded are likely to lead the investigation outside the sphere of the recognized activities of the association, and after deliberation, has decided not to proceed with the reappointment of this committee."

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