Items of Interest April 8, 1933 Issue

Item of Interest

In the daily mail of The Christian Science Board of Directors arrive not only appeals for aid of various kinds, but inquiries from individuals and branch churches to whom solicitations have been sent, as to the worthiness and best way of handling the appeals. Long experience has proved the need of making some investigation of requests for financial assistance, and it is therefore the custom of The Mother Church Directors to refer such letters to the nearest branch church or society. Sometimes, if there is no branch church or society in the locality from which the solicitations have come, inquiry is made of a near-by advertised Christian Science practitioner or Committee on Publication. There are, of course, many who deserve assistance from their friends in time of stress, but this item is written to inform our readers of the need of caution in respect to those applicants who may be unknown to them.

Several illuminating illustrations of this need have come to the attention of The Mother Church, among them the following:

An appeal for Christian Science literature and other help from a writer in a mountain village sent to the Directors was referred to the nearest branch church. From the church came the reply that some three years previous a resident in this village obtained a copy of The Christian Science Journal and began to solicit financial help of those listed therein. Eventually, letters were going from several other families in this village to almost the entire breadth of the United States. Wisely many of the recipients wrote to the branch church near the applicants for information. This neighboring church received letters coming from Maine to Florida and California to Boston, and yet during the entire period it had stood ready to supply Christian Science literature to worthy applicants, and it had supplied used clothing and had aided in other ways. Some of those who received appeals from this village, even though they consulted the near-by church, simultaneously sent small amounts of money or literature or boxes of clothing to their correspondents, so that the soliciting enterprise became profitable and was kept going by the many small gifts received in this way. The branch church soon had to appoint a committee to answer the numerous letters from practitioners, churches, and societies, and in its replies helpfully included the advice that answers sent the solicitors state that their appeals had been turned over to the near-by Christian Science church. One designing solicitor, in response to a heart-rending, apparently sincere appeal which he sent out, received from different people four copies of Science and Health, together with other assistance. Some letters of appeal exaggerated the numbers in the families asking help, and also specified the name, size, and even the weight of each member.

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