Article February 8, 1947 Issue

Classification of the Religion of Christian Science

[Information substantially as sent to all Committees on Publication by William D. Kilpatrick, Manager of Committees on Publication, Boston, Massachusetts]

It has been the custom and practice in many quarters and through various mediums to classify Christian Science merely as another branch of Protestantism without recognition of the distinguishing features which separate it individually from the general term applied to all Protestant organizations. While Christian Science is a Protestant religion and must be recognized as such, its Protestantism is postulated on a much broader basis and involves a more inclusive sphere of action than is usually implied by that term.

The Christian Science Board of Directors has stated that we are definitely to be considered Protestant, although the theology of Christian Science differs radically from that of any other, inasmuch as it is predicated on the allness of God, good, and the consequent demonstrable nothingness of all evil, all sin, disease, and death. Thus we see that the Protestantism of Christian Science protests against the anti-Christ, against materialism, and against evil in all its forms. The position of the Christian Science denomination might be said to be that we are in the ranks of Protestantism because we accept the basis of the Reformation, which asserts the individual rights of conscience—the individual right to search the Scriptures and draw conclusions from them, as against the dogma of the church of that time to do those things for the individual.

A pertinent citation from our Leader's writings may well be included (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 172): "Intrepid, self-oblivious Protestants in a higher sense than ever before, let us meet and defeat the claims of sense and sin, regardless of the bans or clans pouring in their fire upon us; and white-winged charity, brooding over all, shall cover with her feathers the veriest sinner."

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