DEMOCRATIC CHURCH GOVERNMENT

With great wisdom Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, decreed that the government of all Christian Science churches should be democratic. She writes in "The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany" (pp. 246, 247): "The Magna Charta of Christian Science means much, multum in parvo,—all-in-one and one-in-all. It stands for the inalienable, universal rights of men. Essentially democratic, its government is administered by the common consent of the governed, wherein and whereby man governed by his creator is self-governed." Mrs. Eddy considered the paragraph of which the above quotation is a part of such importance that, complying with a request, she gave her consent to its inclusion in branch church by-laws as a part of their preamble (ibid., pp. 254, 255).

Whenever personal leadership remains unrebuked in a Church of Christ, Scientist, Christian Science Society, or other group of Christian Scientists, that church, society, or group is going counter to Mrs. Eddy's wish and counsel. Church members would do well to consider their own responsibility for personal domination before complaining of it in their midst. Just as a hypnotizer cannot operate without subjects who let themselves be hypnotized, so there cannot be personal domination without those who are willing to let themselves be dominated.

Mrs. Eddy says of the Church of Christ, Scientist, that its government should be "administered by the common consent of the governed," not by an individual nor by a minority. Under the democratic form of government it is therefore the church membership as a whole which determines the course of the church, never an individual. For it is the members that make up the church. Of course, the membership cannot itself carry out all the functions of the church. It is too unwieldy a body for that. For this reason it elects an executive board to conduct its business in accordance with the church by-laws. The board, on its part, appoints from the membership the members of the various committees to carry on church activities.

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