LETTERS TO THE PRESS

From Christian Science Committees on Publication

A case without merit—or foundations

In March 1982 a suit was filed in the New Hampshire Probate Court by an ex Church member. The suit was simply the latest in a series of acts which have aimed to discredit The Mother Church in various ways.

Occasionally, the media have been attracted to the claims of this man. Recently, in connection with the suit brought in Concord, New Hampshire, he avowed as his purpose "the complete dissolution of the Christian Science Church as we know it today." The letter published below corrects some of the misstatements made in news articles.

The petition under discussion at first aimed to remove the present Trustees under the Will of Mary Baker Eddy as having been illegally constituted. After a motion to dismiss the suit was filed by the Trustees, pointing out that the petition was completely without legal merit, the petitioner's answer changed ground entirely, admitted the legitimacy of the Trustees, and advanced a claim that they should simply be required to act as though The Mother Church had ended in 1910.

For almost seventy years this normal residuary trust has been administered openly and without complaint under supervision of the Probate Court by Court-appointed Trustees, who are also members of The Christian Science Board of Directors.

The petition disingenuously claimed, however, that Mrs. Eddy intended the Board of Directors to go out of existence when she passed on, and therefore that it had and has no legal existence. The argument was not novel; it had been raised by a few dissidents in the 1920's. As the pamphlet "Permanency of The Mother Church and its Manual" points out, Mrs. Eddy certainly intended the church organization she had spent the latter part of her life founding to continue after her passing. (The current series in The Christian Science Journal titled "A Church designed to last" by Robert Peel gives additional information on this subject. The final article in the series, "The future of The Mother Church in the perspective of history," appears in the September Journal.)

A court hearing on the Trustees' motion to dismiss the suit is expected in September.

In the New Hampshire Times Concord New Hampshire

In your story "Onward, Christian Lawyers" the statement was made that the Merrimack County Probate Court "has been for years the arena for a score of legal contests" over the will of Mary Baker Eddy.

Actually, the exact contrary is true. After Mrs. Eddy's son had lost a suit which he brought in 1911 contesting his mother's will, the Probate Court in 1913 appointed six trustees of the trust estate bequeathed by Mrs. Eddy to The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston. In the intervening 79 years not a single suit contesting this decision has been brought until the present action was initiated by a disaffected ex-member of the Church, David Nolan.

Mr. Nolan is quoted liberally throughout the article, and a few of his more fantastic assertions require comment.

He is reported, for instance, as saying that Mrs. Eddy "abhorred organized religions." Yet the historic fact is that she poured out years of love and detailed care in organizing the Church of Christ, Scientist, and giving it the final form it has today. To the end of her days she never went back on what she had written to an early dissenter: "The apostle likens the church to the body of Christ. I liken the blood of Christ to the life of Truth. Then if you would break up His church, are you not breaking His body and spilling His blood?"

Mrs. Eddy founded a Church to which she could entrust the continued propagation of Christian Science and the upholding of its deeply Christian purpose. As an organization, it consisted of a Mother Church in Boston and self-governing branch churches throughout the world. Its government was set forth in bylaws worked out by Mrs. Eddy over the last 18 years of her life. In 1903 she wrote The Christian Science Board of Directors in Boston: "Never abandon the By-laws nor the denominational government of the Mother Church." ["Permanency of The Mother Church and its Manual," p. 21.]

The Christian Science Church today faces some of the same challenges that other Christian denominations do in an increasingly secular world. But it is meeting them with spiritual vitality and a variety of new steps.

Like some other churches, it is finding that the basics of Christianity are remarkably durable and self-renewing—as is evidenced by the revival of spiritual healing in many Christian churches in this century. Mrs. Eddy's founding purpose for her Church was to "reinstate primitive Christianity and its lost element of healing" [Manual of The Mother Church, p. 17] but her concern extended to the revitalization of Christianity as a whole.

The assertion made to your reporter that "organizationally Christian Science is dead" is an example of wishful thinking carried to the point of total irresponsibility. It would, for instance, be incomprehensible to the thousands of young Christian Scientists coming to The Mother Church in Boston this August to attend a conference representing hundreds of Christian Science organizations at colleges and universities throughout the world.

They, like the many Christian Scientists in New Hampshire, will pretty staunchly assure you that Christian Science is "alive and well!"

A. W. PHINNEY, Manager
Committees on Publication Boston