Editorial January 16, 1984 Issue

Finding freedom through church membership

BARBARA-JEAN STINSON

People do not always associate freedom with church membership. Some feel quite the opposite: that their freedom to do as they please is severely restricted when they get involved with institutions and organizations.

Christian Science, however, sheds new light on this whole question. It brings freedom of a much more fundamental character, and in turn this liberating influence extends to our organizational relationships and indeed to all avenues of our lives. Church membership brings so many rewards; spiritual rebirth, strengthening unity of purpose with others, opportunities to share the encouragement of Christian Science healing with our communities. This editorial concerns only one facet of the spiritual good that church membership can bring; that is, discovering what freedom really means to our individual lives and thus to our communities.

Science provides the way of release from the most tyrannical form of bondage—the domination of the material senses. Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, writes in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures: "The enslavement of man is not legitimate. It will cease when man enters into his heritage of freedom, his God-given dominion over the material senses."^{Science and Health, p. 228.}