Article January 30, 1995 Issue

Spiritual wellness—utterly real and practical

A talk given at the 1994 National Order of Women Legislators conference

The National Order of Women Legislators (NOWL) includes in its membership hundreds of lawmakers representing all fifty state legislatures in the United States. Nearly one-third of state legislators in the United States today are women. One theme of their 1994 annual conference was "wellness," and, acknowledging the variety of viewpoints expressed within the universal concern for health and wellness, NOWL extended an invitation to The Christian Science Board of Directors to give one of two keynote addresses on the opening day of the conference. The Board accepted the invitation and asked Chairman Virginia S. Harris to deliver the address. Mrs. Harris spoke to an attentive audience on November 20 in Naples, Florida. (See reports on the NOWL meeting in The Christian Science Monitor—November 22 and 23.)

Mrs. Harris, who was recently elected to serve on the Board of the National Foundation of Women Legislators, spoke of the importance of preserving the right to choose spiritual healings, and gave examples of the effectiveness of Christian Science treatment. The other keynote speaker during this session of the meeting was Dr. Robert E. McAfee, president of the American Medical Association, who spoke about the need for tort reform, for an abatement of domestic violence, and for giving patients more control over their lives.

Also during the five-day conference, two significant sessions were conducted by the Committee on Publication Office of the Church of Christ, Scientist: first, a workshop on the impact on state legislatures of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act passed by the U.S. Congress in 1993; and second, a case study on federal intrusion into states' rights—the attempt by the Department of Health and Human Services to repeal state provisions accommodating spiritual healing.

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