Article June 16, 1997 Issue

Reform: is it really possible?

with contributions from Robert S. K. Tucker, Martha Dismont, James Mathiott

Welfare reform. Campaign finance reform. Educational reform. Prison reform. Few institutions, organizations, or programs today are not the subject of some kind of reform effort—formal or informal. And even where yearning and struggles for renewal have met with years of apathy or retrenchment, suddenly there can be rumblings of change.

But what makes genuine reform happen? What supplies the energy that permanently reshaper society, communities, institutions, families, for the better? Strategies for change are probably as numerous as the reformers and reform movements that come and go in the news. But when real progress starts taking shape, there is a momentum to it that reaches more deeply and embraces unexpected possibilities.

How can you become part of this movement toward real progress? The Bible turns the would-be reformer to this promise from God: "I will overturn, overturn ..." (Ezek. 21:27). The spiritual might of divine Love, bringing with it freedom and justice, is the will behind true progress. The Founder of this magazine writes, "Spiritual causation is the one question to be considered, for more than all others spiritual causation relates to human progress" (Science and Health, p. 170).