Article January 18, 2010 Issue

A REASON FOR HOPE

BY NATE TALBOT

SOME YEARS AGO, a friend asked what I thought was going to happen to the Christian Science movement. He was worried about empty church pews and so forth. I almost felt a little embarrassed to express my deep-rooted feeling of hopefulness about the Cause of Christian Science. This may have sounded just a little naive in the face of the evidence he was considering.

Such conversations about Christian Science and the fulfillment of its mission in the world have forced some self-examination to understand this genuine hope. I can't ever remember worrying about whether Christian Science is going to succeed.

No doubt there are some who would explain this attitude as, at least partly, cultural. That is, many of us have been raised in an environment that tends to be hopeful. The history of the United States itself has always included a good dose of hope, of openness to great possibilities. That's how the West was won. That's how we got to the moon. Maybe there are some valid elements in this viewpoint. But it still falls short explaining an inability to muster the worry some others have felt.