Editorial March 3, 2025 Issue

Baptism and communion: Private and practical

Mark Swinney

In Christian Science theology, the sacraments of baptism and communion are particularly important. They are profound inner experiences of regeneration and salvation.

Christian Science teaches that baptism, rather than being relegated to a single, physical event, can be an ongoing, spiritual, and private activity, the continuing purification of an individual’s thought and life. God’s deeply touching words in this verse from the Bible’s book of Ezekiel explain His purifying action and its results: “I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments, and do them” (36:27).

Acknowledging that God’s love, cleansing truth, and strength are present in us as His children empowers, enlightens, comforts, and even heals. In the Glossary of Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, gives the spiritual sense of baptism: “Purification by Spirit; submergence in Spirit” (p. 581).