Jump to content
Seriously No Politics ×

The Decline of Christian Science


Recommended Posts

I hadn't given them much thought (other than when their lack of using scientific medicine makes the news) but it sounds like Christian Science may be on the decline.  This story/diatribe shares one view:

Dying the Christian Science Way

Quote

In 20 years, drastic changes have taken place, but the most arresting is the church’s precipitous fall. It’s getting harder and harder to see all the people, because they’re disappearing.

The early popularity of Christian Science was tied directly to the promise engendered by its core beliefs: the promise of healing. The overwhelming majority of those attracted to the movement came to be healed, or came because a husband, wife, child, relative or friend needed healing; the claims of Christian Science were so compelling that people often stayed in the movement whether they found healing or not, blaming themselves and not the church’s teachings for any apparent failures.

---------------------------------------

Still, by this point, few people know or care what the Christian Scientists have been up to, since the average person can’t tell you the difference between a Christian Scientist and a Scientologist. The decline of the faith, once a major indigenous sect, may be among the most dramatic contractions in the history of American religion. Eddy forbade counting the faithful, but in 1961, the year I was born, the number of branch churches worldwide reached a high of 3,273. By the mid-80s, the number in the US had dropped to 1,997; between 1987 and late 2018, 1,070 more closed, while only 83 opened, leaving around a thousand in the US.

Prized urban branches are being sold off by the score, converted into luxury condominiums, museums and Buddhist temples. The branch I attended, on Mercer Island, near Seattle, is now Congregation Shevet Achim, a Modern Orthodox synagogue.

What's most interesting is how the Church is able to weather the decline based on it's massive asset portfolio (mainly real estate):

 

Quote

But real estate has pulled them back from the financial brink. In 2014, the board announced that it had sold adjacent development sites on the plaza, one for $65.6m, the other for $21.9m. After years of struggling to balance budgets, staff at a recent annual meeting announced that the church was in possession of more than $1bn in cash and assets.

And finally, there's this:

 

Quote

By 2010, signs of the church’s impending mortality had become so unmistakable that officials took a previously inconceivable step. They threw Mary Baker Eddy under the bus. A century after the death of their “beloved founder and leader”, the directors took her most precious principle, radical reliance – requiring Scientists to hew solely to prayer – and renounced it in the pages of the New York Times.

Is this a canary in the mine for other smaller sects of Christianity (Jehovah's Witnesses, Seventh-Day Adventists, CoJCoLdS?), or were the problems of Christian Science unique to them?

Link to comment
11 hours ago, cinepro said:

Is this a canary in the mine for other smaller sects of Christianity (Jehovah's Witnesses, Seventh-Day Adventists, CoJCoLdS?), or were the problems of Christian Science unique to them?

Absolutely not. The small Seventh Day Adventist sect has grown tremendously in the same time period, and is still growing - albeit more slowly. We are still growing. I actually have attended a meeting or two of the Christian Scientist sect. I never got it. But I wasn't sick either. I just wanted to see what it was like. Eddy's writings were just weirdly esoteric. If I needed an appendectomy, I wasn't going to sit around and pray -- that's for sure. I don't think it would cure my hernia either. The Lord has blessed us with good science, so I am going to use it.

Link to comment
13 hours ago, cinepro said:

Is this a canary in the mine for other smaller sects of Christianity (Jehovah's Witnesses, Seventh-Day Adventists, CoJCoLdS?), or were the problems of Christian Science unique to them?

An interesting thing to consider, for certain. Two thoughts:

1) Sometime in the past 12 months, I read an analysis of the changing religious landscape in America in which the authors argued that the great 'marketplace of faiths' that has characterised the nation for much of its history was going to be reduced down to about ten Christian faith groups in the next few years. They included Latter-day Saints in the ten that they predicted to survive, but I can't remember exactly who the other ten were other than Assemblies of God and Seventh-day Adventists.

2) Just last night I read a local news report that broke down faith groups by electorate using the latest census data. One of the problems it pointed to was that our small Christian Science community has about twice as many people attending as those who declared Christian Science as their faith in the census. This certainly says something about Christian Science in these parts ... and may say something about census data in general?

Edited by Hamba Tuhan
Link to comment
10 hours ago, Hamba Tuhan said:

An interesting thing to consider, for certain. Two thoughts:

1) Sometime in the past 12 months, I read an analysis of the changing religious landscape in America in which the authors argued that the great 'marketplace of faiths' that has characterised the nation for much of its history was going to be reduced down to about ten Christian faith groups in the next few years. They included Latter-day Saints in the ten that they predicted to survive, but I can't remember exactly who the other ten were other than Assemblies of God and Seventh-day Adventists.

2) Just last night I read a local news report that broke down faith groups by electorate using the latest census data. One of the problems it pointed to was that our small Christian Science community has about twice as many people attending as those who declared Christian Science as their faith in the census. This certainly says something about Christian Science in these parts ... and may say something about census data in general?

I doubt the former is true. With the number of schisms I hear about every day it seems to be growing more diffuse and the general (irrational?) hatred so many have for organized religion larger then a single church building is feeding that trend.

Link to comment
On 8/7/2019 at 12:29 PM, cinepro said:

I hadn't given them much thought (other than when their lack of using scientific medicine makes the news) but it sounds like Christian Science may be on the decline.  This story/diatribe shares one view:

Dying the Christian Science Way

What's most interesting is how the Church is able to weather the decline based on it's massive asset portfolio (mainly real estate):

And finally, there's this:

Is this a canary in the mine for other smaller sects of Christianity (Jehovah's Witnesses, Seventh-Day Adventists, CoJCoLdS?), or were the problems of Christian Science unique to them?

I was always very impressed by the fine journalism exhibited by the Christian Science Monitor.

Yes.  Most other churches are doomed to go the way of Christian Science.

Link to comment
On 8/7/2019 at 12:29 PM, cinepro said:

I hadn't given them much thought (other than when their lack of using scientific medicine makes the news) but it sounds like Christian Science may be on the decline.  This story/diatribe shares one view:

Dying the Christian Science Way

What's most interesting is how the Church is able to weather the decline based on it's massive asset portfolio (mainly real estate):

 

And finally, there's this:

 

Is this a canary in the mine for other smaller sects of Christianity (Jehovah's Witnesses, Seventh-Day Adventists, CoJCoLdS?), or were the problems of Christian Science unique to them?

What has become of the Christian Science Monitor?  When I was in college back in the ‘70s, it was a thriving newspaper, one of very few in the United States with a national circulation. It even had a news syndication service. 

As a side note, the only general editor in the history of the Deseret News who was not a Latter-day Saint was formerly with the Christian Science Monitor and is, himself, a Christian Scientist. 

But I haven’t heard from the Monitor in quite a while, and I know that newspapers all over the country are dying at an alarming rate. Is there still a Christian Science Monitor? 

Edited to add: By the way, abbreviating the name of the Church with initials, as you have done here, is not consistent with guidelines given by President Nelson, so if you are not going to spell out the name of Jesus Christ in the name of the Church, you may as well just call it Mormonism. 

Edited further to add: I just checked. The. Christian Science Monitor is now an online publication with a weekly print edition. 

Edited by Scott Lloyd
Link to comment
Quote

 He made a fist sandwich, fingers laced together and hidden in his palms, showing me his thumbs closed upon them. Slowly, he would say, “Here’s the church, and here’s the steeple,” raising his index fingers together to form a peak. Then, throwing his thumbs apart, he flipped his interlaced fingers over, wriggling them and crying out, “Open the doors and see all the people!”

I learned this in primary in SLC in the 1970's. 

Link to comment

This has been an interesting half hour.  I never knew this stuff.  Reading the article, then browsing through Wikipedia, then going to their website.  I discovered new heights of irony in the Christianscience.com Careers section:

 

 

image.thumb.png.5960998d428cdc6e11e806ffa60a362f.png

 

 

I suppose if I'm ever browsing through churchofjesuschrist.org, and down at the bottom of the Proclomation to the World page, I see a link to the same-sex sealings faq, I'll know what it's like to be an oldschool Christian Scientist in 2019.

 

Edited by LoudmouthMormon
Link to comment
10 hours ago, LoudmouthMormon said:

This has been an interesting half hour.  I never knew this stuff.  Reading the article, then browsing through Wikipedia, then going to their website.  I discovered new heights of irony in the Christianscience.com Careers section:

 

 

image.thumb.png.5960998d428cdc6e11e806ffa60a362f.png

 

 

I suppose if I'm ever browsing through churchofjesuschrist.org, and down at the bottom of the Proclomation to the World page, I see a link to the same-sex sealings faq, I'll know what it's like to be an oldschool Christian Scientist in 2019.

 

It's not as ironic as you think.  "Christian Science Practitioner" is a permitted form of medical care, and practitioners can be compensated for their work.  So this healthcare plan does not necessarily involve doctors -- except I don't think even Christian Scientists believe that broken bones can be set through prayer.  And then theres the Affordable Care Act, which I don't think would recognize a CSP, so there's a legal requirement, possibly, to provide for an ACA-approved policy.

Link to comment
Guest
This topic is now closed to further replies.
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...