Christian Science
Christian Science is a religion that practices the divine Science of healing as taught by Jesus Christ.
It was discovered and founded by Mary Baker Eddy, an American woman who lived in and around Boston, Massachusetts at the end of the nineteenth century. After a serious accident, an injury which ‘neither medicine nor surgery could reach’, Mrs Eddy found herself immediately recovered, and this was the falling apple that led to her discovery of the divine Science that lay behind Christ Jesus’ healing, and to her widespread healing of others. She went on to teach others how to do the same.
Christian Science emphasises God’s nature as divine Love, our Father-Mother, and highlights the true identity of each individual as a child of God, therefore spiritual, not material. God’s infinite goodness, realised through prayer, has healed people of every type of problem from colds to cancer, from debt to divorce, from broken bones to broken relationships. Tens of thousands of the innumerable healings that have been experienced through the practice of Christian Science since it was discovered in 1866 can be read in our publications The Christian Science Journal, the Christian Science Sentinel, and The Herald of Christian Science in many different languages.
Christian Scientists acknowledge that God created a wholly spiritual universe and called it good, as recorded in the first chapter of Genesis. The second chapter of Genesis introduces a very different creation, one in which good and evil mingle, resulting in a mixture of happiness and suffering, which relates to the material concept of existence that is so widely accepted as reality today. On the basis of accepting that the healings of Jesus and other unique experiences in both the Old and New testaments proved the reality of the spiritual and wholly good creation, Christian Scientists understand and endeavour daily to evidence that sin and disease are not created by God, because they are not good and so, they can be no part of God’s perfect creation including every one of us. The Bible also states that God is love (I John 4:8). God, the one parent of all creation, our Father-Mother God, loves each and every one of us.
You don’t have to be a member of The Church of Christ, Scientist to study and practice Christian Science… and you are always welcome at our branch church.
Some experienced Christian Scientists become full-time healers, called Christian Science practitioners, and they are available to give Christian Science treatment to anyone who applies to them. They are available in countries around the world. A full list of practitioners may be found in the monthly publication of The Christian Science Journal, which is on sale at our Reading Room and available via the online directory, including UK-based Christian Science practitioners, and Christian Science practitioners who are members of this church.
To learn more about Christian Science or to gain a deeper understanding of the Bible as a relevant and practical guide to life and understanding God, you can pick up a copy of Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures from our Christian Science Reading Room or any good bookshop or local library. You can also find an abundance of healings being experienced today reported in the magazines the Christian Science Sentinel, The Christian Science Journal and on JSH Online and The Herald of Christian Science.
In 1866, Mary Baker Eddy was healed of a life-threatening injury that neither medicine nor surgery was able to help her with. When she asked for her Bible she began to read about one of Jesus’ healings. Suddenly, she glimpsed a new understanding of God and found she was healed. She was immediately able to get up, confounding the friends and officials who were in her home, waiting for the end.
She called this event her ‘Great Discovery’, which led to her fuller discovery of what she termed the ‘Science of Life’.
She spent the next three years studying the Bible, learning about the spiritual universe that God has made, and praying and testing out what she was learning by healing people she came into contact with. She wanted to find out if her experience could be repeated, and whether there were empirical laws governing what she had discovered.
She found there were. Soon, she was healing many people, and those in trouble began to call on her when medicine couldn’t help them. She gave the name of ‘Christian Science’ to what she had discovered. She said, “The two largest words in the vocabulary of thought are ‘Christian’ and ‘Science’. The former is the highest style of man; the latter reveals and interprets God and man; it aggregates, amplifies, unfolds, and expresses the ALL-God. (No and Yes, Mary Baker Eddy, p. 10.)
A doctor who saw one of her healings taking place urged her to write down her method, and she did so. She produced her main work explaining her system of Christian healing, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, which became a way for her to pass on her healing method to new students. Millions of copies of Science and Health have been purchased and people have regularly reported being healed solely by reading this book and have even been able to heal others through its teachings, too.
Early readers of Mrs Eddy’s book gathered into an organisation and this gradually developed into a Church, with Mary Baker Eddy as its first pastor. But Mrs Eddy soon ordained the Bible and Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures to serve as Pastor to the church and, still today, the weekly Lesson Sermons consist solely of readings from both these books. Through her writings, Mrs. Eddy remains the Leader of the Christian Science movement and is the Pastor Emeritus of The Church of Christ, Scientist for all time.
Her writings, the Bible, the Lesson Sermon quarterly publications and many other books and audio products can be read or purchased in our Reading Room.
The Christian Science Board of Directors in Boston, Massachusetts, is a five-person executive entity created by the founder, Mary Baker Eddy, to administer the business of the Christian Science Church worldwide. It’s governed under terms defined in her version of a church constitution, called the Church Manual. This provides the guidelines for the overall structure of the Church.
Branch churches like ours are run democratically by their members. This branch has an executive board made up of five members who are voted in by the rest of the membership every year. No one person is allowed to serve on the Board for more than three consecutive years. Democracy and rotation in office are fundamental tenets of the way Christian Science churches are run.
- As adherents of Truth, we take the inspired Word of the Bible as our sufficient guide to eternal Life.
- We acknowledge and adore one supreme and infinite God. We acknowledge His Son, one Christ; the Holy Ghost or divine Comforter; and man in God’s image and likeness.
- We acknowledge God’s forgiveness of sin in the destruction of sin and the spiritual understanding that casts out evil as unreal. But the belief in sin is punished so long as the belief lasts.
- We acknowledge Jesus’ atonement as the evidence of divine, efficacious Love, unfolding man’s unity with God through Christ Jesus the Way-shower; and we acknowledge that man is saved through Christ, through Truth, Life, and Love as demonstrated by the Galilean Prophet in healing the sick and overcoming sin and death.
- We acknowledge that the crucifixion of Jesus and his resurrection served to uplift faith to understand eternal Life, even the allness of Soul, Spirit, and the nothingness of matter.
- And we solemnly promise to watch, and pray for that Mind to be in us which was also in Christ Jesus; to do unto others as we would have them do unto us; and to be merciful, just, and pure.
From Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy, page 497.
The Scientific Statement of Being is a fundamental axiom of Christian Science. It explains the spiritual nature of man, which is central to our doctrine. It’s read aloud in churches at the end of every Sunday service along with a correlative Bible verse, I John 3:1-3, and in Sunday schools at the end of classes.
“There is no life, truth, intelligence, nor substance in matter. All is infinite Mind and its infinite manifestation, for God is All-in-all. Spirit is immortal Truth; matter is mortal error. Spirit is the real and eternal; matter is the unreal and temporal. Spirit is God, and man is His image and likeness. Therefore man is not material; he is spiritual.”
From Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy, page 468.
“Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God: therefore the world knoweth us not, because it knew him not. Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is. And every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure.’
(I John 3:1–3)