Week 9: Christian Science. Holy Shit.

“If half the attention given to hygiene were given to Christian Science and spiritual thought, this alone would usher in the Millenium.”

-Mary Baker Eddy in Science and Health

“Yeah, A thousand years of really smelly people.”

-The Churchgoing Atheist

It would be pretty easy to make fun of the nuts who practice Christian Science. Yes, these are the people who believe so deeply that prayer will heal the sick that many of them choose to forgo medical treatment. But part of the Churchgoing Atheist project is giving everyone an equal fair shake, so here goes.

The building has piqued my curiosity ever since I briefly lived on the same street. It is an imposing structure: square, domed, fronted by Greek columns. It looks more like a government building than a church. I wondered if there could possibly be enough Christian Scientists in the Rochester area to warrant such a structure. Finally I had my chance to find out.

Inside it is a majestic building. Above the main room is the dome, gilded with ornamentation. Strangely, there is not one single cross anywhere. There are rows of benches roughly in a semicircle. It could probably hold 700 people. There were maybe 30 people there for the service—a decent number, but they were swallowed up by the room. That place will make a cool concert hall or museum when the church inevitably goes under.

So here’s a bit of basic history for you: in 1866 Mary Baker Eddy was miraculously healed of an injury after reading a Bible passage. She then founded the First Church of Christ, Scientist. The foundation of their belief system is both the Bible and Mary Baker Eddy’s book, Science and Health, in which she interprets Bible passages.

Christian Scientists love Mary Baker Eddy. In some ways, the structure of the service resembles most other churches I’ve been to: hymns, scripture readings, prayers. But the bulk of their service is simply reading from Mary Baker Eddy’s Science and Health.

They have no pastor or priest, no official religious leader of any kind, apparently. The service is run by two lay people who stand side by side at the front podium. One reads a passage from the Bible, and the second reads the corresponding passage of interpretation from Mary Baker Eddy.

This back and forth goes on for quite some time. They share no interpretation except the 150-year-old words of Mrs. Eddy, so it barely qualifies as a sermon, but that’s what they call it. Most of the interpretations from Science and Health were bits of wisdom about the nature of existence. It was a lot of new-age sounding spiritualism about how all matter is illusion and the true nature of existence is immaterial. Only when people learn to let go of the material world can they truly know God. I suppose in that respect it’s not terribly different from Buddhism or even pantheism (everything is God). Still, I don’t put any credence in that mushy cosmology.

There are a number of reasons why I like churches. Good music. Friends and fellowship. Thought-provoking, inspiring sermons. Charity work. This church had none of the above. And on top of it all, it was boring! Outrageously boring. Keep in mind: this is coming from a man who doesn’t believe in God but chooses to go to church every week. I am not easily bored. Forget the comparisons to paint-drying and watching grass grow. Mary Baker Eddy took it to the next level. Honestly, I don’t know how this religion ever spread, because this sermon must’ve been boring even by 19^th-century standards. Even the music was boring (lyrics by Mary Baker Eddy). The whole thing was soul-crushingly boring.

Couple all this with a theology that advises against personal hygiene, and it’s no surprise that the Christian Science Church is dying. Their membership has declined according to their own website (and you should check out the FAQ on their site—it’s rich with bizarre rationalizations). I’ll limit the summative criticisms to only two sentences. This church should die out. It is an outrage that people will deny sick children medical treatment, and the claim that religious belief protects their right to do so turns my stomach.

But now that I’ve got the criticism out of the way, allow me to offer a potentially surprising compliment. I respect their honesty. Christian Scientists actually seem to believe what they say they believe. They do what all Christians should do if they really believe in the power of prayer. Sure, I know the standard answer to this: God answers prayers in the form of good doctors and healing medicines. I don’t buy it. Daniel Dennett has a charming essay, “Thank Goodness,” about why we should thank the doctors and the field of medicine rather than thanking God.

You could look at this in different ways. On the one hand, you could say that doctors are agents of the divine, performing miracles each day, and that is the highest of compliments. Or you could say that doctors have devoted years of their lives to learning, compassion, and selflessness, trusting in science to discover how the human body actually works. Sure, you can have it both ways, but I think claiming the doctors would somehow be less effective in the absence of prayer or God is not only wrong, but a cheapening of the profession and the sacrifice of those individuals. Daniel Dennett’s essay expresses this more eloquently than I can.

To close, a few words about belief (again drawing on the words of Hitchens and Dawkins). Christians claim to believe in the power of prayer, but most would choose to actually place their bets on science when it really matters. Imagine if your child was dying and you only had time to drive to the hospital or the church. Those who genuinely follow through on their belief are respectable, in a twisted sort of way, but the more people actually believe, the more dangerous they are. As many people have observed, the 9/11 terrorists actually believed what they claimed to. Why do we not praise them for their faith? If everyone believed martyrdom would lead to immediate paradise, why do they not all follow through on that belief? The same applies to Christians. If Christians genuinely believe death leads immediately to everlasting life with God, why are they so passionately against physician-assisted suicide? Why do other Christians criticize Christian Scientists for their practices, when they are simply acting upon what they believe? The nature of religious belief is a strange, twisted maze, and trying to navigate it makes one realize how damningly stupid the whole thing is.

Week 2: The Puppet's Message

"For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory..."

-The Lord's Prayer

"Love, love me do.  You know I love you."

-The Beatles

The Beatles are on the radio again.  I’m driving to church, and I realize that the famous Beatles lyric doesn’t really make sense.  Sounds good, though. 

My second outing in the churchgoing atheist project takes me to a Reformed Church.  The Reformed Church is the Dutch equivalent of the Scottish Presbyterian Church that I knew growing up, so once again this week’s service is familiar.  I’ll broaden my horizons as the project continues.

Familiar it is, but looking at the ritual with fresh atheist eyes still yields a great deal to write about.  The best part of the service is the children’s sermon.  There is a puppet theater standing at the front of the sanctuary, a tall wooden box with a window and curtain.  The children walk up front (there are a handful of children at this church) and the puppet show begins.  It consists of a single Sesame-Street-looking puppet saying The Lord’s Prayer.  But as she begins, “Our father,” the voice of God responds over the sanctuary’s PA system: “Yes?”  And in the conversation that ensues, God explains to little Suzie what the prayer means.

Little Suzie doesn’t want to hear it.  She tells God that she just says her prayers because it’s routine.  She doesn’t know what it means, and it doesn’t matter.  It makes her feel good just to say the words, even if they don’t mean anything.  God explains to Suzie that it’s important to think about the words in prayer and to actually mean them when you say them.  And God has hit the nail on the head. 

I don’t believe most Christians listen to the words of the prayers in church.  Now we can never know for sure what’s in other people’s heads, so maybe I’m just assuming that because I spent years not listening to those words myself.  But I’m pretty confident in this belief, partly because the words of those prayers are pretty bizarre when you do actually think about them.  Consider the prayer of confession that is printed in this week’s bulletin: “We confess that we have not bowed before Jesus and are slow to acknowledge his rule.  We give allegiance to the powers of this world and fail to be governed by justice and love…”  If people actually listen to this, they will realize it promotes Jesus as a ruler in this world.  It is not a metaphor; it explicitly says that Jesus should be crowned ruler in place of the governments of this world.  It ends with the idea that people should “obey the commands of our Lord Jesus Christ.”  If people actually obeyed those words, they would invite the poor and the blind to feasts (Luke 14), or if they really obeyed, they would sell everything they have and give it to the poor (Luke 18).  I’ll resist the urge to pursue this line of thought further at this time.

Returning to my belief that Christians don’t actually listen to the words of prayers in church, I need only look to this children’s message for proof.  The church leadership is aware that people—children, at least—don’t think about what they say.  I would extrapolate this to the bulk of the people.  They read the prayers like automatons, performing the weekly, mindless ritual of recitation without reflection.

The lesson from little Suzie isn’t over yet.  God has some moral teaching for the little ones.  He explains each line of The Lord’s Prayer, and when he gets to “lead us not into temptation,” he must explain to Suzie that he’s aware she sometimes tells lies.  Sometimes she watches things on TV that she shouldn’t.  She has friends at school that do bad things.  And God explains that Suzie shouldn’t put herself in situations that will make her do bad things.  God will “deliver us from evil” if we do not put ourselves in positions to be tempted.  While on its face this is good moral advice to give to young people, it is a logically twisted explanation that is typical of Christian attempts to explain religious beliefs.  If it is our responsibility to avoid evil, then what are we asking God for?  I’m sure this fits into the whole “free will” thing—it would be too easy for God to just deliver us from evil, so he puts evil temptation in the world and puts the onus on people to avoid it.  If they do, chalk it up to God’s guidance.  If they don’t, chalk it up to individuals’ weaknesses.  This is a nonsensical explanation to give to children under the guise of logical moral advice.  It’s provided by a voice in the sky (the PA system), which also gives children the bogus idea that God listens to their prayers and responds in personal ways.  Anyone who really believes this is sadly misled.

Although the structure of the service looks exactly like the Presbyterian services I’m used to, there’s one unusual addition.  Early on is an “Exhortation to Self-Examination.”  I’ve never seen this before.  It’s self-explanatory, though: it was simply a call to the congregation to think critically about their own behavior.  This is consistent with God’s message to Suzie in the children’s lesson.  It’s ironic that the service seems to emphasize this need for people to actually think critically about their religious lives.  I appreciate that idea, but I find that that kind of reflection about religion only leads away from the groundless superstitions of church.

Having written way more about the children’s lesson than I’d intended, I’ll keep the rest short.  The sermon was given by a guest pastor.  It was about the kingdom to come, in recognition of the last Sunday of the liturgical year.  The speaker attempted to reconcile Jesus’s statements that the kingdom was at hand with the obvious fact that it is not here, even 2000 years later.  I’ve read and heard many attempts to explain the “kingdom” that Jesus refers to.  The bottom line is that nobody knows what the kingdom means, and there is a wild variety of interpretations of it.  This particular speaker argued that we continue to wait for the kingdom, and that we must avoid the “secular despair” that we are tempted into by its absence. He claims that we can’t even imagine how God’s kingdom is going to be when it happens, and all we can do is “bear witness” as we wait for it.  We must create pieces of that kingdom in Christian communities here on earth, so that what God has promised will be visible.  This will make it so that people will not be justified in their disbelief.  We won’t know when or how God’s kingdom will come, but we are assured that it will.

If people indeed think critically about this, they will realize it is a devious trick.  It is a logical trap.  The pastor argues that it is impossible to know when or how God’s kingdom will come, or what it will look like when it comes.  If these are necessary components of the definition of God’s kingdom, then Christian communities are tricked into forever waiting in ignorance.  Theologians have gotten away with this cruel game of blind anticipation for 2000 years.  I do wish the parishioners and leadership of this church would listen to the puppet’s lesson, because the advice to actually think about what churches say is the most intelligent thing I heard in this building.  

"Love Me Do" doesn't make any sense.  It sounds good and means nothing, just like today's sermon.  The difference is that the Beatles don't claim any special insight into God's plan.