5000 kids

there's still at least 5000 kids in christian science sunday schools

** Continuing the dialogue with my anonymous commenter, who thinks I need to save some of the 5000 kids still in Christian Science Sunday Schools. Again I demur.

1. That's not a large number. There are probably more kids being abused daily by priests in Catholic schools and churches across the country. And that's damage being done right now. Whereas kids of Christian Scientist parents are simply being indoctrinated into a belief system that exposes them to risk, first from their parents' decisions and then from the bad health practices they learn. Also, there are plenty more weird parents of other religious persuasions doing present and future damage to kids just because they're bad people.

3. Kids of Christian Scientist parents don't have much choice about where they're going to spend their Sunday mornings. Their parents just take them there and the kids learn to adapt the best they can. This does not necessarily mean they're getting deeply programmed. Christian Science is boring for kids. For them Sunday School (and camp, and higher schools and that college) it's mostly a social thing. Although, admittedly, some find the beliefs meaningful because of other factors in their lives.

The problem is the parents, the die-hards who make decisions for their kids that put them in danger. Or the ideals or fears they instill in the kids that lead them to adopt this totally unreasonable way of life when they get on their own. It's the same with all religions - get to the kids and make them believe they actually belong to something important and vital to their interests. That's why I never use the term "(x) (religion) kids." Kids are natural atheists until they are warped into identifying with the cults of their parents. Instead, they should be described as "the kids of (x) religionists."

In any case, the musings of this old fart will hardly reach them. I would gladly disabuse parents of the folly of putting their kids into Christian Science (or any other) Sunday Schools if any would seek my counsel - but I doubt any would. And again, the numbers aren't there. Christian Science is an old fad that is rapidly dying out with the wealthy but dying old farts who never broke the spell.

However, there are much more articulate thinkers on this subject who should be studied, my favorite being Daniel C. Dennett. I read "Breaking the Spell," as I was climbing out of the rubble of my destroyed career at the Boston headquarters. From there I moved on to his "Darwin's Dangerous Idea." And once I discovered evolution it wasn't long before Dennett led to Dawkins, led to Harris led to Stenger and the so-called New Atheists.

When the spell broke, I found myself mentally, and emotionally, back to the point just before I began the 35-year-long detour trying to make Christian Science respectable to myself and the general public. It has been difficult closing the gap between then and now, but five years later I am scrambling to accomplish something of artistic value before infirmity or some other cataclysm shuts me down. It's a more positive contribution, I feel, than writing a screed against something hardly anyone cares about anymore. ("Phrenology Exposed!")

Interestingly, for several months after leaving Boston I, for some other reason entirely, wrote short diary-like accounts, which I now see contain signs of my awkward and painful awakening out of a life-long theological trance. These may someday be useful, or at least interesting, to someone trying to break free of religion - though I'm sure Christian Science will be even more irrelevant by then.

The commenter also mentioned I was a "made man in the Christian Science mafia." Well, I have the right kind of surname, and probably the other qualification... Still, they never let me be boss of anything. ;-)

"LIVES DEPEND ON IT!"

** So says my new commenter, urging me to continue to populate this space with my thoughts about Christian Science. I appreciate the intent, but I'm pretty sure no lives will be saved because of this. The time to have spoken up was twenty years ago, when there were enough people maundering down that path to constitute a statistical risk. During that "nova" period Christian Scientists were not only more plentiful but many were proudly displaying their commitment by sacrificing their kids and themselves to it. Kids would clamor for a doctor and would receive prayer from a "practitioner" instead. People would walk around with disfiguring lesions, lumps and limps for years and proclaim that they were responsibly getting "treatment' for the problem. And because the Church still had lots of money, there was more publicity for a health care system that synched with the rising "spirituality" craze. It even invested heavily in the word "spirituality" as a domain name to link its teachings with the hip new Internet culture. If you advertise it, they will come. And lives will be at stake.

But the modern spirituality movement has fizzled, and the attempt to blend a nineteenth-century world view with it depleted serious money from the Church. Which pissed off the conservatives, naturally. So they took their church back and with the remaining assets bought themselves a quiet and comfortable slide into its dotage, the few remaining stalwarts sneaking off to doctors even as they stood up at Wednesday meetings to proclaim how much better their religion is than anyone else's.

No, it's long odds that anyone will stop practicing Christian Science because of me and this obscure little memoir. There just aren't enough of them - or people like me - to have much impact. But it is gratifying to know that this proud and quirky "way of life" is suffocating under its own protective camouflage blanket.

Comment on a recent comment

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p.s. i'm one of your former colleagues at the mother church. the place may have been odd when you were there, but it's become an insane asylum since you left.

Don't know who this is but I appreciate the visit. I haven't been very active on this "column" for a long time, a victim of the "social networks." I can only imagine how insane Christian Science headquarters is these days. It's the insanity of senility.
When I was fired, it was part of an implosion that had been building for several years. A desperate attempt to "modernize" this odd and insane belief system by a small group of rebels taunted and terrorized the old guard, who with a kind of ancient wisdom knew that it would never work, and in 2004 staged a successful coup. They knew, better than the innovators, that all the lipstick applied with a 4-inch brush could never disguise this antiquarian pig. I had been getting glimpses of the underlying insanity of Christian Science ever since I was an accomplice in a young child's death from medical neglect. I spent the ten years after that tragedy trying to rationalize it, defending through speeches and writing the myopia of the underlying beliefs that led to it, and letting myself become a symbol of its new modernity.
Still, it took a complete revelation of the insanity of any religion to set me free from this odd little "movement." I never hear from anyone who still works there but I can readily imagine what is going on five years since I left. Like a dying star, during my tenure there, this church and its "movement" issued a nova flash of vitality as the last expendable energy gave out. Now, as it collapses, it is becoming even smaller and denser and cold and dark, with the brittleness of old age and imbued with the stink of death. And yet, as my commenter suggests, the zombies are still wearing their sweet smiles and making wonderful predictions about a resurgence.