"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.