Unbelievable

***One of my favorite bloggers is Harry T. Cook. I've been receiving his essays by email for several years now, on the recommendation of a friend of mine who is also a former religionist. What I like about Harry is that despite decades of education and faithful practice as an Episcopalian priest he eventually came to the realization that religion as mostly BS. I don't agree with him completely in that I would go further and call it poison.

In a recent essay, "Believing, We Do Not Believe, he begins with

    "Among the many readers of these essays are a number of older, mostly retired members of the clergy. They are Roman Catholics, Episcopalians, Methodists, Lutherans, Presbyterians, several rabbis [former Christian Scientists like me] and others who can no longer identify fully -- if at all -- with their religious pasts."

 ...
    A few of them have become convinced that, for example, most of the Bible is pure myth. I think they are wrong about that, but the point is that they had to deal with biblical passages for their whole ordained ministry and evidently felt constrained to treat many of them more or less as historical reportage. Some of them express relief at no longer having to put on such an act week after week.

Speaking from experience I can say that the acting doesn't come on suddenly. It accrues over many years, and for too many years before the spell is broken life is more or less an agony as the disparity between profession and understanding becomes wider.

I'm one of those who have concluded that the Bible is mostly a pack of myths, propaganda and outright lies. What isn't in those categories is pretty good, but doesn't need the Bible or theistic agencies to give them credibility. They are constituents of what might be called secular humanism in drag. As the billboards say: we don't need a god in order to be good.

Harry goes on to recommend a book by Elaine Pagels, which I have read, where she cites an experience she had walking into a church during the depths of her faith crisis. Even though she had known that church doctrines were unsupported by science or reason, she "fell in love" with that church. I think the import of his statement is that the church provided something essential to her as a human being, a kind of comfort that helps some people bear up under their disillusionments. I have heard this also from many others who claim that the true value of religion, and its churches, is to provide that comfort regardless of the challenges life presents them.

Just as most drugs have various degrees of negative side effects, the drug of religious comfort has costs to the believer. Those costs are too high for some of us, while others struggle to bear up. Regardless, the problem is that religion always wants to point to a deific source for that comfort instead of recognizing that human nature is complex and susceptible to many influences. So many of the recent studies on the brain illustrate that susceptibility and the wide range of influences —  none of them deific. To some of us, the blatant unreasonableness of spiritual concepts is untenable, to the point of causing extreme anxiety and bizarre behavior. Maybe stalwarts like Cook can stand being in the same room with believers and their proclamations. I can't.

As I've stated before, it's not that I have found an exact replacement for the drug-induced comfort of religion. Indeed, I would have to say that the pains of living without that drug are sometimes overwhelming.

Recently I attended a funeral for a dear friend of mine. The service was held in the Unitarian church that for decades I would see from the parking lot of my Christian Science church directly across the street. Sometimes I'd deride that sect for being wishy-washy for having no real god to believe in. And yet, my recent experience at that church, and my contact with the pastor, were so comforting that I said to her: In another context this would be the church I would attend because it provides comfort without exacting a profession of faith in an unreal supernatural being.

As a person of reason I can't bear the hypocrisy of eloquence in defense of bullshit, which I think was one of my special talents during those personal Dark Ages. These days, this blog is my main antidote to the poison I spread for 30+ years as a Christian Scientist. I really don't want another platform from which to rail against religion. I don't have time for it at my age. And besides, religion is doing a very good job of poisoning itself.

I like Harry and recommend him to real thinkers both within and without the ranks of religion, spirituality or whatever label applies to belief in things that are unbelievable by nature. But unlike Harry, I would claim to be Unbelieving, We Still Do Not Believe.

how does one stage a coup in such a tightly-held organization?

**Hi Anonymous, and welcome back. You are referring to what I called a "coup" in 2004. I was speaking almost figuratively. Two distinct factions had sprung up over the previous ten years. The newer one might be called "liberal," which held that the church needed to tear down the walls of exclusivity and let new ideas, people and programs come in to invigorate the church. And the other was, well, pretty much the opposite. They liked walls because they believed that any change from what the founder had done, prescribed or thought about would cause the fragile structure of the denomination and belief system to fall apart. As it turned out, both of them were right. A lot of big money from the heyday of Christian Science was still around and able to finance programs like the website I was involved with. The old guard raised countless squawks about how the religion was being watered down, but their objections were overruled by the new leadership, which had the cunning and force of will to hedge itself about with the wealth and ingenuity of several key players. I was part of that new guard, recruited for my rebel nature, willingness to be led and the flattery of being brought to some level of prominence in a new venture.

The reason both factions hastened the demise of the "movement" is that both were based on magical thinking, which couldn't withstand the ever-increasing prevalence of more realistic views of the world. The old guard believed that Mary Baker Eddy had invented something so radical that it was unique, and that its uniqueness - and therefore its very life - was preserved only by keeping it unadulterated, i.e. unchanged in the least degree. The new guard had believed that with just a few tweaks, Christian Science would become popular again. People would look past the nineteenth-century world view and see that it was basic christianity for the modern era, heedless of the fact that christianity itself was dying out because of its fundamental irrelevance and corrupted institutions. At the same time, it believed that many of the central tenets and systems should be preserved. So, for instance, it published Eddy's foundational book, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, word for word as she had left it 150 years before. The problem is that the book was prohibited from ever being revised after her death - regardless of new information about how the world works. Her view of evolution, for example, was to ultimately blow it off even while admitting that Darwin had a reasonable explanation. Welcome to the two-mindedness of Christian Science. You can call Darwin a perceptive thinker and at the same time deny his validity because ultimately he was talking about the material world, which Eddy taught was essentially unreal. The liberals failed because they really weren't all that liberal, and all the lipstick they could trowel onto the pig of an outdated world view couldn't convince very many people that here was something they could reliably believe in and practice. Especially when it involved abstinence from the health care practices that have become the standard throughout the world.

So the "coup" came about because there were some other well-financed and savvy people (today we would call them tea-baggers) who were willing to take advantage of the succession system in the church and put a couple of its people on the Board of directors. These, in turn, raising the specter of fiscal irresponsibility (the church had squandered millions in its camouflage efforts) worked on enough of the remaining new guarders to turn on their liberal leader and throw her out. Once she was gone it was easy to undo all the innovations she had put in place. The walls went up again and there was universalrecognition that if the movement was going to die out, life for the old guarders should be kept comfortable to the end. We're talking about a very elderly population here, people generally not inclined to change anyway, and fierce about protecting their comfort. So, the world stopped hearing about Christian Science in either its new or its old form, and never missed it. It's just not an idea that has legs (the image of Darwin's fish comes to mind).

Safely inside its cocoon, the members congratulate themselves on their purity and go about their rituals as always. And Christian Science continues to die with each of their deaths.

I hope you see my point in the last several posts. It's not that anybody did anything wrong that caused the demise of Christian Science. Its basic premises cannot stand up to the realities that the physical sciences reveal. It's old. It's creepy. It's delusional. It's not only snake oil, it's snake oil that has far exceeded its expiration date.

"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

**

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.

The few, the healthy, the lucky

A “truce” with medicine

A mild stir has ensued from a report that my former church is trying to make some efforts to ward off criticism that its form of spirituality is in conflict with general standards of health care. The NYT story didn’t go the way the PR department at the church had expected. It conveys the image of an organization in the final throes of its own death. The few remaining adherents are getting deeply into old age.

To be a Christian Scientist is to attribute health and healing to right thinking about reality. It includes the belief that there is a universal benign power that creates and inhabits a world of perfection and happiness. It also attributes all imperfection and unhappiness to wrong thinking, or the belief that we live in some other universe. Healing involves aligning “thinking” with the the perfect world. So, ultimately the responsibility for health is on each individual.

One of the most serious consequences of this belief system is the implication that sick people are to blame for their problems. I have seen people with every kind of ailment endure pain, disfigurement and various degrees of impairment because they believed that these problems would go away as soon as their minds clicked into alignment with the belief that everyone is perfectly OK.

As detailed here recently, a fine and spunky member of the family succumbed because: 1) she refused to have a fibroid removed, and 2) because, at her insistence, no one would give her nourishment via some alternative means.

The church can posture as much as it wants about how it is liberalizing its policies, but the fact of the matter is that most of its dwindling membership is seriously senior and their brain pathways are deeply grooved in the old policies. Most of them will judge the church as straying from the true path and will continue to hobble through the rest of their lives hoping they will pass away quietly in the night with little or no discomfort. And a few of them may welcome the excuse to finally get a medical diagnosis or a prescription for a pain killer or antibiotic or whatever they need. Parents have been scared for the past ten or so years because of legal measures that provide severe punishments for failure to provide medical care to children - so they aren't a significant part of the intended audience.

The whole belief system is defined by a book, Science and Health by Mary Baker Eddy, which she has deemed perfect and complete and is not subject to revision or updating in light of new facts that may emerge to challenge some of her assumptions. One of the most egregious, for me, is her damningly faint praise for Darwin’s discoveries. She basically says that as far as wrong explanations of the natural world are concerned he is less wrong than most. But still wrong. The world isn’t material, she claims, is not governed by universal physical laws, but is a dream state that is the exact opposite of the true spiritual state, which is totally good and eternal. What I eventually came to realize is that the “spiritual” world is the dream state, while the material one is the one that deserves and needs our attention.

People who take up the Christian Science way of life are idealists who sincerely want a better world, and are appalled that there is so much evil and ugliness in their daily lives. The ones who defend it the most, however, are those who have strong constitutions, good genes and a ton of good luck. Their commitment to advancing the cause of Christian Science allows them to attribute their good fortune to the ideas and techniques taught in Eddy’s book.

However, the aging process moves inexorably along and even the Directors of the church must be feeling it - a recent photo of the five of them is scary. If it weren’t for the attempt to get the public to pay for their religion’s wacky prayer treatments they wouldn’t have bothered to posture as “liberals.” Incidentally, most of the Directors took over the church in 2004 coup because they represented staunch conservatives who thought the religion was being diluted by appeal to an increasingly skeptical public and as well as an increasingly confused and discouraged membership. The effort to get this brand of “right thinking” health care covered by government-paid health insurance is laughable and its rejection is a scrap of evidence that there are still some legislators who can think straight - at least for a few moments at a time.

My response to LATimes article on spiritual healing and legislation

Thanks for your article "Healthcare provision seeks to embrace prayer treatments." As a former Christian Science practitioner ("healer") for over 30 years I can vouch for the statements from the critics to which you refer:

But critics say the measure could have a broader effect, conferring new status and medical legitimacy on practices that lie outside the realm of science.

There is no true "spiritual healing." Most of what passes for it are anecdotes where there is no objective diagnosis or controlled testing, from people whose main problems are psychosomatic. Herbert Benson, MD and others have shown that a "relaxation response" accounts for the relief from such problems.

Toward the end of my involvement with Christian Science, and becoming suspicious of the claims I had been taught, I carefully observed if my prayer or lack of it made a difference in my patients. It didn't. People who believe in spiritual healing, and Christian Scientists in particular, are quite defensive about challenges to their faith in this approach to health care and eagerly strive to provide "evidence" for its efficacy. It's also why the Christian Science church in Boston has a large department of people who do nothing but lobby around the world for the kinds of accommodations being advocated in the present health care legislation.

I agree with Dr. Norman Frost, quoted in your article, that more resources need to be devoted to "evidence-based medical practices" and less to long-disproved, and dangerous, systems.