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.

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

**

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.

Woody Allen speaks for me

Interviewed by a priest for the Catholic Commonweal magazine, Woody Allen clearly articulates his world view. Most people will find it depressing, not because it isn't true, but because it isn't hopeful. Until five or so years ago, I was in that class. All my life I had sought a meaning, a principle, an unfailing source of goodness that controlled me and the universe. Even when I stopped believing in "heaven" as a place I still thought of it as a state of mind produced by a connection with an orderly, loving and benevolent "higher power." I now know that none of that is true. Woody and I are about the same age and his views are similar. It took a long, long time but I now view the universe as a cruel, brutal, purposeless state of being. All the forms of religion and positive thinking are attempts to mask the vacuousness we innately sense as soon as our infantile megalomania bursts. These masks don't have to be lifelong commitments or affiliations with organizations. They can be momentary, repeated and simple. Woody calls them "oases":

Well, you know, you want some kind of relief from the agony and terror of human existence. Human existence is a brutal experience to me…it’s a brutal, meaningless experience—an agonizing, meaningless experience with some oases, delight, some charm and peace, but these are just small oases...You can sit down and hear a Mozart symphony, or you can watch the Marx Brothers, and this will give you a pleasant escape for a while. And that is about the best that you can do…. I feel that one can come up with all these rationalizations and seemingly astute observations, but I think I said it well at the end of Deconstructing Harry: we all know the same truth; our lives consist of how we choose to distort it, and that’s it.

They are forms of consciousness-altering drugs with one purpose: to relieve us of the awareness that our lives are ultimately meaningless. And they work, more or less. But as with such drugs there are dangerous side effects. Religious zealots try to bring everyone under the spell of their dream and are at the least a PITA, and at worst terrorists who kill innocents for their god. "Bright-siders" try to add to the chorus of cheeriness that masks their own inner screams and make you feel guilty for your realism. Booze, pot and other pharmaceuticals have their obvious hazards.

Artists practice a peculiar form of masking. Not only do they provide audiences with momentary escape from existential anguish, but they achieve a kind of eternality by leaving behind their works. At my age, this appears to be all that is left for me to do. So I compose and record little musical works that may live on with someone somewhere someday. It's a far cry from the "eternal life" I sought and thought I had understood for so many years. But it is a kind of oasis for me. and this article comforts me with the assurance that someone of Allen's stature sees it the same.

 

Thoughts after a power outage

Our complex of about 250 homes lost electrical power for about 8 hours yesterday. I was working so I didn't even know about it until I was informed that we'd be eating out since there was no power for cooking at home. Coming to a darkened neighborhood after dinner, we did the usual setting up of battery-operated lights and then just sat in the dark waiting for the lights to come back on. Which they did around 10:30PM.

I've recently been reading Richard Clarke's Cyber War, whose subtitle is: The Next Threat to National Security and What to Do About It. I'm reading it on our iPad. The glow from the iPad and the decreasing power available in its battery got me thinking about how isolated we would be if there were to be a cyber attack that targeted the power grid - as Clarke was saying while I read in the dark. The power grid in the US is probably the easiest to bring down since it is so tied into the Internet and there is no security that a child hacker can't crack. Why have we been so lucky? Because it isn't to any enemy's advantage yet to bring us down? Every personal computer (especially those running Windows) is a potential, and likely, carrier of hidden software that can be commandeered from a great distance to inflict some kind of damage. You don't have to know about it, don't have to approve of anything - it just runs as though you had approved. Tens of thousands of such computers can be stealthily united into a potent military strike force. Commerical antivirus software is way too slow and imprecise to prevent the zombification of your computer.

What to do about all for this? I don’t' know, but Clarke seems to be promising some practical ideas later in the book. I will watch for these and hope there's a way I can participate. However, I have serious doubts that I - or most people - can do anything about this. How about the next generations? It'll probably be your full time preoccupation. I wish you luck.

Interview at ABC news

Other commentary

 

The bone-on-boneness of living in only one world

Having done it myself for over 35 years, most Christian Scientists attempt to live in two worlds at the same time - the ideal and the real - though they won’t admit it. I would take every opportunity to deny the less-than-ideal facts of the real world, calling it just a dream or delusion, or at most a “temporary” accommodation to inferior understanding, while asserting that the world of the “spirit” was tangible and real, even though our sensory apparatus cannot detect it. By “real” I mean the world where scalpels get the job done, even though believing in a perfect other dimension may provide comfort and may induce relaxation that aids the physical process.

Now that I am out of it, I readily notice that giving this freebie to CS is a trait that seems indelible in people who were raised in that system. As often, and in whatever way possible, they rise to give credit to their religion for every good outcome regardless of simpler material explanations.

But the tyranny of a “lifer’s” indoctrination may be no worse than the chronic agony of a jilted convert, like me. I find it difficult to shake the resentment of the mental abuse I suffered from the ideas I ingested. I know I should forget about it and move on, but I still have a pain whose cause needs to be fully excised. Or else I should learn to live with it, the same way I used to live with the physical difficulties that didn’t get resolved through prayer. Some Christian Scientists I know eventually turn to medicine - and the older they get the more readily they turn to it - and get the relief they’ve been postponing out of loyalty to the theory of spiritual healing. They even conclude that prayer and spiritual forces had something to do with it, if only to enable acceptance of and peace with themselves afterward. Good for them. But it’s all still out of reach for me. I don’t have the alternative of an ideal, spiritual world to explain away the bone-on-boneness of walking around in the real world. The only one.