 Posted Tuesday, May 20, 2008 4:25 AM
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| Nice research indeed. Makes me feel good, wish it's decline was happening even faster. Just a technical question here: how do you even start to do research like this? In other words how do normal people with mixed-up lives find this stuff out for themselves without taking hundreds of hours and efforts and frustration to get it? Are these facts made available in the Reading Rooms? Ha, ha, Anyway Thanks, From Menderfire9
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Posted Tuesday, May 20, 2008 5:57 AM
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Menderfire9:
It's not hard to do the calculations — well, that hard. All the information is available at The Mother Church website. I don't even have to buy a monthly Sentinel issue. Sure, the church could make it easier, but that's not its goal. Remember, this sect doesn't release membership figures for a reason: It doesn't want people to know how small it really is. So when I count, say, all the California churches and societies, they're listed with Reading Room totals in batches of 20. It sounds harder than it is, but I drink a few coffees while doing the undertaking to stay alert. I've enjoyed tracking the decline of CS over the years — I was in CS from 1983 until the late 1990s when I quit TMC, but was essentially out of CS by the early 1990s. As I wrote in my original post, TMC and the Committees on Publication, which strive to correct "misconceptions" about Christian Science in the media, should release accurate figures about church numbers instead of saying there are almost 2,000 churches/societies worldwide when it's clear that this number is vastly inflated — 16.3% from the current total of 1,719.
Garey
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Posted Tuesday, May 20, 2008 2:59 PM
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Garey:
The church is also guilty of including societies as full-fledged churches in its inflated numbers. Many CS societies only have a few members. I have a photo of the CS Society at M.I.T. in 1952. That society was then just a small group of 10 college students and a faculty adviser. Who knows how many of them attended meetings on a regular basis. At one point in time there was a CS society in an old one-room schoolhouse near my folk's old house in Michigan, which either closed or relocated sometime in the 1960s. The old school then became a private residence.
Just between two generations of my family, (my generation and that of my parents), the Church lost 12 out of 14 of the members of my family between 1965 and 1999. My stepdad, a devout CS Teacher, died of natural causes last summer at age 83. Only my mother remains as an ultra-devout and active CS Teacher. My dad's sister and entire family left the Church in the mid-1960s. My sisters and I left the Church between 1974 and 1986. Three family members faith healed themselves to death loosing substantial periods of their lives between 1967 and 1999. All three would have lived if they had just used over-the-counter medications. None of the 8 family members of my generation believe in CS even though all eight at one time were in regular CS attendance, and none of our 9 children have any CS experience.
I know of several other formerly devout CS families which have experienced similar declines. My last girlfriend was an ex-CSer. Four out of the five members of her family had left the Church and her dad had faith-healed himself to death trying to treat a brain tumor. Among my stepmother and her family none of the four still attend the Church, even though my stepmother was a Practitioner at one time. Another family I knew growing up has had 5 out of 7 members leave the Church. Still another family had 3 out of 4 surviving members leave CS after one of the parents died of a medically-treatable illness.
It isn't any wonder that CS membership is down as heavily as it is, and the existing membership at so many CS churches is over-represented by the elderly. Just in the last 2 paragraphs 30 of 35 onetime devout CS members are in the formerly CS category. Just in the last two paragraphs .01 of 1% of the onetime peak of CS attendance is represented. The decline in Church member-ship just among these 35 people is over 85% in just two generations. If similar trends exist in the experience of many longtime CS families the Church could very well be inflating numbers all across the board. Maybe the Church leadership has decided that inflating numbers is the only way to attract enough new membership to survive.
Just wanted to contribute my two cents worth. Maybe its way past time for the CS Church to quit blaming former member's suffering on their lack of commitment or lack of enough faith. If similar decline is seen over just one more generation there will be precious little left of CS to crow about. Imagine the effects of an 85% decline in membership over the next 40 to 50 years. There might be 10,000 of the current membership remaining, plus any remaining new members that they attract. Probably 75% of the current churches would be forced to close, though some would probably continue to soldier on as small societies.
My guess is that the future of CS is in small isolated societies, kind of like the LDS splinter group recently raided in Texas. It will be much more difficult for members of small isolated sects to leave them. They will become so isolated that their members will greatly distrust the outside world. Fear of the outside world will be used to stifle dissent and dissuade quitting. My guess is that eventually they will want to school their children in-house. And suffering, neglect, and abuse of their children will become much harder to observe, stop and treat. In a century CS will become almost invisible. But there will still be a number of small groups of isolated diehards remaining. And the suffering of their children will continue albeit in greatly reduced numbers.
Mark
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Posted Tuesday, May 20, 2008 6:00 PM
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Anonymous (5/17/2008)
For that matter, have you ever considered why CS is officially the "Church of Christ, Scientist"? MBE was following a 19th Century fad for naming new churches and denominations.
I did not know about the "fad" you're referring to, but I do recall giving consideration to official name MBE came up with. I likened it to her reference in the S&H marginal heading "Jesus the Scientist" (without getting into the distinction she usually makes between "Christ" and "Jesus"). That's the paragraph that includes the familiar phrase "Jesus of Nazareth was the most scientific man that ever trod the globe..." With that, it seemed natural to me that a church could be called "Church of Christ, Redeemer", or "Church of Christ, Savior". I recall when a lecturer came to a nearby town and noticed the long standing signage
FIRST CHURCH OF CHRIST SCIENTIST (without the comma). That was corrected shortly thereafter.
Well, here in Seattle I've seen alot of changes.
Used to be 16 churches. now there's 1st, 3rd, (unsure about 7th), 10th, 12th, 13th, and 14th
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Posted Tuesday, May 20, 2008 9:51 PM
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| In Houston, all that is left is 1st, 4th, 7th, 8th, and 9th.
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Posted Wednesday, May 21, 2008 6:35 AM
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| I was an un-logged, and hence "Anonymous," poster for the first remarks about "Church of Christ, Scientist." The word "fad" was not appropriate. Trend would have been better. Based upon a scattering of personal observations, this nomenclature seemed to have been popular in the late 19th Century. And yes, I do recall Eddy's calling Jesus "the most scientific man who ever walked the Earth." Again, this harkens back to a verbal fad of the period. Just as "green," "high-tech," "digital," and even "digital-ready" (ulp!) are used to enhance a product or concept today, science was a very pronounced buzzword for 25 years each side of 1900. Combining "science" with Christianity was sheer marketing genius. Although her mixture of the two was au currant, Eddy was still committing a variant on a very old and persistent error: recasting the Person of Jesus as somebody she found more appealing and/or legitimate, and not as the Bible depicts. Over the centuries, we have been presented with "Christs" who are completely human, completely divine (and not human at all), an exalted angel, an ascended master, an occultist, an African, a Mason, a social reformer, a complete fiction, a political revolutionary, and on and on. Depicting Jesus as a proto-scientific metaphysician is just one more.
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Posted Wednesday, May 21, 2008 10:48 PM
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| Well, thanks for replying to me. I'm new to CW. I don't have anything much to add to this forum, but to say thanks for your good work, It gives us hope that less and less respectability will be given to this deadly thing called Christian. It isn't even a Science, but this is not the page to get into that! I have been out of the loop for the past 20 years and just now getting updated on the C.S. Church's business. I am just happy to see the numbers go down so dramatically since I left the church pretty much in college in the early 1960's and yet still kept one foot in occasionally out of fear and guilt. I traveled a bit, and every city I visited or lived in( Boston, Mpls, Los Angeles, Seattle, Huston, Puerto Rico, St. Thomas) between 1960 and 1990 was always big and impressive, but less than half full even as early as the 60's and 70's and 80's. And barely anyone at the Wed. nite testimonial service. I think that a lot of people also have one foot in and one foot out so the numbers of real CSists is ever slimmer than it looks. Just sayin' ....
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