I left CS in 1974.  I had a very difficult upbringing at the hands of a CS Practitioner.  My Mom's mother, my Dad's dad, and my Dad himself, ALL faith-healed themselves to death.  Both sides of my family joined the CS Church in the 1920s or 1930s.  My dad's father was the Chief Editorial Writer for the Monitor from the 1940s through the 1960s.  My upbringing was full of abuse and neglect.  My mom claims that I had a 'miraculous' healing of meningitis at the age of 2.  Of course, I don't remember it.  I do remember my mom accusing me of not having enough faith to heal athlete's foot at the age of 7.  I thought for the last 43 years that I was unique, but Kathy at EXCS-UK proved that I wasn't alone.  At the age of 12 I broke my left leg skiing.  (It was a twist fracture of the front bone in my lower left leg, as the ski binding didn't release).  My mom refused to allow the medical personnel at the ski resort to send me to a hospital, as this was "against our religion".  Instead we went home, where she tried to faith-heal me for 3 days.  When my dad returned from a business trip they argued over him calling an ambulance.  When we arrived at the hospital the ER doctor told us that the bone would have to be reset, and started to prepare a pain injection.  My mother loudly objected, saying that it was "against our religion"!  The doctor pleaded with her, to no avail.  Why he didn't just have her removed from the ER is a mystery.  What followed was like torture, as my broken leg was reset without any medication.  The "healing" of my broken leg was proclaimed a "miraculous" healing, and published by my mom.  Now she denies that it ever happened.  My memory must be wrong, I'm told.  In separate incidents, I also sprained an ankle 3 times, broke both thumbs separately, and also my nose was broken.  In none of these cases was ANY medical care provided. 

I was molested numerous times at the hands of older boys and men from the CS Church that my parents trusted implicitly and without reservation, just because they were from the Church.  I attended the Cedars camp in MO, a CS summer camp in the late 1960s.  One counselor had all of us boys skinny-dip while he watched.  Then later on he came into our cabin and molested a couple of us while we were sleeping.  We might have been 11 years old.  Between the ages of 8 & 10 a CS male babysitter molested me, and several times at 13 to 14 a former Vietnam-era ex-Marine (from our church) molested me.  At age 14 I was sent to laceName w:st="on">DaycroftlaceName> laceType w:st="on">SchoollaceType> in CT.  I only lasted a year before I left there.  I didn't fit in in the CS/Ivy League prep setting.  Good thing too, as the next Fall the school suffered an outbreak of polio in the boy's dorm.  Somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 boys were infected, 20 years after a polio vaccine had been discovered.  One of them was my former roommate.  What do you bet that at least part of the problem was that school authorities didn't approach the medical community right away.  After all, doing so would have been "against our religion".  I attended AU in Colorado twice, and a friend of mine died there in 1974 trying to climb a 14,000 ft peak.  He would probably still be alive if AU hadn't thought that they should be exempt from a CO. State law concerning camps that take juvenile campers above 10,000 ft elevation and carrying an emergency oxygen supply.  I know:  Emergency oxygen is "against our religion".  Tim's parents refused to sue the camp because what happened was "God's will", and Tim's name and story is missing from any website about kids killed by reliance on Christian Science.

I left CS in 1974, but my faith had died several years earlier.  In high school I was drinking and using illegal drugs.  (I first smoked pot at Daycroft)!  One Saturday night I went out with friends and by 11:00 PM was too intoxicated to drive home.  I called home and my mom acquiesced and allowed me to stay overnight at a friend's house.  (She warned me to come to church the following day under penalty of losing my car).  The next morning I awoke late with a big headache.  My friend gave me 2 Excedrin’s and I drove straight to the church, wearing my Saturday night street getup.  By the time I arrived I had experienced my first "healing" thanks to an over-the-counter medication, as my headache was gone.  My mom met me at the door and there was a big scene as she refused to admit me, as I wasn't "dressed fit to see the Lord".  Several long-time members argued that I was welcome no matter that I was wearing blue jeans and a black leather coat.  I burned rubber all the way out of the driveway and earned a great personal victory.  Mom would not allow me to attend because she was so embarrassed by that Sunday.  Except for attending once each to hear my mom and step-dad read at their new home in Pasadena, CA I haven't attended since that Sunday in the Fall of 1974.

My step-dad kicked me out of their house when I was out there on vacation a couple of years ago.  I suggested that his church needed to downsize because they were only drawing 5% of capacity and were having constant financial questions.  Their Pasadena church, the last of 3 grand Pasadena-area churches still open, is in a hot development area, and the land is worth many millions.  I suggested selling 3/4ths of the land, and building a new smaller church behind the Reading Room, which is on Green St, 1 block east of the Paseo mall.  Just the value of the sold land would have been enough to construct the new church and provide a stipend to pay for it's upkeep in perpetuity.  He roared that it was the fault of all of us "ungrateful" children that have left the Church, and that is why they are struggling to make ends meet.  He was then on the church Board.  I spent the rest of the vacation in a motel.  And I am right.  There is no way that 100 mainly elderly members can support an eighty year-old edifice that was designed to hold 2,000 people.  And because of the credit crisis, that chance has likely come and gone.  Why do I care?  Because I tired of seeing my mom pump $500 or $1,000 into the collection plate every Sunday so that the place doesn't go under. 

My mom is a leading Practitioner, Teacher, and Lecturer, and has published a book on CS/spiritual healing.  I was at her house (my step-dad died last summer) a few weeks ago.  Her phone rings nearly constantly.  One woman called back at least 5 times, obviously in great pain and quite fearful.  Mom gave her same pat line about working on her thinking, told her that she would "work", whatever that means, and told her to call back if she had any more trouble, which obviously this woman must have had.  And before much work could be done, the phone rang again, with another victim in desperation.  It oh so reminded me of the many nights of suffering in my childhood, when there were only a few words from a practitioner to comfort me.  I have to wonder if part of the gig isn't voice hypnotism, by varying delivery speed and cadence.  Otherwise it is a sham, in my opinion.  The only thing that mom is going to do for certain is send them a bill.  She makes $1,000 per day, or more.  Both of my sisters and I have long left the CS Church, and all 3 of us are professed atheists now.  All of us have too many painful memories to ever go back though mom pushes that idea every day.  She is rich and none of us kids are.  I always make sure that some of her money goes to liberal causes when she sends it.

I got off of illegal drugs 10 years ago, and the last decade has been the best years of my life.  I still struggle with the repressed pain of my upbringing though.  My little sister suggested BLUE WINDOWS to me recently.  I looked-up a couple of reviews and my pain was brought up again.  Her site led me to others including to Kathy's EXCS-UK site and I got an email back from her, all the way from England.  (I have since received more from England).  I've looked for ex-CS groups here for many years without success.  I found help for my other problems in Minnesota and Colorado years ago.  I've still got the CS-thing around my neck like a noose though.  It's likely that mom will be around for 10 or more years and us kids will constantly be bombarded with her religious angst for the duration.

Thanks for letting me share on your site, and thanks for sharing your stories.  I hope that all of you have been able to put the past into perspective and move above it.

Mark

Here's the second post:

I found this group through the group ex-CS UK, and did get a personal response from that group's founder, Kathy, (who's story appears on your site also).

I am basically looking for a group of ex- Christian Scientists who have left the church because of the abuse they suffered as children in the name of religion.  My story is in some respects similar th Kathy's story.  My mother is an extremely devoted, accomplished Practitioner and Teacher.  She still laments the fact that her message was not strong enough to keep any of her children in the religion.  We all left because we thought that our upbringing in Science was abusive.  All of us discovered as teenagers that over-the-counter medications could either "heal" or provide relief for many ailments that we had been expected to just suffer with growing-up.  None of us left the church to subsequently join other churches.  My little sister went through religious de-programming counseling, and is probably the most aggressive "denouncer" of the Church and the abuse we suffered as children through strict reliance on the "healing" tenants of CS, of us 3 kids.  I was the eldest child.  I was the one who had to endure more of the timeframe before my mother became a Practitioner back in the late 1960s, when I was already close to 12 years old.  My little sister was 5 or 6 when my mother became a Practitioner, though I'm not sure that this changed much.  It may have made mother even more reliant on the CS-approach.

Unlike in Kathy's case, I have not had to suffer through the rigors of CS invalid or senior care.  Most of my close relatives did not survive CS-treatment and never became elderly.  All died rather suddenly when they seemed to be in fairly good health.  All three probably would have lived many more years if they had just taken over-the-counter medications instead of relying exclusively on CS-teachings.  Only my dad's mother survived past age 79.  My dad was well-off enough to afford assisted-living for his mom.  After surviving a 2nd stroke, my dad put his mother in a CS "nursing" facility in Columbus, OH, 150 miles from home, where she died a few years later.  I only saw her a few times during her time in Columbus, and it was plain that her dementia had progressed to the point where she couldn't remember who I was.  She scarcely could remember who my dad was.  She lived to age 93.  All that I could think of was how much happier her later years might have been without CS.  Certainly my grandfather might have lived a lot later then age 67, and my dad would have lived well beyond 68, if they had just taken OTC medications instead of radically relying on CS.  Even my mother has used some of her great wealth to help pay for various of her kids and grandkids medical issues.  Does she feel some guilt?  Has this caused some shift in policy within her?

Thanks again,

Mark

Other than watching my mother or a couple of friends of hers, I have no experience in the Church since the mid-1970s.  I suspect CS is a lot like Judaism.  You have your Orthodox members, your conservative members, and your reform members.  My mother has as many as 100 calls a day from people who call her just for her expertise in faith-healing.  This amounts to 1/10th of 1% of the entire current membership of the CS Church.  There are at least 150 other practioner/teachers who have similar qualifications, and as many as several hundred more active practitioners.  My mom teaches a class every summer for 15 or 20 students, and gives an address in front of the assembled congregation at the Mother Church every fall.  I would guess that as much as 10% of the Church membership is "Orthodox" like my mom, and they rely on faith-healing all of the time, and would never even consider the medical community a possible option.  Another 30% to 40% are "conservative", who rely on faith-healing almost all of the time.  This leaves at least half of the membership under the "reform" category.  Reform CSers probably rely as much or more on the medical community as they do on prayer.  It is possible that the Church has begun to embrace the less-conservative  membership as it stuggles to survive.  It is also possible that the reform CS group is growing as a total percentage of membership.  My mother, dad, step-dad, my mom's mother, and my dad's dad all have been First or Second Reader numerous times each.  They all have served on their local church's Board of Directors, and in many other positions.  My dad's dad was Donovan Richardson, the Chief Editorial Writer of the Monitor from the 1940s into the 1960s.  My upbringing was about strict adherance to the tenants of CS healing.  My mother was very suspicious of the medical community and it's motives, and also very suspicious that the Church leadership would find out if we ever used medicine instead of CS healing.  I have a hard time reconciling your statement about the present direction of the Church to my experience.  Of course, my family and experience is all about the Orthodox side of CS.  I left the Church when it was still crowded and viable.  My mother is in a position sort of like the leadership of one of these Mormon splinter-sects.  She thinks that she is the next coming of MBE, and she is going to save the Church.   

So Principia is still open.  I attended two CS boarding schools that are no longer in business.  Daycroft School in Greenwich, CT, was an Ivy League-type prep school that offered a strict CS education for grades 7 to 12.  It was the size of a small college, with at least 10 major buildings and at least 100 acres of grounds.  The gym held 500 people and the football stadium probably 1,000 or more.  When I attended in 1971 they might have had a student body of 300 students, which even then was well below capacity.  Desert Sun School in Idyllwyld, CA was much smaller, with a total student body of maybe 70 or 80 students.  I went there for a short time in 1974.  Both closed their doors by 1992.  But I'm not worried about Principia's future as my step-dad just bequeathed them a 7-figure sum.  I went to 2 colleges:  Western Michigan Univ. in Kalamazoo, MI, and Cleveland State Univ, in downtown Cleveland, OH, both over 22,000 studentsand graduated from a large public high school in suburban Detroit.  My folks toured me through Principia back in the late 1960s, as well as tried to get me admitted into  Cranbrook School in Bloomfield Hills, MI.  After my trip to Daycroft I wasn't interested though.

Maybe because I had already lost my trust of CS and organized religion by 1972, I do not have the same issues with comparing MBE's interpretation of the Bible vs more mainstream religions interpretations.  I don't compare Biblical phrases and any discrepancies are not the reason that I left the Church.  I left the Church because I was tired of having to suffer needlessly in the name of our Church when it became terribly obvious that most people outside CS didn't suffer like we did.  They just took a pill, or chomped down a Tums, or used nasal spray, etc, to solve their ills.  Every headache or case of heartburn or every cold or case of the flu that I had for 17 years I was expected to suffer with.  I crashed on my bicycle and got road rash and I was expected to suffer.  I was NEVER healed of anything that I can remember.  There was lots and lots of suffering to be had growing-up in the more-conservative half of the Church back then.  I just don't understand the reform-side of the church, and because my trust has for so long been destroyed, I wouldn't even think about reconsidering my reasons for leaving CS.  I look at my upbringing in CS as having a noose around my neck that 34 years of history has been unable to take away from me.  I think that MBE's religious teachings are a sham that was designed to make herself wealthy and famous, and that she was somewhere near crazy.  Obviously, others think differently.

I could see that there might be other reasons to leave the church and people that have left much more recently than I did.  You might have left because of discrepancies in doctrine, so may have others.  My sisters and I left because we were really tired of all of the needless suffering.  I think that CS healing is mostly a fraud.  It is interesting how much of a difference our positions are.  The Pasadena, CA CS church is as conservative as any CS church that I have ever seen.  And their membership is mostly elderly.  The nearby San Marino church is much smaller and has a younger crowd.  Recent talk of merging the two churches fell apart over distribution of power positions.  The senior church's leadership was unwilling to share power with the junior church.  The San Marino church might survive for some time.  I don't see how the Pasadena church can without a bunch of money being thrown at the problem.

I hope that I have answered some of your questions.  Even if the Church has almost completely changed from 35 years ago I am not interested.  There are still those who will deny their children medical care in the name of the Church and MBE.  As much as 40% to 50% of the Church membership is still in that category.  Many churches have outstanding youth recreation programs.  Most churches are much larger and more-mainstream than the CS Church.  Figure 100,000 divided by 300 million.  (0.033%)  That is the percentage of CS members to the total population of the US.  I realize that 10% of us are atheists.  Thats 30 million atheists vs 100,000 CSers.  There are 7 million Scientologists.  Isn't Scientology considered a cult?  There are almost as many Jehovah's Witnesses.  Aren't they considered a cult too?  Check-out Reachout Trust's site in England.  That's where I found Kathy at EXCS-UK.

I hope that someday you will resolve the issues that brought you to this group.  I am hoping that communicating with ex-CSers might help me to loose the CS-noose that has hung around my neck for way too long.  Hearing that some part of the Church is becoming more moderate is not suprising, but irrelevant.  I have been admonished plenty of times for seeing a much different picture then others do.  I'm guessing that those who defend the CS Church didn't have to go through nearly as much pain and suffering as needlessly as I did.

Mark

One of the problems back in those days was that there was no internet.  No possible way to check the credentials of a prospective employee besides with the telephone or in writing.  Summer camps were a haven for child sexual predators at one time, and so were boarding schools.  I had a friend once who went to truck driving school.  After graduating he couldn't find a job as a student trucker close enough to home.  So the owner of the trucking school agreed to supply him a false reference.  After that he did get hired somewhere because they thought that he had a year of experience.  Years ago it was possible to go from camp to camp to camp as long as they didn't get caught.  It is like the scandal in the Catholic Church.  Once they got caught the Church just relocated them to a different parish.  I wonder how much of that went on in the CS Church?  Get caught at Daycroft, get a job at the Cedars?

With the internet it is now possible to be fairly thorough researching someone's background.  Back in 1969 it was virtually impossible to find-out much about people that applied for jobs.  Especially if they had a false reference.

Just my thoughts on the subject.

Mark

Concerning your statement:

"I left the Church because I was tired of having to suffer needlessly in the name of our Church when it became terribly obvious that most people outside CS didn't suffer like we did. They just took a pill, or chomped down a Tums, or used nasal spray, etc, to solve their ills. Every headache or case of heartburn or every cold or case of the flu that I had for 17 years I was expected to suffer with."

I had some similar experiences as a child growing up in CS. I was radically reliant ("orthodox" as you term it) like my parents- never considering internal medication of any sort & even hating external medications such as my "prescription" glasses. I would wear them as little as possible, trying to "know the truth" instead (& squinting a lot). I was 14 & had been suffering from a cold & the resultant nasal congestion for a week when it became so insufferable that I decided to sneak down to the drug store to buy some nasal spray. Oh, what an incredible relief! It was like the "Excedrin moment" you've mentioned. Over the next three years, I hid several "illegal" drugs in my room- aspirin, Pepto, & the like, while still considering myself CS. I thought in true CS fashion: "I'm suffering because there must be something I'm just not understanding." How many times have those who have had any extended contact with CS heard that one?! But, unlike many CSists, I saw no need to continue to suffer pointlessly until I discovered that golden nugget of truth I thought I was lacking. I stayed in CS while praying for understanding.

When I was 17, friends & strangers alike in my life became different- my best friend got "saved" & told me about how much the cross of Christ meant to him. The girl I was dating told me that she decided she couldn't see me anymore because I didn't hold to the Bible as absolute truth. Strangers would ask me if I "knew" Jesus as my Savior while I was stocking shelves in the grocery store. I strongly defended CS to all the above, but after awhile, I sensed a strong urging to simply sit down & read the Bible to find out the truth for myself. In short order, I realized a simple, literal reading of Scripture countered CS on every one it's main tenets. I left CS & six months later became a true Christian- defined as one who looks personally to Jesus & His cross as their salvation while concomitantly attempting to follow Christ's instruction & example. Later I realized God had heard my prayer & gave me the understanding I desperately needed. So I guess I experienced at least two of the levels of CS dedication that you mention.   

But my prayer for you is that you would not always lump all who use the name "Christian" together in the same basket. As a child, I was jumped by a couple of Hispanic kids one day & held a grudge against all Hispanics for a short time thereafter. I soon realized, though interaction, that there were many other Hispanics who were not at all mean-spirited like the two I had encountered previously. The stereotype didn't fit for me at that time & I pray that you would likewise see that the mainstream of Christianity shouldn't be colored with the same dark brush you would rightly color the fringe elements with. Yes, CS is ugly & even brutish with it's often cold disregard for human suffering, but don't let that bad experience keep you from having a wonderful, fulfilling relationship with true Christianity & most importantly, the true Christ.

zoarean

So you were sneaking over-the-counter drugs at age 14?  My dad died at age 68 from the flu.  He suffered for a couple of weeks with the flu.  If he had just taken a good swig of Nyquil every night before bed he would have been able to get his normal sleep.  Instead he strove to know "the truth", and was awake all night for a two weeks coughing and sneezing and in pain.  He quickly became bedridden.  He was still really sick when a mechanic friend came by to look at his Buick.  He jumped out of bed and came down the stairs, and had a heart attack and died on the kitchen floor.  Five years at M.I.T and 35 years in automotive engineering and manufacturing and financial administration down the drain for want of $6.00 worth of an over-the-counter medication.  It cost him 10 to 15 years of life but think what it saved Social Security.  Let alone his former employer's medical insurance provider in costs.  Dayquil in the daytime and Nyquil at night:  How hard is that? 

Instead of being "born again" at age 17 I lost a friend from summer camp because the CS-summer camp thought that bringing an emergency oxygen supply along on a high-altitude climb would be the same thing as admitting that there might be a physical ailment that oxygen could alleviate, like high-altitude sickness.  Not only that, but they had to ignore a CO State law requiring summer camps to bring oxygen along above a certain altitude when juvinile campers exceeded that altitude.  [Expletive removed by moderator], the FAA requires pilots of non-pressurized aircraft to be on oxygen above 12,500 ft.  The peak where this happened has a summit elevation over 14,000 ft.  How can anyone think that campers from low altitude should be able to climb 14,000 ft mountains and be totally free from any ailment requiring oxygen?  In this case, the never-ending search for "the truth" cost someone else's kid his life.

By the age of 14 I had already been molested by 3 different perpertrators from the CS Church, and another guy who was a strict Southern Baptist.  At age 14 I was sent to Dayctoft School, a strict CS boarding School.  I only went there for part of 9th grade.  A year later 20 guys in the boys dorm got polio.  There had been a polio vaccine for 20 years by then.  I'm afraid that not taking a common vaccine on religious-exemption grounds was a very expensive mistake for the 20 boys and their families, and probably was one of the early coffin nails that eventually killed the school 15 years later. 

I was "saved" in high school, and in college, and at a couple of truckstops, and in Cleveland as recently as 1989.  I am still highly suspicious of CS and religion in general.  I did not come to this site seeking to rekindle long-dormant religious beliefs.  I came here to try to read other's stories and identify with their pain, in the hope that I might not have such a hair-trigger when the subject of religion is breached.  I almost chewed my fiance's mom's head off because she wanted me to watch a tape about coming back to the Catholic Church.  Just today she left one of their pamphlets out entitled "When You Are Angry at the Church".  I lot of people see my stance as very odd even though I am one of 25 milion Americans that does not believe in a God.  That is 300 times as many people as there are members of the CS Church.

Thanks for responding and your concern.  34 years after I left CS I wouldn't remember enough of MBE's phrases to compare to the Bible.  I don't see the fascination with the doctrine issues some people have.  I haven't believed one thing that MBE taught since the early 1970s.  I left CS like I was leaving a cult.  I tried to get as far away from them as possible.  Now it seems that if I want to think with less animosity towards religion that some think that I must relearn the Bible, or learn parts of it that I wasn't exposed to so many years ago.  I feel that doing so is having to allow myself back in harm's way.  Clearly there is more to it than just reading the Bible.  Somehow I have to figure-out how to give-up my animosity and fear.  I'm a very large tough guy and don't scare easily.  But I may not be ready to allow the threat of religion back into my life.

Best regards,

Mark