BTW, at the considerable risk of subjecting you to another one of those big words, I have this study for your consideration:  It is a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report of epidemiological studies showing higher mortality rates among Christian Scientists.

http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/00000500.htm

This report described measles outbreaks on college campuses in three states.  The largest outbreak --- involving 128 confirmed cases occurred at Principia.  The CDC reports states:

I posted these new threads with the express purpose of getting away from the doctrine debate but it seems that contention unavoidable. We are discussing religion after all.

Anonymous Christian Scientist, I would want you to understand that 50% of my family members are or were Christian Scientists as I married into this religion.  I have been married for more than 40 years. I worked at TMC Center and many of my friends have been CSers too. I love and have loved these people.  But I have seen a lot of, what I feel was avoidable death and suffering.  Its not easy to watch someone you love suffer. Its horrible watching someone you love die suffering.  Please take some time to consider these words.  It has happened to me. And now I am currently dealing with long term suffering on the part of my husband, with whom I am recently separated.  What he is going through involves congestive heart failure and a very strong belief that Christian Science heals.  Put these two into a pot and stir them up and you have one very ill very depressed Christian Scientist.  He can't heal it and he now doubts the strength of his convictions...he doubts himself. I would call what he has gone through physical and spiritual torture.

I am upset and am very angry with Christian Science, and I have good reason to be. Allow me that.  I did NOT go to christianscience.com and make nasty, sarcastic comments there, I came here to get help from others who have had similar experiences.  Your snied comments only aggrivate me, they are not going to change how I feel about CS. Have some compassion for your fellow man and go argue your convictions somewhere else. Go talk about us at christian science.com where people will agree with you.  All you are doing here is acting like a yappy little dog in a room full of people with a bad headache.

Square Peg

Thanks for starting this topic.  There has been some good discussion despite the disruptions.    I'm not convinced our Anonymous poster is a Christian Scientist or even a Christian for that matter.   The attacks seem to be of a more personal nature and not connected to this topic.  I hope they will cease, and this unhappy person will find more constructive ways to communicate.

This compelling and heartbreaking story once again illustrates the kind of loose, and even false interpretations that Christian Scientists give to "healings". The way this CS TEACHER chose to "retell" Liz's experience is a prime example of how mainstream Christian Scientists are hearing "healing" stories that are actually untrue...MYTHS. Yet when it comes time for their own demonstrations of serious illnesses they can't get one and die or suffer horribly.  Right now I want to use Born Free's x-rated word when describing this TEACHER... I am so upset and even furious.  How can a person study the bible and go to church for as long as this teacher must have and lie like this and ultimately be the cause of the deaths of others?  What is the sense of giving your life over to trying to be totally spiritual.... GODLIKE?  Is this GODLIKE?  How hard can it be to see what he is doing?  Its the work of the devil. 

Square Peg

Christian Science and irresponsible parenting
By Liz Heywood

In his March 5 guest column for On Faith, Gary Jones calls the Secular Coalition's White House presentation on faith-based medical neglect an "unjust and unfair attempt to convert the atypical to the norm" -- because my testimony was grounded in my near-death Christian Science experience 30 years ago. It may be convenient for Jones to dismiss my experience as ancient history, but it's impossible for me to forget-especially when I put on my prosthetic leg in the morning.

Contrary to Jones' description of my case as atypical, my parents were "class-taught" church members just outside Boston. Some of my relatives worked at the church headquarters; one was a Christian Science practitioner, certified by the church to pray professionally. My childhood bone disease-diagnosed years later as osteomyelitis-may have been uncommon, but Christian Science doctrine was followed to the letter. As a result, I was bedridden for almost a year, my leg dripping pus; my deformed knee ultimately fused solid at an eighty-degree angle.

I walked with a "simian gait," as one doctor noted, on my rigid knee for thirty years until it was amputated in 2007. My orthopedic specialists said they usually saw fused limbs like mine only in elderly patients who'd had osteomyelitis before the discovery of antibiotics, or in third world countries.

Christian Science theology opposes both medical treatment and diagnosis and demands denial of symptoms. Jones claims that Christian Scientists "do not believe that suffering or death is ever God's will." Indeed, they believe suffering and death aren't real at all. In Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, the Christian Science textbook, Mary Baker Eddy defines FLESH as, "An error of physical belief; . . . an illusion; a belief that matter has sensation." Is a child's pain an illusion? Is a parent negligent when he denies the reality of his child's pain? Jones claims that Christian Science parents "will turn to other means for healing, including medical." But how much pain should a child suffer before the parents recognize that "their prayers are not availing?"

When I was a child, we prayed truly and deeply, all of my family, through every minute of my agony. Indeed, prayer was the only treatment I (and my parents) knew. Doctors were unfamiliar and we were afraid of them. The Christian Science "nurses" who helped care for me were trained by the church to wash my leg with only soap and water; nothing stronger than petroleum jelly was applied to my open sores. They also served to distance my practitioner from my physical state; he never once saw the infection that ate at my flesh. Is this the "skilled nonmedical nursing care" Jones mentions?

My practitioner became and remains a Christian Science teacher who teaches people to become Christian Science practitioners. In at least one talk, he used my case as an example of a child healed by Christian Science while successfully shielded from outside intervention. I called him four years ago to ask whether he really believed I'd been healed as a child. He said, "Well you didn't die-what would you call it?" Does this make me part of the "remarkable" record of Christian Science healing Jones refers to?
In 2003, seven-year-old Eben Tryon died of untreated diabetes in Norwood, Mass. Maybe Jones thinks that child's death is old history too. But it would be hard to argue that his parents were atypical Christian Scientists or didn't know the rules of the religion. His mother was a Christian Science "nurse" and his father was employed at church headquarters.

Does Christian Science neglect children's health? The church seeks religious exemptions from all child health laws-every preventive and diagnostic measure, the civil child abuse and neglect laws, and criminal laws requiring parents to provide medical care for sick children. In the 1990's the church got a religious defense to first-degree murder enacted in Delaware, to capital murder in Arkansas, and to homicide by abuse or neglect in Oregon. No conscientious adult-whether religious or non-theist-could call this responsible parenting.

Liz Heywood is an above-knee amputee and former member of the First Church of Christ, Scientist.

It is certainly not Godlike or Christly, but it is all too human.  In every group there are bad apples, and the CS practitioner corps is full of some very bad characters.  And the church does a very poor job of enforcing standards of conduct.  Many Journal-listed practitioners are just plain incompetent; a few are downright evil, but some are geniunely sincere in their efforts to help others thru prayer.  I don't think any of them heal the way Jesus did.  If they could, you can be sure, the world would hear about it.  IMO, Tosto has gone too far in his rejection of all religions, but I don't blame him for this reversal.  I blame CS for torturing and twisting him away from a true view of God and man. 

"Here's the kind of "testimony" that won't be made in those churches:

I go to a private religious university, and for the most part I get a nice, secular education. Occasionally, though, someone will stand up in a cafeteria and announce that they witnessed a miracle or some such. "He was in constant pain but after we prayed the cancer went into remission" -- that kind of ***.

One day, I had had enough of it, so immediately after one girl told her magical success story, I stood up and cleared my throat:

"I'd like to follow my friend's story with a similar tale of my own. I had an uncle who never took care of his body, and eventually he developed type II diabetes. He wouldn't listen to his doctors or do anything to treat his condition. Eventually it got so bad that they had to amputate his foot. This all but destroyed his lifestyle. He spent his entire day at his job on his feet, and he couldn't do anything with his new disability; he couldn't even afford a prosthetic. None of us in my family was religious at the time except for my mother, but she convinced us all to join hands in prayer, as that was the only thing we could really do. We were skeptical, but we humored our mom and asked God to help our uncle in anyway He could, and his foot grew back!""

When I came to the end of Mario's little ramble I immediately chuckled.  Then I thought about what he was saying here.  Everyone laughs because everyone knows a foot can't grow back.  (I know Ann will like this story)  Well then how can a person get healed of childhood diabetes (the bad kind of diabetes) or terminal lung cancer? You can SEE the foot gone...and you can SEE the foot back again.  It's very tangible and very in your face. Here there can be no interpretations, no exaggerations, no heresay. You are not inventing a serious problem where there is no serious problem and you are not inventing a miraculous cure where there is none.

Square Peg