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Christian Science historically bridged ascetic American Protestantism & prosperity gospel, with a reliance on prayer rather than medicine for healing.
Influence from “positive thinking” teachings of the Dutch Reformed Protestant Rev. Norman Vincent Peale https://thefederalist.com/2019/04/11/christian-science-became-dying-religion/
Influence from “positive thinking” teachings of the Dutch Reformed Protestant Rev. Norman Vincent Peale https://thefederalist.com/2019/04/11/christian-science-became-dying-religion/
In his book “The Right Stuff,” Tom Wolfe described how Christian Scientists were more elite among American WASP military culture in World War II and the early Cold War than Episcopalians. https://thefederalist.com/2019/04/11/christian-science-became-dying-religion/
Only a few decades ago, Christian Scientists H.R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman were at the apex of White House influence, top aides to President Richard M. Nixon, whose mother-in-law had practiced the faith with affinity from West Coast Quaker background https://thefederalist.com/2019/04/11/christian-science-became-dying-religion/
Sen. Charles Percy and Rep. Robert McClory were Christian Scientists on Capitol Hill. Not to mention Judge William Webster and Admiral Stansfield Turner, who served as directors of the FBI and CIA, respectively (Webster later also directed the CIA). https://thefederalist.com/2019/04/11/christian-science-became-dying-religion/
But the religion’s eschewing of standard medicine, and increasing scandal over the deaths of children under Christian Science care. A small genre of apostate memoirs testify also to concerns with psychological impacts of disembodied faith concerned with negative mental influence
Chuck Colson:
Positive attitude and disbelief in evil as reality contributed to the Nixon White House’s undoing. The same tendency evident in the role of Christian Scientists Nancy Astor and Lord Lothian in the Cliveden Set as a hotbed of British appeasement before World War II.
Positive attitude and disbelief in evil as reality contributed to the Nixon White House’s undoing. The same tendency evident in the role of Christian Scientists Nancy Astor and Lord Lothian in the Cliveden Set as a hotbed of British appeasement before World War II.
The Christian Science ethos was an important thread in the “soft establishment” of generic Protestantism in mid-20th century American civil religion, which arguably peaked in the weekly ecumenical worship services held at the Nixon White House led by Christian Science aides.
The number of Christian Scientists in the United States was 270,000 in 1936 (the last reliable public count). Today, despite growth in the nation’s population, actual church membership in the U.S. could well be down to 50,000, a steep drop in congregations and registered healers.
Traditional Christians saw in it a lack of connection with the teachings of the church fathers, and a revival in new form of old heresies of Gnosticism, Sabellianism, and Arianism. A strand of Anglo-Israelism influenced some followers, adding ethnophyletism to that list.
