Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, March 14, 1992 TAG: 9203140232
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: PETER STEINFELS THE NEW YORK TIMES
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
The quiet response, some church members explained, reflects both the anxieties stemming from criticism of the church in its earliest days and the central beliefs of this distinctively American religious movement.
A few outspoken Christian Scientists said that this week's reorganization, which included the resignation of Harvey W. Wood as chairman of the church's five-person governing board, the appointment of a new treasurer and a shift in assignments for other board members, was more a facelift than the basic change in church policy that they would like to see.
But most Christian Scientists who were asked about the shakeup in the denomination's national leadership at the First Church of Christ Scientist in Boston, the central headquarters known as the Mother Church, remained publicly deferential to church officals.
Interviewed on the telephone and at Christian Science reading rooms in several cities, church members, librarians and church officials declined comment, pleaded ignorance of affairs of the Mother Church or offered upbeat observations on the state of Christian Science.
"Sure we've all got an idea of what we think because this is a very big thing for our church," said one woman in a Minneapolis reading room, "but we do not have the authority to discuss our personal views."
This reticence, which seems to go well beyond the usual reluctance of religious groups to air their problems in public, may appear at odds with the fact that Christian Science has always attracted articulate middle-class members of more than average education and has encouraged civic-mindedness.
But some church members said that what looks to outsiders like a puzzling docility actually goes to the heart of Christian Science.
The reorganization of the Boston headquarters came after a stream of highly respected church officials had resigned because they believed that the board, pressed by the high costs of its ambitious new ventures in television and magazine publishing, was compromising Christian Science doctrine.
Last September the church's Publishing Society issued a book that the church had declared incompatible with Christian Science in 1948 for equating Mary Baker Eddy, the church's founder, with Jesus.
Bliss Knapp, the book's author, and his family left the church bequests worth $98 million on the condition that it published the book as authorized literature and sold it in reading rooms.
The board of directors also confirmed in early March news reports that it had borrowed $41.5 million from the church's pension fund since January and had temporarily tapped an endowment set up to support the Christian Science Monitor, the venerable but subsidized newspaper.
"A lot of Scientists are awfully grateful all this is coming to the fore," a Massachusetts church member said on Wednesday, "but we still won't talk about it to the press." Like many other church members, she insisted on anonymity and seemed aware that her attitude was somewhat contradictory.
In part, this reticence dates from Christian Science's earliest days, when Eddy and her followers were ridiculed as charlatans for their beliefs. Many Christian Scientists feel that their doctrine of physical healing through disciplined prayer and austere living has been caricatured as emotional faith healing or self-hypnosis.
But Nathalie Dupree, a third-generation Christian Scientist in Atlanta, said that this reliance on prayer also explained the refusal of many church members to embroil themselves publicly in the church's dispute, now more than five years old.
Dupree, who has been unenthusiastic about the church's ventures in broadcasting, said that Christian Scientists viewed the recent reorganization as a healing achieved through prayer, but one that "is not complete." Church members believe that negative comments only "slow down the healing," she said.
Dupree, who is the host of a popular cooking program for the Public Broadcasting System, "Nathalie Dupree Cooks for Family and Friends ," likened church members to cooks patiently standing over a stock pot and skimming the top of the liquid until a clear broth emerges.
"They feel their part is not to gossip but to keep praying that we will get a really good chicken soup," she said.
Richard Cattani, editor of the Christian Science Monitor, said Christian Scientists considered it "bad form to get into a public dispute over church matters." This attitude rested on the denomination's aversion to pressuring others to change their opinions, he said.
Stephen Gottschalk said Wood's resignation and the assignment of new responsibilities to other board members was "musical chairs, with no fundamental change."
A leading historian of Christian Science who worked for the church for many years, Gottschalk said that selling the Monitor Channel, a money-losing 24-hour cable news channel, reduced the church's losses but still left "a serious financial question."
Even Gottschalk put his case in religious terms. He said that it was of more concern to him that the board remained committed to publishing Knapp's book and collecting his legacy and that there was "no sense of the repentence that real healing requires."
Victor Westberg, the church's new official spokesman, called this language of healing and repentence inappropriate. The latest changes, he said, were a "technical restructuring," and the church is "staying the course."
by CNB