Matter is not what is real, so sickness is not what it appears to be.
Founded by Mary Baker Eddy on the claim that she had rediscovered the method by which Jesus healed, and that it is a demonstrable science rather than faith. The church has no ordained clergy — two Readers read aloud from the Bible and from Science and Health at every service, in the same lesson worldwide. Its practitioners treat by prayer for a fee and advertise in a directory. It built the Christian Science Monitor in 1908, and it has declined by roughly four-fifths since 1970.
Christian Science practice of relying on spiritual treatment instead of medicine has produced a documented record of child deaths and litigation in the United States. Robyn Twitchell, aged two, died of a bowel obstruction in Boston on 8 April 1986; his parents were convicted of involuntary manslaughter in 1990, and the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court reversed the convictions in 1993 in Commonwealth v. Twitchell, holding that an opinion of the state Attorney General had made the law misleading as to criminal liability. Ian Lundman, aged eleven, died of untreated juvenile diabetes in Minnesota on 9 May 1989; in a wrongful death action a jury found the practitioner, the nurse and the boy's mother and stepfather negligent, and in 1995 the Minnesota Court of Appeals in Lundman v. McKown affirmed compensatory damages against the individuals, reversed judgment against The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and struck down the 9 million dollar punitive award against the church as unconstitutional; the United States Supreme Court declined review in January 1996. Amy Hermanson, aged seven, died of untreated diabetes in Florida in 1986; her parents were convicted in 1989 and the Florida Supreme Court quashed the convictions in 1992 on due process grounds arising from the state's own religious exemption statute. The church's position is that members are free to choose medical care and that it does not direct treatment decisions.
Why it is filed this way
Christian Science is usually classed with the nineteenth-century American metaphysical movements — New Thought, Divine Science, Unity — rather than with the Protestant denominations, and Eddy sued and disowned the New Thought teachers who had learned from her. It uses Protestant furniture, reads the Bible at every service, and holds a doctrine of God, Christ, matter and death that no Protestant confession would recognise.
The map
Christian Science (the Church of Christ, Scientist)’s corner of it — solid lines are descent; dotted lines are resemblance only, ideas held in common across unrelated faiths. Click a node to recenter; ✕ returns here. All 171 faiths →Where next
the museum exit — every door leads deeper inSources
2 cited texts
- Mary Baker Eddy, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 468 — the scientific statement of being where it is cited →
- Mary Baker Eddy, Manual of The Mother Church, Article VIII, Section 28, Numbering the People where it is cited →
These citations identify texts used in the linked passages. Follow each passage to read its quotation and context. A tradition’s own texts explain its teachings; historical claims may also require independent scholarship. Translations marked (rendered) are our own plain-English wording, not a standard edition; where a passage matters, read it in a full translation.