Christian Science (the Church of Christ, Scientist)

Movement·Founded 1879 CE·The church does not publish membership figures and is forbidden to by its own Manual, Article VIII, Section 28. Independent estimates for the late twentieth century range from under 100,000 to several hundred thousand and are not reconcilable. What can be counted is public: practitioners and teachers listed in the Christian Science Journal in the United States fell from 4,965 in January 1971 to fewer than a thousand, and branch churches from roughly 1,800 to about 1,000.

Judaism → Christianity → Catholicism → Protestantism → Christian Science (the Church of Christ, Scientist)

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Core tenet of Christian Science (the Church of Christ, Scientist)

Matter, sickness and death are errors of belief, not facts about the world.

God is All-in-all and God is Mind, so what is real is mental and spiritual; the material universe reported by the five senses is a misapprehension. Sickness is therefore not a condition to be fought but an error to be seen through, and healing is correction rather than cure.

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Understanding it — context, not catechism: how this passage is held

The metaphysics is stated most compactly in what Eddy called the scientific statement of being, on page 468 of Science and Health, and it is genuinely idealist rather than merely optimistic: there is no life, truth, intelligence or substance in matter, and matter itself is mortal error. Sickness, sin and death belong to what Eddy called mortal mind, the false consciousness that believes in a material universe, and the work of Christian Science is to displace that belief with the understanding that God is All. This is not the same claim as faith healing, and Christian Scientists are consistent in rejecting that label — faith healing asks God to intervene in a real illness, while Christian Science holds that the illness has no reality to intervene in. The practical difference matters: a practitioner does not pray for a cure, and does not diagnose, because to diagnose would be to concede the premise.

From the sources — the passages this rests on; concise renderings, cited

There is no life, truth, intelligence, nor substance in matter. All is infinite Mind and its infinite manifestation, for God is All-in-all.

Mary Baker Eddy, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 468 — the scientific statement of being

The same ground, other faiths

claims that share this one's ideas
The world is an appearance you have mistaken for a fact. Hinduism Go deeper →
The soul is light in exile. Mandaeism Go deeper →
Suffering has a cause, and therefore an end. Buddhism Go deeper →
The soul is liberated by its own effort. Jainism Go deeper →
God contracted to make room for the world. Judaism Go deeper →
The kingdom has arrived and has not arrived. Christianity Go deeper →

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This is a science, and it is meant to be demonstrated. →the next passage in Christian Science (the Church of Christ, Scientist) Christian Science (the Church of Christ, Scientist)'s Belief roomback up one layer Propose a change to this claimone button — it routes to the review pool Branch with this claim changeddisagreement here never has to become an edit war — it becomes a founding

Numbers count Panfaith activity only — never real-world adherence.

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