A Church in Strife Over Secular Missteps : Christian Science: A news empire in distress and a bequest at risk symbolize the spiritual estrangement from the founder.

A 45-year-old book, a trust worth nearly $100 million and an extravagant electronic news empire have thrown the once quiet Christian Science church into rare public debate.

Members are berating the board of directors of the First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston for squandering more than $400 million on secular television ventures. The most outspoken dissenter, church historian Stephen Gottschalk, has also led the protest against the Boston hierarchy for publishing a long-suppressed volume about the church’s founder, Mary Baker Eddy, just to grab the fortune left by the family of its author--a fortune that would otherwise go to two California institutions.

Those who have watched the steady demise of the church nationwide should welcome the long-needed airing of opposing views.

Yet there is danger that the combat will resolve little because many in the opposition as well as the hierarchy hold nearly the same limited view of the founder of Christian Science. So, regardless of who prevails in the current battle over the ways and means of running the church, paramount issues remain unsettled.

Surprisingly, the church Establishment for many years has taken timid positions on Mary Baker Eddy and her discovery. Her deep search to understand God as loving and compassionate led her into unexplored avenues to find health and peace. But officials of her church, from fear of being labeled unconventional or even weird, prefer the well-traveled highways of popular thought. They have watered down and even shunned the radical approach that Christian Science demands.

The urge to blend with the world and other religions produced the secular media monstrosity that now overshadows the whole church. Throughout the hasty construction of the news operations, the Boston church authorities lulled the membership into apathy with patently false rosy reports. Those who dared to dissent were branded disloyal. Ecclesiasticism, throughout history the enemy of honest seekers of truth, had once again reared its unsightly head.

As the news empire collapses, it appears that the love of money and power is bringing the hierarchy to its knees, in a modern day reminder of St. Paul’s warning, “God is not mocked.”

The cheery reports have developed a hollow ring. The church authorities have claimed success in physical healing. They have made boasts for their television network and worldwide shortwave radio system, as well as for the colorized and diminished Christian Science Monitor and a new highbrow monthly magazine. But the truth is that the church is losing ground fast and heading the way of some of the TV evangelist movements--toward oblivion.

It was once otherwise. When Mary Baker Eddy founded the Christian Science church, its growth was tremendous and its success was phenomenal. The clear reason was that thousands found healing--often after their doctors had given up their cases as hopeless--through reading Mrs. Eddy’s textbook, “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures.” What healed them? God. This religion was founded on God. Deification of any person was forbidden.

After Mrs. Eddy’s death in 1910, she left a 138-page manual, not personal successors, to rule her church. If followed, this God-directed little book would be the church’s certain guide to health and holiness. Instead, it has been misused and misinterpreted to the detriment of the movement.

Now broke and forced to borrow cash, the church has turned to a last human resort by publishing “The Destiny of The Mother Church,” a book written by a Christian Science teacher, Bliss Knapp, and banned by the Boston directors since 1948. Knapp wrote that Mrs. Eddy fulfilled the prophecy of the woman foretold in the 12th chapter of Revelation (“And a great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of 12 stars”), a concept that the board has shied away from for decades.

However, Knapp’s wife and sister-in-law left a trust to the church that could be tapped if the church published and distributed “Destiny.” Otherwise, the money is to be divided by Stanford University and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

The scheme to collect the Knapp money may fail if the Los Angeles County Superior Court finds next month that the church has not fulfilled all of the terms of the $97-million trust. Such a ruling could push the once-rich denomination into bankruptcy. Even if the church does obtain the money, most of it will go toward shutting down the media operations.

A saying, drawn from Jesus’ remarks in Matthew, seems to fit the situation in the Christian Science church today: “The wheels of justice grind slowly but they grind to powder.”