Christian Science Room Visitors Stop to Sit, Perhaps Snooze

They are often squeezed between small shops on a busy boulevard, a storefront nook with a window displaying a daily Bible lesson, pages of the Christian Science Monitor newspaper and a sign welcoming visitors.

Amid the frenzy of holiday shopping, it might seem a good spot to rest for a while.

But how many people actually go into a Christian Science Reading Room? And what do they find?

If figures on usage are available, the Church of Christ, Scientist--the Boston-based denomination’s formal name--isn’t revealing them. Christian Science, which teaches healing through prayer rather than by medical means, also declines to release membership figures, following the wishes of its 19th-Century founder, Mary Baker Eddy.

A recent unguided tour of a half-dozen reading rooms in the San Fernando Valley found volunteer attendants either unwilling or unable to discuss the volume of visitors.

In all six rooms visited, however, at least one person dropped by on the 20 to 30 occasions I visited. Some were church members buying church magazines; others simply walked in to read the Monitor or church literature without talking to the attendant.

“I don’t ask people if they are Christian Scientists,” said Leorma Lester, an attendant at the Northridge reading room on Reseda Boulevard across from Chili’s restaurant. “If they want to ask questions, that’s fine.

“One man comes in regularly and reads while eating his lunch. I don’t know who he is.”

Now, food and drink is verboten with most reading room attendants, including Sylvia Alderman, the librarian for the Van Nuys reading room just off Van Nuys Boulevard on Sylvan Street.

“It’s like a library--you wouldn’t walk in with food,” she said.

At the same time, the Van Nuys reading room might benefit from loosening up a little. Open from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Monday through Saturday, it seems perfect for a lunchtime break for people with business at the nearby Valley Civic Center. But few barristers or bureaucrats come by.

Are there ever days when no one at all drops by?

“Oh, yes,” she said.

Every congregation is required by the denomination to operate a reading room. As the May, 1992, issue of the Christian Science Journal notes, “reading rooms were popular in Mrs. Eddy’s day” in hotels, on ocean liners and in train stations.

Church leadership, while faithful to the founder’s century-old dictates, has encouraged local librarians to update reading rooms with computers and VCRs as well as children’s literature and tapes.

The typical reading room has a front section where one can purchase church literature, including a new edition of Eddy’s “Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures,” the church’s basic text first published in 1875.

The back section has chairs of varying comfort, writing desks, shelves of biblical reference works, church journals and copies of the Christian Science Monitor, the church-owned national newspaper.

The better-endowed reading rooms sport a personal computer to research Bible verses and a television to watch videotaped Bible lessons. But the poor location, and lack of electronic aids, of some rooms reflect a decline in Christian Science membership since World War II.

Christian Science has also been hurt financially by ambitious but unsuccessful cable TV ventures in the 1980s. In recent decades, churches in Tujunga, San Fernando, Pacoima-Panorama City and the 2nd Church in Glendale have folded as the demographics of the East Valley changed.

The most recent closing was the North Hollywood congregation on Morrison Street west of Lankershim Boulevard. The sign on the building today, written mostly in Korean, identifies it as a Presbyterian Church.

Telephone directories list a reading room in the Magnolia Park section of Burbank, but a “For Rent” sign hangs on the door there. A church spokesman said the sponsoring congregation has relocated the room to its church property in Burbank.

Reading room visibility to traffic and pedestrians is deemed important, however.

The Encino reading room, a half-block north of Ventura Boulevard, has experienced a dropoff of visitors since the Northridge earthquake closed the U. S. Post Office next door.

The Woodland Hills church leadership is currently debating whether to rent space in a mall or build a room in front of its church on a residential street. Its reading room is now behind the church.

The largest Valley reading room is at 12360 Ventura Blvd. in Studio City. “We own this building and have been here since 1962,” said Susan Carr of North Hollywood, spraying the front section with an orange-scented air freshener.

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It has the longest hours--8 a.m. to 9 p.m. most days--and a plush carpet rather than the utilitarian carpeting found in most reading rooms. The yellow carpet looked so inviting to one jobless young woman once that she stretched out on the floor.

“She said, ‘My back hurts,’ ” said Carr, sympathetically.

The reading rooms occasionally attract visitors who simply want to use the restroom, get change for a parking meter or to snooze--showing little interest in Christian Science or Bible study.

Keeping a balance between tolerance and firmness is a task for attendants at the Studio City reading room and at another red-brick-faced facility on North Brand Boulevard in Glendale.

“A lot of them are homeless, but they can stay as long as they want,” said volunteer Sylvia Hollenbeck at the Glendale reading room.

“Some people are cold. They get comfortable and warm, so I have to wake up some of them.”