CORRESPONDENCE

To the Editor:

Martin Gardner’s article “Mind Over Matter” (Book Review, Aug. 22) purports to review three books: Mary Baker Eddy’s “Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures;” Dr. Gillian Gill’s 1998 biography, “Mary Baker Eddy”; and Caroline Fraser’s new “God’s Perfect Child: Living and Dying in the Christian Science Church.” Had these books received equal treatment along with their equal billing, the first two books would have considerably redressed the pointed imbalance of the latter.

Clearly the reviewer favors Fraser’s rancorous indictment of Eddy and her church over the scholarly study by Gill. As to the article’s “review” of “Science and Health,” Los Angeles Times readers would have been hard-pressed to find one. The contents of the final edition of “Science and Health”--the culmination of Eddy’s refinement of her ideas in the book over several decades--are barely mentioned. Instead Gardner focuses on the book’s first edition. Though this edition is of genuine historical interest, there were six major revisions that followed.

The story of “Science and Health,” selling more than 100,000 copies annually in 16 languages, will continue to be told in lives healed and transformed. To the many Los Angeles Times readers searching for deeper spirituality and prayer that brings solutions, a reading of “Science and Health” would be of great interest. Certainly, the 42% of Americans who use alternative treatments would be amazed at the review’s reiteration of Fraser’s dismissive attitude toward alternative and mind-body interventions, especially considering the nearly 300 studies documenting the benefits of prayer. Such a view lags sorrowfully behind the course curricula of 64% of American medical schools that now teach complementary and alternative medicine--the near majority of which feature courses in spirituality and healing.

Both Gardner and Fraser place undue reliance on an unreliable source, the 1909 biography of Eddy attributed to Georgine Milmine. Gardner justifiably praises Gill’s “Mary Baker Eddy” as an “impeccably researched biography,” yet his review inexplicably ignores the fact that in more than 20 references to the Milmine biography, Gill thoroughly discredits its sources and conclusions. (Gill’s appendix documents her conclusive evidence against the propagandistic intent of the Milmine volume.)

The review’s blanket statement, “To Christians and skeptics she was an object of ridicule,” is easy to write but unsupported. Consider the words of Clara Barton, founder of the American Red Cross: “Love permeates all the teachings of this great woman [Mary Baker Eddy]. . . . [L]ooking into her life history we see nothing but self-sacrifice and selflessness.” And consider too that many evangelical Christians, including clergy, who have embraced this reinstatement of “primitive Christianity and its lost element of healing” also have recognized Mrs. Eddy as a Christian benefactor whom they deeply respected. Moving accounts of healings experienced through reading “Science and Health” fill that book’s last chapter, including some by those who began as skeptics. Many Christians whose love of the Scriptures has been deepened by the book’s spiritual insights into the Bible credit the book with restoring their faith, their moral dominion and their health. Graciously, Gardner acknowledges these healings: “Stirring testimonies to Christian Science healing, such as those in the back of ‘Science and Health,’ undoubtedly took place. . . .”

These healings have occurred in great numbers and still do. Some 60,000 documented cures have been published by the church. Among children, Christian Science treatment has permanently healed such conditions as multiple head injuries, prenatal hydrocephalus, grand mal epilepsy, severely lacerated kidney, asthma and mononucleosis, all medically diagnosed. To include this record would show the same sort of fairness routinely accorded medical advancements. So would an acknowledgment that Christian Scientists are always free to choose the health care system they deem best for themselves and their children.

Claims for spiritual cures need not escape scrutiny--but what kind of scrutiny? No one would think it fair to focus only on those cases medical doctors don’t cure, or on medical mistakes alone, to assess what the practice of conventional medicine can achieve. Yet, in effect, this is what Gardner and Fraser do by zeroing in on the rare losses of children to Christian Science parents, losses as tragic as those experienced by parents whose children have received medical or other treatments. Those willing to consider the fuller record will see four and five generations of children whose parents have relied on Christian Science as their primary choice for health care, who have been well looked after, consistently healthy and regularly healed of illness and injuries through prayer to God alone.

Despite the article’s repetition of notions such as the church’s “fall” and “financial decay,” its reserves are strong, and other than minor equipment leases, the church is free of debt. Further, despite being well into a major restoration of its international headquarters facilities, the church is devoting increased resources to meeting the growing public interest in the healing ideas of Christian Science. Demands on its international speakers bureau are increasing and recent years have seen wider distribution of “Science and Health” and other publications, including the Christian Science Monitor. Shortwave and domestic radio broadcasts continue to cover much of the world, and information on the church and its publications is available on the Internet.

Finally, what does it say about literary criticism in America today that any author--such as the one here, who never requested access to the church’s historical archives--should be gratuitously praised for a personal attack on the religious faith and practice of fellow citizens, many of whom have served and continue to serve their country with distinction and make substantial contributions in their local communities?

It would be a shame if the biases in Gardner’s review and in Fraser’s book were to persuade anyone to ignore primary sources on Christian Science or to preclude them from deciding on its merits for themselves. Eddy invites the thinker into the pages of “Science and Health.” This book continues to speak for itself, leading spiritual seekers to satisfying answers about how to understand and draw closer to God--resulting in healing and individual well-being.

Gary A. Jones

Manager

Committees on Publication

The First Church of Christ, Scientist

Boston, Mass.

Martin Gardner replies:

I was not asked to review “Science and Health,” nor did I make any effort to do so. The title was added to the other two books by the editors (for readers interested in acquainting themselves with Mrs. Eddy’s writings). If anyone is curious to know what I think of Mrs. Eddy’s Bible, in all its endless revisions, they can buy my “Healing Revelations of Mary Baker Eddy,” soon to be reissued in paperback by Prometheus Books.

Gary Jones ticks off a list of horrible ailments that he claims have been completely cured by Christian Science. You don’t have to believe him. Who diagnosed the ills and confirmed the cures? Christian Science practitioners? Incompetent doctors? One wonders how such awful ills could have gone away if, as Scientists believe, they never existed in the first place.

Yes, some of the cures described in the back of “Science and Health” may have been genuine. Many ailments go away without treatment; others respond to the power of faith in a treatment no matter how bizarre. Christian Science has a dismal record of not providing detailed confirmations of its more miraculous healings. The letters in “Science and Health,” describing such cures, are signed only with initials and without street addresses. This made it difficult to verify facts even at the time and certainly makes it impossible now.

There are claims, for example, that cataracts have been made to disappear. As any ophthalmologist will tell you, this is as impossible as unfrying an egg. There has never been a documented case of reversing the clouding of an eye lens. Patients with a strong belief that they have been cured of cataracts may fancy for a while they are seeing better, but that isn’t confirmation of a cure.

Miraculous testimonials of healing are a dime a dozen in books by the most preposterous of cranks. A faith healer like Oral Roberts can claim he once brought back to life a dead child, but who believes him except other Pentecostals? I recently wrote in “The Skeptical Inquirer” two columns, one on a book about how to cure every ill known to humanity by rubbing the bottoms of feet, the other about a book making similar claims for drinking one’s urine. Both books swarm with stirring testimonials of wonderful cures.

The most shocking statement in Jones’ letter was his equating the deaths of Christian Science children, whose lives could have been saved by medical doctors, with children who die under orthodox medical treatment. That was a hit below the belt.

Christian Science is a non-Christian, nonscientific cult. Whenever such a cult is criticized, you can be certain it will arouse howls of angry protests from true believers. It’s good that so few Christian Scientists have read my biography of Mrs. Eddy. They might have died of unreal apoplexy.

Caroline Fraser replies:

The letter by Gary Jones, spokesman for the Christian Science Church, misrepresents my scholarship in “God’s Perfect Child: Living and Dying in the Christian Science Church,” claiming that I rely on an “unreliable source,” the 1909 biography of Mary Baker Eddy written by Willa Cather and Georgine Milmine. More than 100 end notes in my book refer the reader not to the Cather-Milmine biography but to the church’s own published source on Eddy’s life, the three-volume biography by Robert Peel. Many other notes in my book refer to primary sources on Eddy and the history of Christian Science, not all of which are controlled by the church. As I recount in the book, it was the church’s history of manipulating scholarship on Eddy that led me not to request access to their archives, a request that, in any case, would almost certainly have been denied.

Moreover, I took pains in my book to point out that Christian Scientists are productive members of society, describing the successful careers of Scientists from Ginger Rogers to Joseph Cornell, so Jones’ wounded lament that I have maligned these good citizens is puzzling. I do criticize the overzealous religious practice of Christian Science parents whose medical neglect of conditions ranging from diabetes to meningitis has caused the suffering and deaths of their children, deaths which were not only “tragic,” as Jones would have it, but, more to the point, unnecessary. Such conduct calls into question the moral authority of a church that has, throughout its history, rigidly pursued and enforced an extreme position against medical care that has indeed “transformed” lives but, in many cases, not for the better. Jones would like to paint my analysis as bigotry, but his defensive and inaccurate response is yet another example of the church’s intolerance for constructive criticism.