First Church of Christ, Scientist, Peterborough, New Hampshire
February 12, 2012 (Sunday 7)
First Church of Christ Scientist
26 Concord Street
Peterborough, NH 03458
603.924.7412
Church History: Formerly a residence belonging to the Goyette family, the structure was purchased by the First Church of Christ Scientist and converted to a church during the first half of the twentieth century. The Peterborough Church’s web site is here.
Affiliation: First Church of Christ, Scientist (85,000 members)
Sunday’s Service: This denomination has no clergy, although it does have practitioners and teachers. The church considers its pastor to be the Holy Bible in combination with the Mary Baker Eddy Book, “Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures”. The duties of presenting both the selected biblical passages and the accompanying readings from the Mary Baker Eddy text, “Science and Health”, rotates periodically among the members. The readings for each service during the course of the year are determined by church headquarters in Boston and published in a quarterly pamphlet that is distributed to the satellite churches.
The service began with a Hymn, followed by a Scriptural reading and a silent prayer. After the silent prayer the Lord’s Prayer was recited, notices are read, and a vocalist performs solo with accompaniment from the pianist. After that, an explanatory note is read, which I’ll include here in full, as it does a very good job of explaining the structure of this denominations’s worship service.
Friends: The Bible and the Christian Science textbook are our only preachrs. We shall now read Scriptural texts, and their correlative passages from our denominational textbook; these comprise our sermon.
The canonical writings, together with the word of our textbook, corroborating and explaining the Bible texts in their spiritual import and application to all ages, past, present, and future, constitute a sermon undivorced from truth, uncontaminated and unfettered by human hypotheses, and devinly authorized.
Next is a reading referred to as the Golden Text, which for this week was Isaiah 45:6. A responsive reading, also from Isaiah, followed the Golden Text.
At this point it was time for the sermon, which consisted of seven sections. Each section contained a number of brief biblical passages from old testament and new testament books, which are then supplemented with a number of related passages from Science and Health.
The subject of this Sunday’s sermon was the Soul, and how it relates to the one and only God. The soul, if I understood correctly has a slightly different meaning than it does for mainstream Christianity. Here the soul is the only component of personhood that is considered perfect and permanent.
Following the sermon was the collection, another Hymn, and the reading of the Scientific Statement of Being, along with its correlative scripture, 1 John 3:1-3.
My Thoughts: The extent of my knowledge of Christian Scientists, prior to attending this service, was that they believe in a strong connection between prayer and healing, and that most members of the Church decline medical intervention. I am not going to address that belief here, except to note that what Christian Scientists practice, in their eyes, is not the equivalent of what one commonly thinks of as faith healing, where healing is simply a byproduct of faith.
This is the second consecutive week that I have attended a service without clergy. For the other people present, it was clear that the structure of the service was very familiar to them. The Sunday service is very structured and the subject matter, as I mentioned, is the same in every Church for any particular Sunday. Christian Scientists also have a Wednesday evening service called a Testimony Meeting that has, as I understand it, a more open format. People can speak to provide examples of how prayer has healed them, for example, and scripture can be chosen that has specific application to the local church. If my blog was called “51 Sundays and a Wednesday” I would have perhaps chosen the Testimony meeting to attend.
I have always been interested in the application of textual criticism to the books of the Bible, and I believe as one would expect an agnostic or an atheist to believe. I believe the books in the Bible were written separately and without divine influence. I believe that the authors of the various books of both the new and old testament believed they were writing a document that stood on its own, and did not believe that their writing would necessarily become part of a larger collection at some later date. I believe the Bible is rife with errors, and that many books of the Bible were never meant to be taken literally. And of course, framing those beliefs, I do not believe that God exists.
I mention the above things because for me, the most difficult thing about relating to this Sundays sermon was was the way that the sermon stitched together various bits of scripture for, what was for me, no good reason. As an example, section 1 of the sermon went from Leviticus 26:1 to Leviticus 26:11-12; then to Genesis 31:3; then to Genesis 32:1 followed by Genesis 32:24-30; and next to Jerimiah 23:23-24. Then the point of these texts were driven home by a couple of different passages from the previously mentioned Science and Health book.
While I don’t have a problem with a pastor providing a sermon that touches on multiple unrelated biblical passages in support of the subject of his sermon, it nevertheless seemed a bit strange today to have unrelated biblical passages stitched together the way that it is done by the Christian Scientists. Without a significant amount of homework on the part of the worshipper, it’s impossible to come to a decision about whether the selected passages are being used in context, or if they are just words that seem to work with the words selected from other passages.
I recognize that I am over simplifying what I experienced today, but for me it was difficult to relate to this service in a meaningful way.
The church members were friendly and welcoming both before and after the service, and as I’ve said before, it seems to me that community and friendship tend to be the primary drivers for many people who regularly attend church services. One of the downsides of writing this blog is that I drop in to a service, meet some really nice people, and then disappear, as the parameters of this project preclude me from making return visits.
One of the lay readers was kind enough to give me a brief tour of the building after the service was over, and it was nice to be able to see the upstairs where Sunday School is held. This was a beautiful home in its day, and for the most part, it maintains its original character and architectural details in a way that is rare among residences that have been converted for commercial or public use.
I’ve never gone to a Christian Science service, but one of my close friends years ago grew up in the faith and went on to be a Marxist materialist. He quoted his mother as saying things like “There is no truth or reality in Matter”, the exact opposite of materialism. An older physics professor at U Mass. Lowell, who is a Christian Scientist and of whom I’m fond, is a living demonstration that the church’s doctrine is not anti-science, so I am uncertain as to what the church stands for. I know that a great deal of fine music has come from it, though.
The idea that simply reading or hearing a set of passages from a holy text, not obviously related to each other, is healing or enlightening somehow seems more Hindu or Muslim than Christian. Thanks for telling us what it was like to be there.
When I wrote that the texts were not related to each other, I meant only that there was no intent of the authors to align their excerpts in the way that it was done. I do believe the texts are very carefully chosen because despite the fact that they come from books that are unrelated, the subject matter itself is considered to be consistent across the selected texts. Perhaps I didn’t make that as clear as I could have.
Hi David…
Glad you could attend the service and the most important thing about church to me is that you
felt welcome and at home.
We have a great definition of church in Science and Health..” Church: The structure of Truth and Love; whatever rests upon and proceeds from Divine Principle.”
There is more to the quote but I guess for me, all of us are the Church(you too!) and hopefully can let out the light of Love. Love is the motivational force. Best, Marsha Whitney
Great report, David. Are you going to attend any Mormon services? This is so interesting to me. I think of religions the way I do of art or music. It’s a way to express our reaction to the ideas of divinity and transcendence; some are colorful and whimsical…some staid…even severe. What I believe, what I think is true defies connection to any particular religion, but I can appreciate other people’s expression as long as it doesn’t trample me.
Do the sermons connect specific ailments to conditions of the soul? I think about Eastern Medicine here…acupuncture and such…we have no idea how it works and the whole idea of mapping a person’s Chi…well, it is a quantum physics without electron microscopes concept to me and yet, it seems to work for me.
Ah! The things that can’t be weighed or measured and yet still exist…or perhaps it ALL can be weighed and measured if we had the right tools?
Thanks again for doing this. It is SO interesting!
Hi David, thanks for including our church in your tour of Christian churches this year. It was very nice to have you there. And you’ve written a fair report. I appreciate your clarification on the relation of the Bible citations. Links between passages are found throughout the Bible that corroborate a given truth such as God’s love for His creation.
To speak to Pat’s question about healing, Christian Science addresses the many varied problems that we all deal with as a need to enlarge our understanding about just how infinite God’s love and power are. There is not a specific treatment for cancer and another for a cold, for instance. Many times, Christ Jesus’ and other’s healings in the Bible begin with “Fear not” and then go on to prove God’s presence and love for His children—everyone—in the result of a healing. Our fears/doubts tend to be specific—we might feel unloved, or scared of failure, or any number of things. These fears show up in our experience as things going wrong in our bodies or lives. Christian Science treatment addresses the root issue of the problem by helping the person see the literal all-mightiness of the all-loving Almighty as the actual spiritual truth of the situation—and our being.
In my experience, nothing—I mean nothing—comes close to PROVING God’s love as when I have gotten an insight on how God loves me, or is so completely good, or is so universally true, or… and a pain, a flu symptom, a distress is suddenly just gone—and I KNOW firsthand that God is with me and I am safe.
Anyway, that’s what the Christian Science Church is about, more or less. And you’re very welcome to come to our Wednesday testimony meetings (7PM) and Sunday Services (10AM). We have a website and links for more info if you’re interested:
http://www.christiansciencepeterborough-nh.com/
Danis, thanks for the clarification and the kind comments. One of the difficult aspects of writing these articles is that I often (most often) do not have as much knowledge as I would like about the theological underpinnings of a particular denomination. Anytime someone is able to provide additional information is a very welcome event. Thank you. I enjoyed attending the service in Peterborough.
It’s been a pleasure, David, and a credit to you that you’re so open to the additional input and comments of others. Later today I was thinking how understanding something and proving it true are what make any science. Students of Christian Science study and pray to understand God the way Christ Jesus taught, and to see the proof the way he showed it and expected of his followers.
Looking forward to seeing you some Wednesday night—whenever the spirit moves you.
Hi again David,
Just wanted you to know that I’m enjoying thinking about what you wrote and/or said—that the books of the Bible were each written as their own entity, and not expecting to be compiled into the collection we know as the Bible. It’s a point I’ve just not thought about before in quite this way, and am enjoying it. So thanks.
Hi David, I see you kept it up at least through March. I hope you’re finding some satisfaction with your church tour effort. And I hope you’re finding Science and Health at least an interesting read.
I want to invite you—and anyone reading this if you post it—to our church’s annual Christian Science Healing lecture.
Monday, June 11 at 7PM in the Peterborough Historical Society at 19 Grove St.
It’s a free, one-hour event to introduce folks to Christian Science ideas and to explain how God’s power heals—including examples—and why it’s a helpful and reliable choice for healthcare.
This year’s speaker is Martha Moffett, a Christian Science healing practitioner, teacher, and speaker from St. Paul, MN. Her topic is “Christian Science Healing: A Demand of the Times” the theme being derived from a statement by Mary Baker Eddy, “Metaphysical healing, or Christian Science, is a demand of the times. Every man and every woman would desire and demand it, if he and she knew its infinite value and firm basis.” In these times of intense interest in health care, personally and nationally, this talk contributes in a positive way to that discussion. Not politically, but in terms of a good, effective, reasonable way to care for oneself.
It would be great to see you there.
Best,
Danis