Faith and Blue Weekend at Third Church of Christ Scientist

People’s Newspapers – Dallas, Texas

Third Church of Christ Scientist is partnering with Dallas and Highland Park officers for National Faith and Blue Weekend.

Third Church of Christ, Scientist in Dallas is continuing its outreach with local first responders, this time partnering with the Dallas and Highland Park police departments.

The festivities at the church at 4419 Oak Lawn Avenue Oct. 7 begin with a meet-and-greet at 10 a.m. with doughnuts, hot chocolate, games for children, and more, followed by remarks and a question-and-answer session with officers.

National Faith & Blue Weekend is a collaborative effort to build bridges and break biases. We can’t wait to see you there!

For more information about the event, visit Third Church of Christ Scientist’s website.

Iconic Mother Church Sunday School building to become new home of the Boston Youth Symphony

By A.Z. Madonna Boston Globe Staff

After over half a century based at the Boston University College of Fine Arts, Boston Youth Symphony Orchestras (BYSO) has announced that it has acquired a space of its own at 235 Huntington Ave. at the southern end of the Christian Science Plaza, across the street from Symphony Hall. There, it plans to establish the new BYSO Youth Center for Music.

The BYSO negotiated a long-term lease with the First Church of Christ, Scientist to acquire the 30,000-square-foot Brutalist building, which was built in 1971 and designed by Araldo Cossutta, an associate in I.M. Pei’s architectural firm. Renovations to the space are scheduled to begin in mid-April, and the BYSO plans to start hosting the first programs in the new space in the fall.

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Andrew W. Hartsook

Andrew W. Hartsook of Zanesville, Ohio, passed away on Thursday, August 31, 2023. Andrew was a Christian Scientist and author of the book “Christian Science After 1910.” For 36 years Andrew was editor and publisher of a quarterly, 4-page mailed newsletter for Christian Scientists called “The Banner.”

Link to news report»

Link to “Christian Science After 1910” book on Amazon»

Who Best Avoided the COVID Religion?

The Epoch Times – Jeffrey A. Tucker

“The lockdowns were a major blow to religious institutions and practice. Every major survey shows that attendance at weekly religious services is down from pre-lockdown times….”

“The religious congregations that resisted COVID-19 controls and shutdowns have likely earned trust and loyalty from their members….”

“The Amish never paid the slightest attention to the disease frenzy that shut down the rest of society….And so there simply was never a chance that these people would stop worshiping God in the way their tradition demands….”

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What happened to the Indigenous American Christian Science Church?

This paper was prepared by Spindrift Research. www.spindriftresearch.org
(updated 26 August, 2023)

A Christian Application of Science

“If you are less appreciated today, than your forefathers, wait ― for if you are as devout as they, and more scientific, as progress certainly demands, your plant is immortal.”  (Pulpit and Press, page 10:20 – 23)

When people decide on doing a project, they ordinarily check to see if it’s relatively safe to do; this process is known as checking for risk management.  Sometimes, people decide that they must forego risk management for a greater purpose.  Mrs. Eddy’s risk management was turned off when she came to realize she was uniquely positioned to connect Christianity with Science.  She was in special circumstances to do it.  Just like when the Founding Fathers realized they were in special circumstances and gave up everything to seek freedom.

Few Americans know anything about this all-American church called Christian Science.

Christian Science reframes questions about reality.  Basic is: God is Mind and Mind is pure intelligence.  The human mind imitates pure intelligence within a simulation of creation and invents crafty forms of deceit.  Christian Science takes artificial intelligence very seriously. Attempts to curtail AI and AGI will likely fail.  Why?  AI, (and the media), knows how to hypnotize and mesmerize.  We should strive to answer, “Do we think?  Or do we think we think?”  We should strive not to be an NPC, a person who can’t think for himself.   It’s almost natural for the human mind to have a negative outlook on the human scene.  It takes effort to draw upon the pure divine Mind and have a positive outlook. Happiness also takes effort.  Unhappiness takes no effort. 

“For centuries – yea, always – natural science has not been considered a part of any religion, Christianity not excepted.”  (Science and Health, page 98:22)

Within the religious culture of the Nineteenth-Century, Christians listened for “a still small voice.”  (1st. Kings 19:12)  Within this burgeoning industrial and scientific culture, Mrs. Eddy inserted, listen for “The ‘still, small voice’ of scientific thought….”  (Ibid., page 559:8)

“Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.” ― Mike Tyson

The Sociological shift from curious to incurious.

Christian Scientists discuss internal issues about what has gone astray within their church.  These issues include, “All we need is more healing.”  These in-house issues won’t be discussed here.  The external macro-issues of American society and Christian Science will be discussed.

What happened to the deference and curiosity Christian Science enjoyed in America until the 1950s and 60’s?  Energy is followed by the public. Christian Science was Apple Computer for Christianity.  Somehow it became Blockbuster.

There are sociological macro-reasons for the diminishment of curiosity and deference.  There continues to be cultural hairpin turns for society since the introduction of the laws of Truth, Life, and Love. After the 1950s, Christian Science has been described as a gourmet restaurant with an innovative menu but with no food anyone wants to eat.  For the moral tones it set:

Science is the “stranger that is within thy gates,” remembered not, even when its elevating effects practically prove its divine origin and efficacy.  (Science and Health, page 146:20) 

Generally speaking, the Christian clergy has never cared for Christian Science, but the American culture respected it for years.  The Christian clergy dismissal is mostly because of Jesus Christ.  Preachers complain Christian Science sees Jesus Christ as a Fixer not a Savior.  The clergy also complains about the word Mother being used for God. The values offered are not approved as Biblically correct.

Jesus as Savior, Messiah, Mediator, and Shepherd are acceptable terms for Jesus.  Christian Science adds Jesus as a Scientist who demonstrates advanced laws of Love.  This description has irked Christians and clergy who point to “being led astray” by false doctrine when “someone comes to you and preaches a Jesus other than the Jesus we preached.” (II Corinthians 11:3 – 4, NIV)

Generally, the culture’s respect was due to an indigenous American church attempted to make Christianity hip to the times of innovation and discovery. Christians are startled that Christian Science is preoccupied with good and evil.

Remarking on the perspectives of Christianity, science, and technology, Christian Science emphasizes that the God-principle is missing from the scientific worldview.  The assertion that Christianity has a scientific side has been a heresy to say.  On its own terms, Christianity should gradually end-run heresy and expand on science for its own desire for relevance and subsistence.

From 1866 until about 1945 – 1950, Christian Science was a novel intellectual curiosity and was even considered edgy by some observers of American culture and religion.  Here was a church that was trying to speak the scientific language of the American culture.  Thinkers in science, medicine, and journalism were drawn to it.  In Boston, Christian Science was the talk of the town.  Christian Science fit well with inventions and the Industrial Revolution.  Commenting on trends in the culture, comedians had their reliable Christian Science satire.  Humorist, Mark Twain, authored a six-hundred-page love and hate book about Mary Baker Eddy.

Twain turned down meeting Mrs. Eddy in person.  It’s surprising he didn’t meet with her, as she could read the room and the temperature of the culture with the best of her male contemporaries.  Mrs. Eddy didn’t think about provincial goals.  She thought about how veritable ideas synchronize and work in systems.

Albert Einstein probably read but certainly heard Mrs. Eddy’s “Scientific Statement of Being” that contrasts matter and Spirit when he attended a Sunday church service.  It is well established that he attended church services repeatedly.  For example, I have a friend, Peter Jaeger, who went to my high school, New Trier High School.  When Peter was nine years old, he and his mother were in Fifth Church in New York City for a Sunday morning service.  They were sitting in a side-aisle and Albert Einstein was sitting a couple of rows behind them.

After the service, Peter’s mother, Loretta, walked to the aisle and met Einstein.  Dr. Einstein said to those greeting him, something to the effect, he appreciated Mary Baker Eddy bringing scientific concepts into her church.  He thought someday, referring to the pews around him, more churches could be filled with congregants who think in a similar way.

In 1968, the two prominent Democratic candidates for president were Robert Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey.  After Senator Kennedy was killed by an assassin, Hubert Humphrey became the candidate.  Shortly before election day, a reporter asked him what was his fondest childhood memory.  Never asked that question before, Humphrey replied, “My fondest childhood memory was listening to my grandmother talk about Christian Science.”

Nadir under Radar

What moved Christian Science into the shade?  Sociology plays a role.  During the 1950s, 60’s and 70’s, unanticipated sociological events occurred which sunk Christian Science below the public’s curiosity radar.  Here are examples:

• In the early 1950s, L. Ron Hubbard launched Scientology which became a certified religion in the United States.  L. Ron Hubbard was determined to have his Scientology confused with Christian Science.  Scientology has been confused with Christian Science (especially in Hollywood).  It seems overnight there were numerous Scientologists in Hollywood.  Previously, there were numerous Christian Scientists in Hollywood.  For example, Alan Young (of Mister Ed) has a picture of himself with Elisabeth Taylor and Marilyn Monroe as teenagers in the Christian Science Sunday School.  The book, Christian Science in Beverly Hills, gives examples of how celebrities, directors, and movie executives positively influenced Hollywood.  Five examples are It’s a Wonderful Life, The Gene Autry Show, Kukla, Fran and Ollie, A Charlie Brown Christmas, and Star Trek.  A Hollywood producer said, when directors needed an actor to stand on a corner of a street scene and read a newspaper, often copies of the Christian Science Monitor were used.  Several members of the Disney family were Christian Scientists.  Russian composer, Sergei Prokofiev, was a Christian Scientist who wrote Peter and the Wolf which impressed Walt Disney.  Mr. Disney planned to blend the story into his movie Fantasia, but World War II broke out.  Peter and the Wolf, became its own animated story in 1946.  
• During the 1960s, the Christian Science optimistic and moral influences on movie storylines and scripts went dark.  Of the topics the Christian Science Church works to clarify in the public’s eye, Scientology is second on the list.  First on the list is the rumor Mrs. Eddy has a telephone buried with her.  She intends to dialup her phone to reach her Boston Board of Directors.
• Early in the 1950s, Jack Warner of Warner Brothers noticed the attention Christian Science was receiving in Hollywood and Los Angeles.  In LA alone, there were forty-five churches and forty-five Christian Science Reading Rooms.  Warner saw Christian Science as a social phenomenon ready to be made into a movie.  He met with choreographer, author, and Christian Science practitioner, Arthur Corey, about a movie script.  Corey wrote a screenplay called Prophetess.  The Prophetess script begins with Mary Baker Eddy’s sons and former students suing her to get her money.  Newspaper editors decide how to report it.  Actress and Christian Scientist Mary Pickford was picked to play Mrs. Eddy.  An alternate choice was actress Joan Crawford.  The Mother Church prevented the movie from going into production.
• In the 1950s and 60’s, among the many Jewish members of the church, there was a feeling of guilt they survived the millions of Jews who were slaughtered during World War II in the Holocaust.  Many fine American Jewish Christian Scientists felt they had to leave the church and return to their Jewish faith and roots.  The enthusiasm and contributions by the Jewish members of the church are sorely missed.  Until World War II, outside the USA, Germany had the most Christian Science churches.  Within the United States, the Jewish religion founded Jewish Science.  Jewish Science was started because too many Jewish adherents became Christian Scientists.
• Christian Science teaches mankind should eventually discover matter has no destructive power.  It’s the energy of the thought-waves behind matter that is destructive.  In 1945, the world was ominously changed with the apocalyptic example of the atomic bomb instantaneously killing thousands of people in Japan.  This instantaneous deadly example, where matter as energy could potentially destroy every living thing on earth, has amplified fear of matter worldwide.  The atomic bomb and nuclear warfare have shaken confidence and faith that matter lacks the power to destroy man.  The worldwide fear of the coronavirus has also amplified the insidious fear of matter as a demonic destroyer of man.
• In the late 1960s, almost invisibly, state legislatures ruled colleges and universities could no longer ask what was a student’s religious preference on entrance forms.  Young adults could not find their own religious family groups on campus, and the campus ministries could not find out who were the new students to invite to their meetings.  Campus church and religious groups were blinded by law.  Campus religious groups were not allowed to know what students were associated with their own groups.  Campus ministries, such as Christian Science Organizations, have shrunk, suffered or closed.  A quiet undermining crusade promoted a law which successfully undermined religion on campus and college students.  The activists knew, without ministries being allowed to receive the names of students, “You can’t tell the players without a scorecard.”  Untold damage was done to campus religious groups.  No wonder Sunday School classes are empty.  You are deprived from whom you invite.
• Christian Science reached its peak number of worldwide churches in 1961.  Looking forward to the year 1966, congregants were enthusiastic to prepare themselves for the Centennial of Christian Science.  After the 1966 Centennial Celebration was over, there wasn’t another project to anticipate that compared and stirred the same enthusiasm and support.  There were attempts such as building a new headquarters and having the Christian Science Monitor going on cable television to compete with the networks and CNN.  It’s believed that Fox News and the CBN News Channel filled an opening which could have been The Monitor Channel had Christian Scientists seen and supported the cable vision.
• In California during the 1960s and 70’s, members of the church left Christian Science in droves.  The reasons for the exodus are murky.  A speculation is, Californians tend to try liberal, innovative and far-out groups such as the Human Potential Movement, the Children of God, Scientology, EST, and New Age variations of Christianity, or they drop out of Christianity.  I know of a successful California man who quit his job and Christian Science.  He joined the Jim Jones cult.  He drank the Kool-Aid in Jonestown, Guyana.  How this man was hypnotized away from his Christian Science roots remains a mystery.
• With the advancements of science and technology, new comfort distractions have emerged for every American.  An unanticipated consequence of progress, comfort, and ease of lifestyles has been less attendance at church and Sunday school for children (for most Christians).  A seven-day week use to have Sunday, when adults and children attended church and Sunday School for a weekly spiritual tune-up.  For our American society today, the Church has become less important or nonexistent as a center of family activities.
• Since the 1950s, with the floodtide of medical advancements, spiritual healing by prayer has become labeled as a dangerous primitive behavior by the medical profession and by the Media.  Examples of failures of spiritual healing for children have been featured by the Media.  Children and adults who are not immediately seen by a doctor are perceived by society as being anti-medicine, nonconformist, anti-progress, and in a cult.
• Reading some Christian and sociological definitions of what describes a religious cult, a belief in spiritual healing is a sign a person belongs to a cult.  How ironic it is that several Christian denominations and groups include spiritual healing.  Historically, Christian Science had enough impact on other Christian groups to convince them to include healing in their theology. 
• A bright spot is, derived from studies of spirituality and prayer, ninety medical schools offer courses on spirituality in medicine.  Also, the church Board of Directors is on the prowl for people with scientific credentials to help explain Christian Science.
• Christian Science relies on reading and study in Reading Rooms with the hope and expectation that reading promotes healing for humans.  Currently, fewer people read books and articles because of growing-ubiquitous technologies.  Despite voluminous published volumes of healings and fresh explanations of theology found in Reading Rooms, some secrets have been kept about key events in Christian Science history.  These events are gaps of information which amount to lost history.  During the 1950s and 60’s, the students who had had direct teachings from Mrs. Eddy were fading out.  Without these original practitioners and students to ask, a number of secrets were lost or the secrets were shared with a few people who rarely re-shared the secrets.  Fortunately, a few maverick students and practitioners recorded information not meant for public consumption.  But some history has not survived.  Here is an example of a recovered event.  For some reason, there was a deliberately lost experiment about prayer on a plant by Mrs. Eddy.  One speculation is, the experiment was an embarrassment for the church, thus it was erased from history and our memory.  Particulars of the plant experiment can be read in Chapter Thirteen of Spiritual Dynamite under “Missing bloom details.” One bright light is the unspiteful, kind, and being fair to all concerned news coverage found in the newspaper, the Christian Science Monitor.  The reputation of the Monitor is respected by journalists and foreign leaders.  The Monitor strives to publish unbiased news.  The Monitor’s biases are shown on the Editorial Page.  The Christian Science Monitor is an idealistic attempt at presenting the most objective news stories of the world.  But conservatives see the news stories in the Monitor as globalist and left leaning. The conservative’s appraisal is, many stories don’t come from an unbiased premise but rather assume the premises made popular by those pushing the New World Order of a one world government.

The cruel twist is, in the Twenty-First Century many people prefer to read a news story that is slanted toward their liberal or conservative biases.  People prefer the news that agrees with them.  When you try to be objective, when you try to be Switzerland, both sides hate you.

One big theme of Christian Science news coverage is, are you being fed one side of a story and is the story being reported without context?  Without the whole story, you are being hypnotized and emotionalized to believe one side of a story to be the truth.  Mrs. Eddy started the Monitor to counter the hypnosis driving many stories reported in the news media.  Careful reporting is needed because the news media is a pathway for hypnotic persuasion.  In her day, the hypnosis was labeled yellow journalism.  In our century, the hypnosis is called fake news.

The Monitor tries to bring dialogue, healing, and seeking nearest to the truth to reporting the news.  Being informed on the context of a story, along with Bible study and prayer, helps you wake up from your own hypnosis with its emotions.

For readers who desire to pray indirect prayers about world issues, the Christian Science Monitor provides selected issues to ponder and put on a prayer list.

A description of the Monitor and the way it reports news is: “More information will not resolve the tough issues for humanity.  Only more understanding of the truth and the backstories behind the issues can.”  The backstories that don’t make the news are often published in the Monitor.  Mrs. Eddy wrote, “The object of the Monitor is to injure no man, but to bless all mankind.”

The Monitor brand can adjust its position when new information may promote positive values that lead to solutions.  There is a psychiatric diagnosis called Headline Stress Disorder.  The Monitor wants its readers to not get sick when reading negative news.  Comedian, Jack Benny, said, “Don’t get me wrong.  The Christian Science Monitor reports bad news.  You just think it’s better.”

Monitor editor, Erwin Canham, tells the story of the Monitor and defends the freedom of reporters in his book, Commitment to Freedom. With social media, news has to be fast and entertaining signaling that “Good journalism is boring.”

Christian Science Church historian, Robert Peel, records what was different about early students of Christian Science was their sense of urgency and priority.  With the fast pace of the Twenty-first Century, the whole population has different time management priorities.  Fewer people schedule the time to study the Bible and pray about issues.

Those stranger things.

Some other rather strange and unforeseen sociological factors have not helped the church grow either:  For example:

• A shocking divorce rate among Christian Scientists.  Most religious denominations count on having enough intact marriages to sustain the flow of members.
• An upper-class perception of Christian Scientists as prosperous and powerful people in business, politics, and entertainment was diminished to a middle-class perception in the Twenty-first Century.  Sociologically speaking, Christian Scientists have gone from being perceived as wealthy patricians to indebted plebeians.
• When several of Mrs. Eddy’s metaphysical vocabulary words slid into the lexicon and were being spoken by the American public, Webster’s Dictionary published the definitions of the words.  In the Twenty-first Century, these metaphysical definitions have all but disappeared from revised versions of Webster’s Dictionary.  Christian Scientists used to pay and have pertinent quotes of Mrs. Eddy put in print media.  As far as is known, placing quotes isn’t done anymore.
• Christian Science is not inherited but is developed individually.  Most children did not stay interested.  Christian Science is probably the least inheritable church even with great parents.  Mrs. Eddy’s progeny and generations following have no interest in their religious heritage.
• A hundred years before vaccinations became a controversial issue, the Church took a position for its members to prayerfully choose whether or not they wanted to take vaccines.  The Church became entrapped in the anti-vax movement even though many Christian Scientists have their kids and themselves vaccinated.  The religious exemption rule was initiated by Christian Science.  The anticipation behind the religious exemption was, vaccinations could become a slippery slope of American freedoms sneakily being taken away.  Dangers in society start when control of parental decision making is given over to the government.  For example, instead of being strictly a vaccine for the coronavirus, the shot might be to manipulate genetic software.
• Vaccine decisions, concerns, and one’s duty to self, family, and fellow human beings produce a wide range of emotional to reasonable opinions.  Questions about shots should be pondered about The Golden Rule and words like mandatory, freedom, liberty, law-abiding citizenship, chastisement, choice, safety, self-defense, global fear, directed evolution, weaponization, and chemicals used unbeknownst as human software.  Also consider the concepts of the somnolence of children and adults and what does lesser damage when we decide between two or more problematic choices.  Hundreds of thousands of citizens have claimed the church’s “religious exemption.”  Afterward, they might avoid taking the coronavirus shots.  Mary Baker Eddy was against getting shots of liquor but not shots of vaccines.  She recommended getting shots, when shots involve obeying the laws of the community and the land.  She made sure her grandchildren in South Dakota were vaccinated.  She wrote, “Where vaccination is compulsory, let your children be vaccinated, and see that your mind is in such a state that by your prayers vaccination will do the children no harm.” (Miscellany, page 344:30 – 3)  Lingering-vax-effects might require a high state of mind.

These unhelpful sociological changes have cancelled the curiosity factor into the Boston church, which attempts to make Christianity more scientific.  Indigenous Christian Science in America has dropped below the radar of curiosity.

Some positive Exceptions

There are exceptions where Christian Science is acknowledged by society:

• Mrs. Eddy has shown that willingness to have curiosity is important for out-of-the-box thinking.  She wrote, “What is the Principle and rule of Christian Science?  Infinite query!”  (Miscellaneous Writings, page 337:7 – 8)  The Christian clergy has detested Christian Science for asking too many peripheral, philosophical, and theological questions that detract from Jesus Christ.  These questions hurt faith and create doubt.  However, when you watch Christian television, more Christians than ever before are being curious and asking similar questions.
• One place where Christians won’t budge is on the subject of evolution.  Charles Darwin’s evolution and subsequent modifications are rejected and decried by a significant slice of Christianity to the present.  Christian Science points out, if men and women are reflections of God as Light, how material men and women evolved from chemicals isn’t a showstopper.  Christian Science postulates that the material creation is very much like a simulation of reality.  Mortal mind is the programmer and developer. The reflection of reality isn’t intelligible by the physical senses.  The reflected creation is unaffected by the simulation of creation.  To know there is Truth and Life outside the simulation is the key to victory. Remarkably, that people live in a simulation is being pondered by thinkers.  A prayer for the earth is: “Let ‘Thy Kingdom come’ creation reach the simulation.”
• Christian Science has been labeled as avant-garde Christianity.  Perhaps it fits only from this specific description in Wikipedia: “Avant-garde in music can refer to any form of music working within traditional structures while seeking to breach boundaries in some manner.”
• One blessing of Christianity is the elevation of womanhood.  Nonetheless, there are churches who won’t allow their women to join the clergy.  A pastor near my college said Mrs. Eddy was prohibited to be the leader of her church because God doesn’t allow women to be leaders.  When women clergy are equal to men clergy, the equality is sometimes acknowledged as getting a boost from the early women workers in the Christian Science Church.  Also, the concept of the Motherhood of God existing alongside the Fatherhood of God appears to be reluctantly creeping into some Christian theologies.  Father-Mother God doesn’t jive for some Christians. Occasional journalism awards and compliments are from journalists, politicians, even clergy who acknowledge the fairness of news writing in the Christian Science Monitor.  In Washington D.C., journalists are invited to attend the Monitor News Breakfast which invites newsmakers to be guest speakers.  The Washington Post wrote that the Monitor breakfasts are “one of Washington’s premier journalistic forums.”  President of the United States, Dwight D. Eisenhower, wrote: “With freedom, fairness, and sensitivity, it has recorded the events of our day and written with clarity of its judgments for the morrow.  In its pages are found the facts and opinions upon which intelligent decisions can be firmly based.” Mrs. Eddy foresaw a Christian hyperlink to a scientific future.  Occasionally, there is recognition that she was years ahead of her time by teaching about the nature of reality as it relates to quantum physics to simulations.  Christian Science and quantum physics overlap when they pronounce, “Reality is not as it appears to our five physical senses.”  “The mind is the matrix of all matter” wrote Max Planck, Quantum Physicist.  Also, Mrs. Eddy’s irrational belief that our human existence looks more like a simulation is becoming a rational theory. The theory of living in a simulation is considered by thinkers such as Elon Musk and Rizwan Virk.
• In our Twenty-first Century, instead of discovering God, we are discovering a simulation.  Christian Science suggests discovering both.

The cultural shifts of society may turn in a new direction toward perceiving what Christian Science perceives.  “The logic of events” may dictate the future of our perceptions. Perhaps an odd logic of events, such as the unexpected chance that brought the tiny Illinois Bottlecap Balloon Brigade to national awareness—when their one-hundred-dollar ham-radio-monitored balloon was shot down by a four-hundred-thousand-dollar missile—will bring to public awareness the contributions to civilization by the tiny Christian Science Church.

Arcadis IBI Group Completes Restoration and Repair of Boston’s Iconic Christian Science Plaza

BOSTON, MA / ACCESSWIRE / October 24, 2022 / ArcadisIBI Group, an award-winning landscape architectural design and environmental planning practice, is pleased to announce the completion of a multi-year restoration and repair project for the Christian Science Plaza, one of Boston’s most iconic urban landscapes….

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From ‘thoughts and prayers’ to prayer that moves

By the Rev. Jarred Mercer | The Daily News | Newburyport, MA

…Using the word “prayer” as a way of avoiding action not only betrays a complete lack of understanding of the word, it’s also blasphemous.

Uziyah, Amerie, Xavier, Tess, Ellie, Rojelio, Jose, Jailah, Jayce, Nevaeh, Jackie, Annabelle, Eliahana, Makenna, Lexi, Eva, Irma, and others whose names we don’t yet know, whom we can only offer to God in silence, do not need evasive “thoughts and prayers.”

They need prayer that moves,…

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Faith leaders and politicians ask for prayer for Texas shooting victims

By Kelsey Dallas | Deseret News

Religious leaders and politicians are calling on God to comfort the victims of Tuesday’s devastating shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas. As of Wednesday morning, 19 children and two adults have been reported dead.

In formal statements and less formal social media posts, leaders have asked Americans to pray for an end to gun violence and to push elected officials to enact policy changes. Here’s a look at comments made so far:

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SCOTUS Tackles Arguments over Prayer at the 50-Yard Line

Christianity Today | by Daniel Stillman

The US Supreme Court justices spun more than a dozen hypothetical prayer scenarios during oral arguments in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District on Monday….

The court is expected to rule in Kennedy v. Bremerton in early summer.

Click here for complete story: https://www.christianitytoday.com/news/2022/april/praying-coach-scotus-kennedy-bremerton-schools.html

The Supreme Court debates public prayer. So should we.

ReligionNews.com | Opinion | by Jacob Lupfer

Proper spiritual discernment could have sorted out Kennedy v. Bremerton School District years ago….

Ostentatious public prayers do not edify. If anything, they detract from serious Christian devotion. As with street-corner preachers who are well within their right but convince no one, Kennedy’s public postgame prayers were likely little more than a sideshow. The law may broadly permit it, but Christianity does not require it.

In fact, Jesus warned against showy public prayers, saying in the Gosel of Matthew that hypocrites love to pray publicly “that they may be seen of men.” God’s rewards, according to Jesus, flow to those who obey his command, “When thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father.”…

Click here for complete story: https://religionnews.com/2022/04/26/the-supreme-court-debates-public-prayer-so-should-we/