Christian Science polity in crisis

Christian Century, March 3, 1993 by Stephen Gottschalk

IN STRUGGLING WITH the problem of authority in the church, Peel observes, Eddy sought to avoid both the "spiritual anarchy of the Protestant diaspora" and the "centralized absolutism" so easily subject to corruption. So while giving the board broad administrative authority, she also checked and balanced its powers in several ways. First, the board's power derives wholly from the Manual, first published in 1895 and revised and augmented until Eddy's death. While the Manual originated as codification of by-laws she had formulated for the church, Eddy came to see it as an indispensable guide to the church's future growth. Its by-laws, she wrote, "sprang from necessity, the logic of events--from the immediate demand for them as a help that must be supplied to maintain the dignity and defense of our Cause." And she wrote into three Manual by-laws, as well as in a series of deeds of trust for the land on which the church stands, the provision that the Manual could not be altered after her death.

Second, while the directors have extensive powers within the Mother Church, that church is but one of three elements within the total structure of the Church of Christ, Scientist, spelled out in the Manual. Branch churches function under the Manual by-laws prescribing rules for their formation and order of services. But they are otherwise free to conduct their own affairs democratically, electing readers and church officers from among members of their own congregations. There is also a third power bloc within the church structure over which the board has sharply limited power: the associations of pupils of teachers of Christian Science (practitioners authorized by the church to instruct a class of 30 serious students annually). Such associations, of which there are hundreds, can be dissolved only if a teacher is disciplined by the board under the Manual and not at all after a teacher's demise.

Board members are themselves also subject to the Manual's discipline and have no more right to violate those by-laws than they have to change them. The Manual does not provide for a mechanism to oust the board by popular vote of the membership, but it does include two provisions that apply directly to the exercise of its duties. The Committee on Finance, which oversees church expenditures, can request the directors' resignation if they have not properly administered church funds. In addition, members have the responsibility to complain to the clerk of the Mother Church if the board is not fulfilling its primary duty of overseeing church officers. If such a complaint be found valid, the Manual stipulates that the board shall perform their duties or resign.

A useful summary of the board's role was provided by W. A. Dane, who served as its legal attorney for many years: "This Manual is the source and the measure, the limitation, of the responsibilities and the powers of the Board of Directors, and they are governed and controlled by its provisions; and in that respect they are the administrative unit of a highly developed form of constitutional church government." The statement was made during a serious dispute from 1919 to 1921 between the directors and the trustees of the Christian Science Publishing Society, in which the trustees claimed for the Publishing Society virtual autonomy from the church. The dispute ended with a reaffirmation by the Supreme Court of Massachusetts of Eddy's intent for a unified form of church government.