God's Perfect Child: Living and Dying in the Christian Science Church (Hardcover)

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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

In God's Perfect Child: Living and Dying in the Christian Science Church, Caroline Fraser delivers the most intelligent, humane, and even-handed history yet published of this important American religion. God's Perfect Child begins by telling the life story of Mary Baker Eddy, who founded Christian Science in 1879. Eddy built the church from a fringe sect into a mainstream religion whose wealth and power exceeded that of many Protestant denominations in the mid-20th century--and were considerably augmented by the church's once-popular newspaper, the Christian Science Monitor.

Fraser, a literary critic and poet who was raised a Christian Scientist, has a relentless analytic bent and an acute eye for physical detail, both of which are in evidence on every page of this book. Her stories of parents whose attempts at faith-healing resulted in their children's deaths are especially poignant. These stories also illuminate and analyze the fears and pains that have plagued many Christian Scientists who subscribe to Eddy's belief that individuals can control their physical destiny by force of faith. Ultimately, Fraser has little sympathy for the obdurate self-reliance advocated by Christian Scientist doctrine, which she sees as a forerunner to the extremist paranoia of contemporary cults. "The suggestibility, infatuation, and enthusiasm that sparked Christian Science ... lies behind our current anxious fixations on imaginary perils and medical conspiracies," Fraser writes. "Florid though they may seem, such fears can have far from imaginary consequences."

The goal of Fraser's book is to track down and annihilate irrational fears in the religion of her childhood; her reason for doing so, however, exudes an undeniably spiritual grace: "Should we continue to pursue [these fears], our providences will surely grow ever more remarkable." --Michael Joseph Gross

From Publishers Weekly

Freelance writer Fraser spent her childhood practicing the teachings of Christian Science. She was told that she was "God's Perfect Child" and that any errors she made, including being carsick every Sunday as she and her family traveled to her grandparents' house, were due to her "Mortal Mind." Although she left the church before she entered college, Fraser acknowledges that Christian Science is "profoundly complex" and "worth understanding in its own right." She sets out in this scintillating religious history to show the good, but especially the harm, that Christian Science has done. She opens with a brief biography of Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of Christian Science, whose Science and Health is studied reverentially by church members. She reveals Baker Eddy's fear of the material world and the ways in which she fashioned this fear into a religion that resists the advances of the scientific age. Fraser traces the development of Christian Science from a small sect to today's large political and religious organization that attracts numerous followers eager to embrace its messages of human perfectibility and self-reliance. In the course of her history, the author also briefly examines the lives of some famous Christian ScientistsADoris Day, Carol Channing and Mr. Ed's Alan YoungAand their contributions to the church. But, Fraser's history is also a rousing expos?. Not only does she reveal what she sees as Mary Baker Eddy's neuroses, but she also delves into what she calls the church's "pernicious" teachings that illness is not real (it's only the "Mortal Mind" obscuring the "Divine Mind") and that people can heal themselves without the benefit of medical help. Fraser combines episodes from her own experience with an evenhanded historical analysis in this first-rate social and religious history. (Aug.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 576 pages
• Publisher: Metropolitan Books; 1st edition (August 15, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0805044302
• ISBN-13: 978-0805044300
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 5.8 x 1.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (100 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,354,108 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Facing the music: "Divine Truth" in the key of 'D'...for disillusioning, December 6, 2006

By	R. Anderson "Philological Pop" (Nashville, TN) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Whatever your beliefs, and whether you are a former Christian Scientist or a continuing member of the Mother Church, you owe it to yourself to be willing find answers about Christian Science from a 3rd party, not your practitioner, your Teacher, your Sunday School Teacher, or your parents. Documented, footnoted, and deliberate, this book takes you beyond the sanitized biographies of MBE and the history of the church put out by the CSP in the Reading Room.

This book was, for me, not only eye-opening in terms of the origins of the church (and the continuing 'dissenting' movement I had no idea existed), but also affirming: Learning that there are others who suffered at the hands of well-meaning, compassionate people who otherwise were caring, giving parents, except when it came to acknowledging your pain, disease, or injury -- when they became emotionally unavailable, sometimes pretending they didn't understand when you asked to go to a doctor...or assuring you that healing would take place as soon as you acknowledged the "Divine Truth" of your relationship with God. When you became no longer an individual but a 'divine idea' that couldn't really be sick, injured, or in pain, because that wasn't part of God and couldn't be part of you either, as His creation.

More shocking still was the realization after reading this book that based on the exclusions for CS treatment still provided in many state laws, abused and neglected animals may have more protections afforded them than the children of praticing Christian Scientists.

Before I get hauled over the coals (immaterial though they may be) for 'not really understanding' the message of Christian Science by some readers:
My Sunday School teacher was at one time 1st reader for my church, 1st reader for the Mother Church, a Class Teacher, Practitioner, and COP representative. If I didn't get the 'real message' of Christian Science from him, I don't know who else I would have been able to 'get' it from.

A word of warning for Christian Scientists: Reading this book may result in a lot of difficult questions to yourself and others. Be prepared to process more than just a few lingering doubts by the time you get to the end of it.

41 of 52 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Accurate and nuanced emperor-has-no-clothes portrayal, October 10, 1999

By A Customer

I grew up in a Christian Science family and tried for years attempting to confirm in my own life that its principles of "healing demonstration" actually worked, before giving it up when I began to actually start thinking for myself partway through college. Based on my own childhood, it was obvious from the lengthy preface's emotionally nuanced, on-target portrayals of the characteristic inner life and other features of a Christian Science upbringing that this was going to be an insightful book.

Many have focused on the corruption, backstabbing, and stonewalling in the Mother Church as documented in Perfect Child, or have argued about the book's portrayal of Mary Baker Eddy. But for me its thematic core lies in its rich storehouse of insight and examples about how the psychology of denial inherent in the practice of C.S. gives rise to the "shadow" side of the movement, both in the individual lives of adherents as well as how this shadow has been collectively woven through-and-through the movement's history from the beginning. As anyone knows from Psychology 101, any time a part of the psyche is suppressed or regarded as unreal, it merely expresses itself in distorted and unconscious ways, and much of this book is about just this fascinating side of Christian Science.

This includes not just the toll taken in terms of wrongful deaths as discussed in the central sections about the "child cases." As tragic as they are, these cases and/or those of permanently disabling untreated illnesses or accidents probably only involve a modicum of Scientist families. The underlying tragedy which affects almost all is the deeply buried, warping, psychological split it creates in adherents who must live in the material world while fantasizing it doesn't have the power or the reality that it does.

The insidious psychological distortions and pretend-games this introduces into individual Christian Scientists' lives (numerous examples of which are heart-wrenchingly and at times farcically documented in Perfect Child) certainly are not what the Church will say it officially sanctions. But overall, a movement is inevitably going to be, has to be, judged by the real people who practice it and the effects it has on them in real life, not the ivory-tower theory behind it, as this book amply demonstrates.

Looking back, I never saw a verifiable instance that Christian Science could "heal" any physical problem of significance that wasn't a typical self-limiting illness such as flu, fever, or cold that wasn't going get better on its own anyway. It amazes me it took me so long to accept the obvious, even if I was just a kid then.

To this day, I remember the kindly little old ladies in church crutching around with canes or looking at you only half-seeingly through cataracts. I remember the nice, sincere guy several classes ahead of me in Sunday school with the withered, palsied arm and hand, clenched claw-like against his side that never got better; the daughter of one of my own Sunday school teachers with a serious case of psoriasis or eczema on her face that never went away; myself, one of the first in grade school to have to get eyeglasses starting at age 7 due to progressive nearsightedness; my own father who put off treatment of life-threatening kidney disease till he very nearly died before finally accepting medical treatment in his last years before dying an early death. And my own dear mother who continues to believe in the efficacy of Christian Science to this day even as arthritis encroaches, and while on high-blood-pressure medication and estrogen.

I was personally fortunate in that my own parents eventually came to ignore, not only in their lives but in their children's, the Church's stricture against "mixing" C.S. and medical treatments. However, that they nonetheless continued to believe in the efficacy of C.S. is demoralizing for a child and remains incomprehensible but is, alas, typical, and a recurring element of the episodic tragedies that unfold in this book. Such is the mesmeric power C.S. can have. And as Fraser points out, to put the onus on followers for not being able to "practice" or "understand" the religion "correctly" is just the same old blame-the-victim game played on people since time immemorial.

If you are a former Christian Scientist, the book will answer a lot of questions you may have had about what's beyond the images that even followers are fed: what exactly were those controversial "Kerry letters" of the 1970s that were only whispered about; why was "class instruction" kept so secret; what was the big deal about "malicious animal magnetism"; what are the quote-unquote "documented cases" of C.S. healing the official Church cites in the Journal and Sentinel really worth, and what do the few studies out there in actual peer-reviewed scientific journals reveal; how long ago did the movement peak, really, and how far along is its decline; and the pivot-point of the book--the "child cases" of wrongful death and child neglect against which the Mother Church has worked to legislate immunity, through the use of unscrupulous tactics hidden from the rank-and-file.

For those of you who aren't Christian Scientists, you'll get interesting insights into classic traits of Christian Scientists such as the passive-aggressiveness, bland denials, reaffirmations of untruth and fantasy, and the double talk that often typify their response to things they don't like but are supposed to try to be nice about. Just like some of the reviews you'll read on this page from current adherents and higher-ups within the Church. Don't let those deter you--read the book and decide for yourself.

22 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Book, April 21, 2006

By	P. Plumb - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: God's Perfect Child: Living and Dying in the Christian Science Church (Paperback)

I was raised as a Christian Scientist. I stopped attending church at age 20. I'm now 48. While the religion has some good points, it has some bad points too---and I feel both sides are honestly presented in this book. I doubt very many practicing Scientists would read this book, but as an ex-Scientist, I couldn't put it down. It was so helpful to me personally. I hadn't known such books on Christian Science existed, and when I found them on amazon.com, I bought all of them---they've all been helpful, but this book was the best, due to the depth of the research. I highly recommend this book to anyone who was raised in this religion and had to blindly follow along even though it didn't make sense.