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Home > Books > Quo vadis? Where are you going, Christian Scientist?
Quo vadis? Where are you going, Christian Scientist?
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Product Code: 0-942958-27-6
Manufacturer: Kappeler Institute Publishing
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Paperback, 27 pages
Level:
SUBJECT(s):
Christian Science—Government and Ethics
RELATED RECORDINGS:
M-17, Why Study Christian Science as a Science (2 hours, audio)
SYNOPSIS: This book provides a provocative and lively discussion of the problems facing The Mother Church (Boston) today, and the solutions given from the standpoint of Science. The important questions are: What is the cause of this crisis, and can we continue to consider the idea of Christian Science in the same way? This book challenges the reader to consider Christian Science as a Science, and not merely as a religion, and shows what Mrs. Eddy meant when she said that "Science…is revolutionary in its very nature" (Mis. 99:1).
CONTENTS:
Message from Max Kappeler
Introduction
Chapter 1: The present situation in Christian Science
Chapter 2: The Church organization
- The first Church organization
- The second Church organization
Chapter 3: The Science of Christian Science
EXCERPT:
From Max Kappeler, "Quo vadis?" Where are you going, Christian Scientist?, pp. iv–vi.
Message from Max Kappeler
Dear readers,
For many years I have written books with the purpose of contributing to the understanding of Christian Science teachings. This book serves a different purpose, and I am rather hesitant to publish it, but hope that you will understand why I do so.
This time I write of something very different, namely about the Christian Science movement, that revolutionary discovery Mary Baker Eddy brought to our age. The movement of Christian Science, as organized by The Mother Church in Boston, has been in a serious crisis for quite awhile. The important question is: What is the cause of this crisis? Can we continue to maintain and promote the idea of Christian Science in the same way as before?
When Mrs. Eddy left us in 1910, the movement carried on by using the same method of church practice and governance, except that the directors took the place of Mrs. Eddy. Since then, the church services and rituals have remained the same—for over 100 years—in contrast to Mrs. Eddy's time, during which she constantly reformed things. The rigidity (and eventual failure) of this method has shown itself, among other ways, in Boston's rejection of the paradigmatic discovery made by John W. Doorly, CSB (London). The Christianly scientific system that Doorly found attained its full and final form during the 1940s. My life-work rests completely on the foundation of this system, which helps to unlock the meaning of the Bible and also opens up the deeper spiritual meaning of the structure of the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures." Unfortunately, all the insights gained since then are still attacked today by the organized church of Christian Science. The critics of the "Doorly-Kappeler movement," as it is wrongly called, have hardly read our writings—and if they read them, they did not understand them. Science cannot be fully grasped by merely "reading" our books; understanding requires a constant prayerful spiritual culturing of a new consciousness.
What stands in the way of a scientific understanding is what I call an "organization-consciousness." It is a mental attitude, one that clings to the old and considers it as a protection for the spiritual idea. Thank God that, in the meantime, there has been a steadily increasing interest in the spiritual idea of Christian Science as a Science of the divine Being; independent and freethinking Christian Scientists worldwide can determine for themselves the validity of the scientific logic of our research.
I have already given my foundational position in regard to church organization—at the request of my teacher, John W Doorly—in my book Christian Government—its Scientific Evolution (1946). At the time, this book was called "church-destructive" and was literally burned, though I was strictly adhering to Mrs. Eddy's entire body of writings. Today, we can look at the situation in the Christian Science movement and see that the conclusions given in "Christian Government" proved to be right.
I give you now—55 years later—another book on this subject. It is an analysis of the present situation of the Christian Science movement, which has shown a rapid decline since the mid-1940s. I will try to show wherein the cause of this decline lies.
John Doorly prophesized in 1946 that under the dictatorial leadership of the church organization "that in about 25 years from now the Christian Science church will be in danger of becoming another small religious denomination to which humanity will pay less attention than it is even now paying."
Unfortunately, this prophecy has been fulfilled. I ask that you take this article to heart, and those of you who see the sad situation the organized Christian Science church finds itself in, to assist in finding the solution in a progressive scientific way.
Max Kappeler
Zürich, Autumn 2002
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