Christian Science: Neglect and Trauma in the name of “Good”
TRIGGER WARNING: religious abuse, sexual molestation
Only recently have I begun to piece together the snapshots of my trauma around religion.
I was raised in a Christian Science household, a religion often confused with Scientology. While both, to many, are Cults, they are not the same thing. The main fundamental rules of Christian Science were drilled into our brains at an early age, and going to church was required for my siblings and me.
From my understanding, my grandparents on my mother's side came to the faith after growing up in alcoholism. They embraced its doctrine of prayer and healing, desperately seeking to break free from what we refer to today as generational trauma, and they bought into the hype that one's mind can pray and heal like Jesus. My mother, experiencing her own trauma, latched onto Christian Science as a means to cope. She became immersed in it, becoming a Christian Science nurse, or what I lovingly call a hospice nurse. I do not know how my father came to the faith; I only know that Christian Science became the household's religion when my parents married. Because "prayer healed," growing up, we were not allowed to see a doctor or therapist, we were exempt from vaccinations, and even broken bones didn't warrant a hospital visit.
From my experience, the fundamental flaw in Christian Science isn't just the neglect factor hidden well behind the concept of religion but also the reality that Christian Science denies half of the living experience. While growing up, we were taught to gaslight ourselves and others and to turn a blind eye to self-care, illness, disease, dysfunction, and even death. We heard stories of people who had raised the dead and healed blindness and disease, and we were told that if we believed and trusted God, we could do it, too. While it's a nice sentiment, it is impossible to understand happiness without feeling sad or what it feels like to feel peace if there isn't pain. Denying and ignoring the evil in the world does not make it go away. Instead, it invalidates us and transforms the living experience, creating trauma and incongruency within the psyche and the body.
Sunday school taught us the Ten Commandments and the Lord's prayer, but it also taught us in their terms how to "heal." Perhaps that's the "science" part attached to the Christian part. Yet, I don't see how neglecting basic human needs like life-saving medicines is a science. Then there are the children who die under the care of Christian Science; often, I wonder if they were the luckier ones because they escaped the trauma of living through it. Regardless, it's still neglect, and what Christian Science is is a faith based on denial, neglect, and gaslighting.
Children are taught to trust in their caretakers, but what I was taught was to trust God and know that even a broken bone can be fixed by simply "correcting" a "false thought," which would refer to denying the fact that the bone was broken in the first place because "God" didn't create anything that wasn't "perfect" or "broken." Unfortunately, this was something I experienced firsthand. I broke my ankle in high school, and my parents at first refused a hospital visit because "God" would heal it if only I "corrected" my belief in the idea that it had broken to begin with. I waited two days before my dad decided to take me to a doctor, where science showed a break. A doctor then set it and allowed space for my body to heal, and I finally received the means to walk. The injury would not only affect my body for the rest of my life but also my mental well-being.
The broken ankle is only one of many instances where my needs did not get met in significant ways. I grew up with these experiences every time I was sick or hurt. At seven years old, it was discovered that I was being sexually molested. Instead of support to understand and process what was happening, my parents called a practitioner ( a Christian Science healer) who was also a close family friend. This woman spent the day with me, asking about what had happened to me at a public car wash. The memory of watching the cars go through the brushes while clinging to a damaged cabbage patch doll is incinerated in my brain and will never leave. That is one of many snapshots that suddenly make sense because of the assistance of psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy.
Psychedelics have allowed me to piece together these memories and find meaning, find the root causes of my trauma, and Christian Science has been at the forefront of that trauma for 43 years. The neglect of getting medical care for illnesses like whopping cough, measles, mumps, chicken pox, and flu, only to name a few, has left lasting impressions not only in the subconscious but also in the body, leaving emotional and physical scars that have only now been allowed to come to the surface safely.
When someone denies a child medicine, and that child is left to suffer, it affects them in ways that a Christian Scientist will never understand because, to them, they are providing care, they are offering prayer to treat that illness, and in their mind, that is Love. To the rest of the world, that logic is incredibly flawed. The idea that a mother or father would refuse to give their child Tylenol to calm a fever or even take them to a doctor to set a bone is abuse. While a Christian Scientist doesn't see it that way, it doesn't change that fact and the fact that abuse in the name of "Good" and the name of "God" is still abuse.
I am healing, and the journey has taken me 43 years to break free from the influence of a cult that masks as a religion founded in everlasting and unconditional Love. Yet, it takes abuse to a whole new level in the name of "God." While I will always respect that Christian Science gave my mother peace, I recognize that my trauma is forever intertwined with a dying religious belief that was meant to heal.
