WICCA

WICCA TIMELINE

1951  The 1735 Witchcraft Laws, which had made the practice of Witchcraft a crime in Great Britain, were abolished.

1951  The Witchcraft Museum on the Isle of Man opened with backing from Gerald Gardner.

1954  Gardner published the first non-fiction book on Wicca, Witchcraft Today .

1962  Raymond and Rosemary Buckland, initiated Witches, came to the United States and began training others.

1971  The first feminist coven was formed in California by Zsuzsanna Budapest.

1979  Starhawk published The Spiral Dance: The Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Great Goddess .

1986  Raymond Buckland published the Complete Book of Witchcraft.

1988  Scott Cunningham published Wicca: A Guide for the Solitary Practitioner .

2007  The United States Armed Services permitted the Wicca pentagram to be placed on graves in military cemeteries.

FOUNDER/GROUP HISTORY

Gerald Gardner, a British civil servant, is credited with the creation of Wicca, although some disagreement continues to swirlaround whether or not that is true. Gardner contended that he was initiated into the New Forest Coven, by Dorothy Clutterbuck in 1939. Members of this coven claimed that theirs was a traditional Wiccan coven whose rituals and practices had been passed down since pre- Christian times.

In 1951, laws prohibiting the practice of witchcraft in England were repealed, and soon thereafter, in 1954, Gardner published his first non-fiction book, Witchcraft Today (Berger 2005:31). His account came into question, first by an American practitioner Aiden Kelly (1991) and subsequently by others (Hutton 1999; Tully 2011) Hutton (1999), a historian who wrote the most comprehensive book on the development of Wicca, claims that Gardner did something more profound than merely codifying and making public a hidden old religion: he created a new vibrant religion that has spread around the world. Gardner was helped in this endeavor by Doreen Valiente, who wrote much of the poetry used in the rituals, thereby helping to make them more spiritually moving (Griffin 2002:244).

Some of Gardner’s students or students of those trained by him, such as Alex and Maxine Saunders, created variations of Gardner’s spiritual and ritual system, spurring new sects or forms of Wicca to develop. From the beginning there were some who claimed to have been initiated into other covens that had been underground for centuries. None of these garnered either the success of Gardner’s version or the scrutiny. It is most probable that some of them were influenced by many of the same social influences that had informed Gardner, including the Western occult or magical tradition, folklore and the romantic tradition, Freemasonry, and the long tradition of village folk healers or wise people (Hutton 1999).

It has typically been believed that British immigrants Raymond and Rosemary Buckland brought Wicca to the United States. But, the history is actually more complex as evidence suggests that copies of Gardner’s fictional account of Witchcraft and his non-fiction book, Witchcraft Today were brought over to the United States prior to the arrival of the Bucklands (Clifton 2006:15). Nonetheless the Bucklands were important in the importation of the religion as they created the first Wiccan coven in the United States and initiated others. Once on American soil, the religion became attractive to feminists looking for a female face of the divine and environmentalists who were drawn to the celebration of the seasonal cycles. Both movements, in turn, helped to transform the religion. Although the Goddess was celebrated, the coven led by the High Priestess Gardner had not developed a feminist form of spirituality. It was common, for example, for the High Priestess to be required to step down when she was no longer young (Neitz 1991:353).

Miriam Simos, who writes under her magical name, Starhawk, was instrumental in bringing feminism and feminist concerns to Wicca. She was initiated into the Fairie Tradition of Witchcraft and into Zsuzsanna Budapest’s Feminist Spirituality group. Starhawk’s first book, The Spiral Dance: The Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Great Goddess (1979), which brought together both threads of her training, sold over 300,000 copies.(Salomonsen 2002:9). During this same period the religion went from a mystery religion (one in which sacred and magical knowledge is reserved for initiates), with a focus on fertility, to an earth based religion (one that came to see the earth as a manifestation of the Goddess — alive and sacred) ( Clifton 2006:41). These two changes helped to make the religion appealing to those touched by feminism and environmentalism both in the United States and abroad. The religion’s spread was further aided by the publication of relatively inexpensive books and journals and the growth of the Internet.

Initially the Bucklands, following Gardner’s dictate, claimed that a neophyte needed to be trained by a third degree Wiccan, someone who had been trained in a coven and gone through three levels or degrees of training, similar to those in the Freemasons. However, Raymond Buckland changed his position on this. He eventually published a book and created a video explaining how individuals could self-initiate. Others, most notably Scott Cunningham, also wrote how-to books that resulted in self-initiation becoming common. Wicca: A Guide for Solitary Practice (Cunningham 1988) alone has sold over 400,000 copies. His book and other how-to books have helped to fuel the trend toward most Wiccans practicing alone. The large number of Internet sites and the growth of umbrella groups (that is, groups that provide information, open ritual, and at times religious retreats, referred to as festivals) make it possible for Wiccans and other Pagans to maintain contact with others whether they practice in a coven or alone. The growth of these books and websites helped to make Wicca less of a mystery religion. Initially it was in the coven that esoteric knowledge was taught, often as secret knowledge that could only be passed on to others who were initiated into the religion. Little, if any, of the rituals or knowledge now remains secret.

DOCTRINES/BELIEFS

Belief in Wicca is less important than experience of the divine or magic. It is common for Wiccans to say they don’t believe in the Goddess (es) and God(s); they experience them. It is through ritual and meditation that they gain this experience of the divine and perform magical acts. The religion is non-doctrinal, with the Wiccan Rede “Do as thou will as long as thou harm none” being the only hard and fast rule. The religion, according to Gardner, existed throughout Europe prior to the advent to Christianity. In Gardner’s presentation, the Goddess and the God balance what he called male and female energies. Groups, referred to as covens, are ideally to mimic that balance by being composed of six women and six men with an additional woman who is High Priestess. One of the men in the group serves as the High Priest but the Priestess is the group leader. In actuality few covens have this exact number of participants, although most are small groups (Berger 1999:11-12).

The ritual calendar is based on an agricultural calendar that emphasizes fertility. This emphasis is reflected in the changing
relationship between the Goddess and the God as portrayed in the rituals. The Goddess is viewed as eternal but changing from the maid, to mother, to crone; then, in the spiral of time, she returns in the spring as a young woman. The God is born of the mother in midwinter, becomes her consort in the spring, dies to ensure the growth of crops in the fall; then he is reborn at the winter solstice. The God is portrayed with horns, a sign of virility. The image is an old one that was converted to the image of the Devil within Christianity. All goddesses are viewed as aspects of the one Goddess just as all gods are believed to be aspects of the one God.

The image of Wicca as the old religion, led by women, that celebrated fertility of the land, animals and people was taken by Gardner from Margaret Murray (1921), who wrote the foreword to his book. She argued that the witch trials were an attack on practitioners of the old religion by Christianity. Gardner took from Murray the image of witches of the past as healers who used their knowledge of herbs and magic to help individuals in their community deal with illness, infertility and other problems. At the time that Gardner was writing, Murray was considered an expert on the witch trials, although her work subsequently came under attack and is no longer accepted by historians.

Magic and magical practices are integrated into the belief system of Wiccans. The magical system is one that is based on the work of Aleister Crowley, who codified Western esoteric knowledge. He defined magic as the act of changing reality to will. Magical practices have waxed and waned in the West but have never disappeared (Pike 2004). They can be traced back to twelfth century appropriations of the Cabbala and ancient Greek practices by Christianity and were important during the scientific revolution (Waldron 2008:101).

Within Wiccan rituals, a form of energy is believed to be raised through dancing, chanting, meditation, or drumming, which can bedirected toward a cause, such as healing someone or finding a job, parking place, or rental apartment. It is believed that the energy that an individual sends out will return to her/him three-fold and hence the most common form of magic is healing magic. Performing healing both helps to show that the Witch has magical power and that s/he uses it for good ( Crowley 2000:151-56). For Wiccans the world is viewed as magical. It is commonly believed that the Goddess or the God may send an individual a sign or give them direction in life. These may come during a ritual or meditation or in the course of everyday life as people happen upon old friends or find something in the sand at the beach that they believe is of import. Magic therefore is a way of connecting with the divine and with nature. Magic is viewed as part of the natural world and indicative of individuals’ connection to nature, to one another, and to the divine.

Wiccans traditionally keep a Book of Shadows, which includes rituals and magical incantations that have worked for them. It is common for the High Priestess and High Priest, leaders of the coven, to share their Book of Shadows with those they are initiating, permitting them to copy some rituals entirely. Each Book of Shadows is unique to the Wiccan who has created it and often is a work of art in its own right.

Most, although not all, Wiccans believe in reincarnation (Berger et al 2003:47). The dead are believed to go to Summerland between lives, a place where their soul or essence has a chance to reflect on the life they lived before rejoining the world again to continue their spiritual growth. Karma of their past actions will influence their placement in their new life. But, unlike Eastern concepts of reincarnation that emphasize the desire to end this cycle of birth, death and reincarnation, returning to life is viewed positively by Wiccans. The inner being is able to interact again with those who were important in past lives, learn and evolve spiritually.

RITUALS

Within Wicca, rituals are more important than beliefs as they help put the practitioner in touch with spiritual or magical elements. The major rituals involve the circle of the year (the eight sabbats that occur six weeks apart throughout the year) and are conducted on the solstices, equinoxes and what are known as the cross days between them. These commemorate the beginning and height of each season and the changing relationship between the God and the Goddess. Birth, growth, and death are all seen as a natural part of the cycle and are celebrated. The changes in nature are believed to be reflected in individuals’ lives. Samhain (pronounced Sow-en), which occurs on October 31 st, is considered the Wiccan New Year and is of particular import. The veils between the worlds, that of the living and that of the spirit, are believed to be particularly thin on this evening. Wiccans deem this the easiest time of the year to be in contact the dead. This is also a time during which people will do magical working to rid their lives of habits, behaviors, and people that are no longer a positive force in their lives. For example, someone may perform a ritual to eliminate procrastination or to help them gather their energies to leave a dead end job or a dead end relationship. In the spring, the sabbats celebrate spring and fertility in nature and in people’s lives. There is always a balance in rituals between the changes in nature and the changes in individuals’ lives (Berger 1999:29-31).

Esbats, the celebration of the moon cycles, are also of import. Drawing Down the Moon, which is possibly the best known ritual within Wicca because of a book by that title by Margot Adler (1978, 1986), involves an invocation in which the Goddess or her powers enters the High Priestess. For the duration of the ritual she becomes the Goddess incarnate (Adler 1986:18-19). This ritual is held on the full moon, which is associated with the Goddess in her phase as Mother. New moons or dark moons, which are associated with the crone, are also typically celebrated. Less often a ritual is held for the crescent or maiden moon. There are also rituals for marriages (referred to as hand-fastings); births (Wiccanings); and changing statuses of participants, such as coming of age or becoming an elder or a crone. Rituals are held for initiation and for those who becoming first, second, or third degree Wiccans or Witches. Rituals can also be done for personal reasons, including rituals for healing, for help with a particular problem or issue, for celebration of a happy event, or for thanking the deities for their help.

Wiccans conduct their magical and sacred rites within a ritual Circle that is created by “cutting” the space with an athame (ritual knife). Because Wiccans do not normally have churches, they need to create sacred space for the ritual in what is normally mundane space. This is done in covens by the High Priestess and High Priest walking around the circle while extending athames out in front of them and chanting. Participants visualize a blue or white light radiating up in a sphere to create a safe and sacred place. The High Priestess and High Priest then call in or invoke the watchtower, that is, the powers of the four directions (east, south, west and north) and the deities associated with each of those. They normally consecrate the circle and the participants with elements that are associated with each of these directions, which are placed on an altar in the center of the circle (Adler 1986:105-106). Altars are typically decorated to reflect the ritual being celebrated. For example, at Samhain, when death is celebrated as part of the cycle of life, pictures of deceased relatives and friends may decorate the altar; on May Day (May 1 st) there would be fresh flowers and fruit on the altar, symbolizing new life and fertility.

Once the circle is cast, participants are said to be between the worlds in an altered state of consciousness. The rite for the particular celebration is then conducted. The Circle also serves to contain energy that is built up during the rites until it is ready to be released in what is known as the Cone of Power. Singing, dancing, meditation, and chanting can all be used by Wiccans to raise power during a ritual. The cone of power is released for a purpose set by the Wiccan practitioners. There can be one shared purpose, such as healing a particular person or the rainforest, or each person may have his or her own particular magical purpose (Berger 1999:31). The ceremony ends with a cup of wine being raised and an athame dipped into it, symbolizing the union between the Goddess and the God. The wine is then passed around the Circle with the words “Blessed Be” and drunk by the practitioners. Cakes are blessed by the High Priestess and Priest; they are also passed around with the words “blessed be” and then eaten (Adler 1986:168). Sometimes rituals are conducted naked (skyclad) or in ritual robes, depending on the Wiccan tradition and the place the ritual is conducted. Outdoor or public rituals are normally conducted in robes or street clothes. At the end of the rites, the Circle is opened and the Watchtowers are symbolically taken down. Traditionally, people then share a meal, as eating is seen as needed to ground participants (i.e., help them leave a magical state and return to the mundane world).

Solitary practitioners may join with other Wiccans or Pagans for the sabbats or esabats or perform the rituals alone. Some groups offer public rituals, often in a rented space at a liberal church or the backroom of a metaphysical bookstore. If the practitioner does a ritual alone they modify the ritual as needed. Books and some websites provide suggestions to enable solitary practitioners to do these rituals individually.

ORGANIZATION/LEADERSHIP

According to the American Religious Identity survey conducted in 2008, there are 342,000 Wiccans in the United States. This is consistent with the number of teenage and emerging adult Wiccans found in The National Survey of Youth and Religion (Smith with Denton 2005:31; Smith with Snell 2009:104) Many experts believe this number is too small, based on book sales of Wiccan books and traffic on Pagan websites. Nonetheless, the religion is a minority religion. Wiccans live throughout the United States, with the largest concentration in California where ten percent of all Wiccans reside. The District of Columbia and South Dakota have the lowest percentage, with one-tenth of one percent of Wiccans living in either of those areas (Berger unpublished).

There is no single leader for all Wiccans or Witches. Most pride themselves on being leaderless. Traditionally, Wicca has been taught in covens, but a growing number of Wiccans are self-initiated, having learned about the religion primarily from books and secondarily from Websites. Some individuals are well-respected and known within the community, mostly because of their writing. Miriam Simos, who writes under her magical name, Starhawk, has been called the most famous Witch of the West (Eilberg-Schwatz 1989). Her books have had an important impact on the religion, and she was the founder and one of the leaders of her tradition, The Reclaiming Witches. Even those who have not read her books may be influenced by the ideas as they have become so much a part of the core thinking of many in the religion. There are some Pagan umbrella organizations, such as the Covenant of the Goddess (CoG), EarthSpirit Community, and Circle Sanctuary that organize festivals, have open rituals for the major sabbats, provide a webpage with information, and fight against discrimination for all Pagans. They normally charge a small fee for being a member and other fees for open rituals and festival attendance. No one is required to be a member, and there is a growing number of Wiccans who are not members of any organization. Nonetheless, these groups remain important and many of their leaders are well known within the larger Pagan community.

ISSUES/CHALLENGES

There is a longstanding debate among practitioners about the group’s sacred history as presented by Gardner. Although most Wiccans now regard it as a foundation myth, a small but vocal minority believe it to be literally true. Several academics, such as Hutton and Tully have had their credentials and work brought into question by practitioners who disagree with their historical or archeological findings. Hutton (2011:227) claims that those who critique him and others who have questioned Gardner’s claim to an unbroken history between antiquity and current practices of Witchcraft have provided no new evidence to support their claims. Hutton (2011, 1999), Tully (2011) and others note that there are some elements of continuity between pre-Christian practices and current ones, particularly in terms of magical beliefs and practices, but that this does not indicate an unbroken religious tradition or practice. Hutton argues that some elements of earlier Pagan practices were incorporated into Christianity and some remained as folklore and were absorbed by Gardner creatively. Wiccan practices are informed by past practices according to him and others but that does not mean that those who were executed as witches in the early modern period were practitioners of the old religion as Margaret Murray claimed or that current practitioners are in a unbroken line of pre-Christian Europeans or Britons.

Although Wicca has gained acceptance in the past twenty years, it remains a minority religion and continues to have to fight for religious freedom. Wiccans have won a number of court cases resulting in the pentagram being an accepted symbol on graves in military cemeteries, and, recently in California, the recognition that Wiccan prisoners must be provided with their own clergy (Dolan 2013). Nonetheless, there continues to be discrimination. For example, on Sunday, February 17, 2013 Friends of Fox anchors mocked Wicca when reporting that the University of Missouri recognized all Wiccan holidays (in reality only the Sabbats were recognized). The three anchors went on to proclaim Wiccans were either dungeons and dragons players or twice divorced middle-aged women who live in rural areas, are mid-wives and like incense. This portrait is both demeaning and inaccurate as all research indicates that while most Wiccans are women, they tend to live in urban and suburban areas and are as likely to be young as middle aged, and tend to be better educated than the general American public (Berger 2003:25-34). After a protest lead mostly by Selena Fox of Circle Sanctuary, the network apologized. Nonetheless most Wiccan believe that negative images, such as the one presented on Fox news, are common and can affect individuals’ chances of promotions and their ability to take time from work to celebrate their religious holidays. However, there does appear to be a shift from Wiccans being seen as dangerous devil worshippers to being regarded as silly but harmless. Many Wiccans have been working to have their religion recognized as a legitimate and serious practice. They are active in inter-faith work and participate in the World Parliament of Religions.

REFERENCES

Adler, Margot. 1978, 1986. Drawing Down the Moon. Boston: Beacon Press.

Berger, Helen., A. 2005. “Witchcraft and Neopaganism.”Pp 28-54 in Witchcraft and Magic: Contemporary North America, edited by. H elen A. Berger, 28-54. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Berger, Helen A. 1999. A Community of Witches: Contemporary Neo-Paganism and Witchcraft in the United States. Columbia, SC: The University of South Carolina Press.

Berger, Helen A. unpublished “The Pagan Census Revisited: an international survey of Pagans.

Berger, Helen. A., Evan A. Leach and Leigh S. Shaffer. 2003. Voices from the Pagan Census: Contemporary: A National Survey of Witches and Neo-Pagans in the United States. Columbia: SC: The University of South Carolina Press.

Buckland, Raymond. 1986. Buckland’s Complete Book or Witchcraft. St. Paul, Mn: Llewellyn Publications.

Clifton, Chas S. 2006. Her Hidden Children: The rise of Wicca and Paganism in America. Walnut Creek , CA: AltaMira Press.

Crowley, Vivianne. 2000. “Healing in Wicca.” Pp. 151-65 in Daughters of the Goddess: Studies of Healing, Identity, and Empowerment, edited by Wendy Griffin. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press

Cunningham, Scott. 1988. Wicca: A Guide for the Solitary Practitioner. St. Paul, MN: Llewellyn Publications.

Dolan, Maura. 2013 “ Court Revives Lawsuit Seeking Wiccan Chaplains in Women’s Prisons” Los Angeles Times , February 19. Accessed from http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2013/02/court-revives-lawsuit-over-wiccan-chaplains-in-womens-prisons.html on March 27, 2013.

Eilberg-Schwatz, Howard. 1989. “Witches of the West: Neo-Paganism and Goddess Worship as Enlightenment Religions.” Journal of Feminist Studies of Religion 5:77-95.

Griffin, Wendy. 2002. “Goddess Spirituality and Wicca.” Pp 243-81 in Her Voice, Her Faith: Women Speak on World Religions, edited by Katherine K. Young and Arvind Sharma. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

Hutton, Ronald . 2011 “Revisionism and Counter-Revisionism in Pagan History” The Pomegranate12:225-56

Hutton, Ronald. 1999. The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Kelly, Aiden. A. 1991. Crafting the Art of Magic: Book I. St. Paul, MN: LLewellyn Publications.

Murray, Margaret A. 1921, 1971. The Witch-Cult in Western Europe. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Neitz, Mary-Jo. 1991. “In Goddess We Trust.” Pp.353-72 in In Gods We Trust edited by Thomas Robbins and Dick Anthony. New Brunswick NJ: Transaction Press.

Pike , Sarah . M. 2004. New Age and Neopagan Religions in America . New York: Columbia University Press.

Salomonsen, Jone. 2002. Enchanted Feminism: The Reclaiming Witches of San Francisco. London: Routledge Press.

Smith, Christian with Melinda. L. Denton. 2005. Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Smith, Christian with Patricia Snell. 2009. Souls in Transition: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of Emerging Adults. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Starhawk. 1979. The Spiral Dance. San Francisco: Harper & Row Publishers

Tully, Caroline. 2011. ” Researching the Past is a Foreign Country: Cognitive Dissonance as a Response by Practitioner Pagans to Academic Research on the History of Pagan Religions.” Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion, Orlando, FL.

Waldron, David. 2008. The Sign of the Witch: Modernity and the Pagan Revival. Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press.
Author:
Helen A. Berger

Post Date:
5 April 2013

Ramtha’s School of Enlightenment

Founder: JZ Knight

Date of Birth: 1946

Birth Place: New Mexico , USA

Year Founded: 1988

Sacred or Revered Texts: The White Book

Size of Group: As of October, 2000, JZ Knight has around 3000 devotees. 1

History

JZ Knight, founder of Ramtha’s School of Enlightenment, was born in Roswell, New Mexico where she experienced psychic and paranormal phenomenon from an early age. An elderly Yacqui Indian woman held JZ in her arms when she was a mere infant and declared that she was destined to “see what no one else sees.” Then, when JZ was older, she and some friends saw “blinding red flashes of light” while at a sleepover. The light abruptly stopped, and the girls apparently forgot the bizarre incident. Years later, JZ recalled the strange flashing lights. She was intrigued by their cause and why she had forgotten about them. JZ believed UFO’s or some higher power may have been responsible, beginning her interest in the paranormal. 2

Despite a turbulent childhood caused by an alcoholic father, she graduated high school and went on to a small business college. Financial difficulties forced her to quit school, but she managed to get a decent job with a cable company. In 1973, she started her own communications company. Her coworkers quickly found that JZ had an uncanny ability to determine when (and to whom) to sell. In fact, some of them believed she could predict the future. 3

Whatever psychic influence JZ had might have been inherited from her mother, who claimed she could foresee the future in her dreams. JZ’s mother knew about a family member’s death or even whether JZ made the school majorette team before the event occurred. 4

JZ’s psychic experiences continued, helping her to realize that she was indeed special. One psychic saw a great force within JZ, a force nearly as powerful as Jesus Christ. This force would help bring peace to the world. Later, an event occurred that can only be described as a miracle. A friend had forced JZ to see an evangelical healer due to her faltering health. JZ, who had become disillusioned with the hypocritical church long ago, openly denounced the minister’s healing powers. In that instant, a flash of blue light knocked the minister down. The congregation was stunned. JZ was cured of her ills. She believed she had seen the hand of God. 5

One of the most important events in her life occurred when she accompanied her friend to a psychic reading one afternoon. The psychic took a strong interest in JZ. She predicted that JZ would move to a place with “great mountains” and “tall pines.” This was where she would meet The One. This entity, the psychic foresaw, would give JZ “great influence” and destiny. Sure enough, JZ received a job offer in the mountain country of Tacoma, Washington. She took the job with the psychic’s powerful words echoing in the back of her mind. 6

The next few years were uneventful in terms of paranormal phenomenon, but JZ and her second husband Jeremy dabbled in psychic communication and mysticism. Jeremy , in particular, became interested in the properties of pyramids, which were believed to harness psychic energy. One day in February, 1977, while JZ and Jeremy were playing with some pyramids in their home, The One appeared before her. 7

Standing in her kitchen a mere ten feet from JZ was an enormous figure, dressed in flowing robes and surrounded by purple light. He proclaimed, “I am Ramtha, the Enlightened One. I have come to help you over the ditch.” He went on to say to a bewildered JZ: “It is the ditch of limitation and fear I will help you over. For you will, indeed, beloved woman become a light unto the world.” Ramtha then warned JZ that she was in danger and she must leave the house immediately, at which point he disappeared. JZ heeded this warning, moving her family into a new home. Days later, the house was ransacked by thugs. The trusting relationship between JZ and Ramtha was thus cemented. 8

The Beginning of RSE

With the help of experts in the field of psychic communication and channeling, JZ was able to turn her body over to Ramtha so that he could spread his teachings. Ramtha first spoke to the public in 1978, when he made an impact with his vast knowledge and insight. The local media soon picked up on this story helping Ramtha’s (and JZ’s) popularity to spread. The fact that Ramtha emerged in the heart of the New Age movement considerably helped his cause; people were lining up to hear him speak. JZ became a full time channel and began charging money for admittance (an idea brought to her by Ramtha himself). Even Actresses Shirley McLean and Joan Hackett became disciples of Ramtha (The Enlightened One predicted McLean would win the “highest award” for her role in Terms of Endearment). Knight’s popularity among the stars lead to her appearance on the Merv Griffin Show in 1985. 9

The RSE Today

JZ’s school has earned her millions of dollars and lots of adoration. She is among the leading New Age channelers with 3000 followers. Disciples come to her ranch in Yelm, Washington to learn the Great Work (see Beliefs and Practices). Ramtha offers courses for beginners and advanced students which are designed to let the disciples harness their divine powers. Aside from lectures by Ramtha, the students participate in “field work” which is designed to focus their concentration and energy (C&E). Field work usually involves searching a vast field for index cards while blindfolded. JZ also built a massive maze known as the Tank in her ranch which she uses for various lessons. Although the lessons seem strange to the students and outsiders, each one has a specific purpose that progresses them on the path to enlightenment. 10

Ramtha’s School tends to attract an older audience than most New Age Movements. The average age for a beginning student is mid-thirties, with some starting as young as age 6, however. According to a study of the advanced students, the typical students “are in midlife, have high levels of education and occupational prestige, and are now choosing to orient themselves in a new direction.” 11

The RSE has become more commercial in the late 1990’s. Students must purchase and watch an introductory video before attending classes. The sale of Ramtha books, video’s, and audio cassettes has become a profitable business. 12

JZ’s success, however, is not without a price. Critics claim that JZ is a fraud, and that she uses mind control techniques. Lawsuits have hurt her in recent years, including a case brought by her ex-husband who says she used Ramtha’s influence to coerce him out of a fair divorce settlement (see controversies).

Beliefs

Ramtha’s teachings are encompassed in a work known as the White Book, and these ideas are based on ancient Gnosticism of the Mediterranean. The core principles of Ramtha’s School are 1) a supreme deity is a part of every man, and 2) the key to reaching the God within us is through Gnosis or knowledge. 13 Ramtha himself does not wished to be revered as a God, but rather as an equal. He says in one of his channeling sessions, “I am but a teacher, servant, brother unto you.” 14

Who Is Ramtha?

Ramtha is a 35,000 year old warrior from the ancient city of Lemuria. The Lemurians were oppressed by highly advanced citizens of Atlantis because they believed the Lemurians were “soulless.” At age 14, Ramtha led a small army against the Atlantians and defeated them. More people joined his army, and he soon became a great warrior. He was stabbed severely during one battle, but miraculously he did not die. His enemies began to believe he was immortal. Ramtha “learned the mysteries of the unknown god and became enlightened” during the seven years he was recovering from his wound. He rose through higher levels of consciousness and eventually transformed into a being of light. He ascended as a God, but vowed to return. 15

Indeed, 35,000 years later, Ramtha returned to meet JZ Knight. Ramtha chose to channel through JZ rather than present himself in human form for several reasons. First, he did not want to be worshipped as a deity, but rather an equal. He felt that if he presented himself, he would be idolized by his students. Second, his human form limited him to a male entity. Channeling himself through a woman presented the dual male/female nature of God. Third, for reasons of his own, he believed JZ Knight was especially suited to the task at hand. 16

Ramtha’s Worldview

Ramtha’s goal with beginner students is to break them away from the traditional Western worldview. This worldview limits the individual and suppresses his power as a divine being. Ramtha aims to make the student not only believe in his divine power, but to manifest it. 17 Ramtha’s Creation myth and the philosophies stemming from it are complex and abstract, but they are essential to understanding his teachings.

The universe started as a Void of nothingness. This Void “turned in upon itself” creating consciousness and energy. Consciousness and Energy fused together causing the Void to become aware of itself. This awareness was represented in the Void as single- dimensional entity called Point Zero. Other dots of awareness formed, and the high energy reactions between the various dots created time and space. As these dot entities interacted, seven energy levels developed. The entities of awareness left Point Zero to “explore” other levels of the Void in order to “make known the unknown.” As the entities progressed from Point Zero (the highest level) to level 1, energy and time slowed. At the lower levels, the entities took on form and substance. When the entities reached the first level, they “coagulated” into human form. It was at this level that life as we know it began. 18

This theory of Creation is difficult to grasp. The main point, however, is that consciousness exists on multiple levels, with human form being the lowest. The higher the level, the greater the level of consciousness. The entities (Gods) used consciousness to create objects at their whim. In other words, they manifested their dreams to create all the objects in the world. The Gods came down to the lowest levels to experience life in its material form, but they still had their divine powers. The early humans could easily move between levels and manifest their dreams or desires. Over time, however, this ability was lost. Ramtha’s School of Enlightenment allows students to regain these powers, and carry on the task of Gods: to make known the unknown. 19

Humans often move to other consciousness levels without realizing it. The most common occurrence is moving up to the second level while dreaming. Near-death experiences, psychic visions and other phenomenon can be attributed to moving to another plane of consciousness. 20

When humans lost the power of the Gods, they fell into the “ditch of limitation,” the same ditch that Ramtha mentioned during his first encounter with JZ. Ramtha holds the Church partly responsible for this limitation when it “took God outside of Man, [and] put him far, far away.” The Church “unenlightened” man by claiming that God is far superior to humans. Ramtha’s teachings indicate that the Church “created” God to keep men in line. He even goes so far as to say Hell and the devil were “created through religious dogma for the purpose of intimidating the masses into a controllable organization.” 21

The Great Work

The Great Work of Ramtha’s teaching is literally manifesting dreams and desires. In essence, the Great Work requires reaching maximum potential of the mind. The key to manifestations lies in the cerebrum, which, according to Ramtha, has the power to make dreams a reality. In the past, humans would hold a dream or desire in their mind, and it would manifest. Today, humans play a passive role to manifestations. They absorb the world around them in their mind, and this then becomes reality. In a sense, they are trapped in the present reality. Ramtha desires to teach students the power to manifest any desire and make known the unknown. 22

Issues and Challenges

Any new religion has its share of controversy, and the RSE is no exception. The public generally perceives New Age Religions, groups in a negative light, usually without any evidence. Ramtha’s messages are certainly not mainstream, and the way in which JZ presents them is also subject to controversy. Some critics claim JZ is a fraud whose only goal is to make money. Others say that she uses brainwashing techniques to keep her students from leaving. There are a number of opinions on the matter and no clear answers.

Is JZ a Channeler?

JZ has undergone a lot of scrutiny as one of the most prominent American channelers. Her overall performance as Ramtha is seamless. While she is channeling, her posture, walk, voice and the color of her eyes changes. Actress Linda Evans, a student of Ramtha’s, argued that if JZ is a fraud then “she is the greatest actress in the world.” 23 A skeptical psychologist became uncertain of JZ’s legitimacy when JZ put her hand on his head revealing such power that he “could hardly take it.” 24 Even if Ramtha was not real, he said, there was definitely a power within her that science could not explain. Later, a team of scientists did tests on JZ during channeling episodes over the course of a year. The results of the test categorically ruled out fraud or multiple personality disorders. 25 “We know something’s going on here,” said one of the researchers, “we just can’t say, at this point, specifically what it is.” 26 Her students swear that JZ and Ramtha have entirely different personas leading them to believe that Ramtha is indeed channeling through JZ.

Other evidence points to the contrary. One of JZ’s business managers saw her “practicing” the Ramtha personality. Her husband Jeff Knight also noticed her slip in and out of the trance to take cigarette breaks (JZ, unlike Ramtha, was a smoker). 27 And then there is the common sense argument, according to the Skeptics Dictionary Website: “…it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that the likelihood of a 35,000 year old Cro-Magnon ghost suddenly appearing in a Tacoma kitchen to a homemaker to reveal profundities about centers and voids, self-love and guilt-free living, or love and peace, is close to zero.” 28 It takes a great leap of faith to believe that JZ is a channeler, although scientific evidence may not be enough to discredit Ramtha.

Criticism of the RSE

Publicity surrounding Ramtha’s School has been negative for the most part in recent years. A 20/20 segment portrayed JZ as a fraud who was exploiting peoples’ beliefs in Ramtha for money. The show also claimed that Ramtha was teaching people that they are above morality due to their divine status. These beliefs, they surmised, could only lead to amoral behavior. The 20/20 exposure led to more attacks from the press on JZ and the School. 29

J. Gordon Melton, a leading scholar on new religious movements, thoroughly investigated the RSE and found that these criticisms were unfounded. Melton attributes most of the bad press to sensationalist journalism that critiques unconventional beliefs for a good story. Furthermore, anti-cult and counter-cult sentiments are popular with Americans, which intensifies the controversy. 30 . Melton’s book gave important facts rather than insinuations and smear campaigns

Anti-cultists respond that Melton’s book is biased because (1) Melton was hired to testify for JZ in a court case against her in 1992, (2) JZ provided funding for the book and (3) Melton established close ties with JZ and the school during the research thus damaging his credibility as an objective researcher. Melton also neglected to mention several incidents where people were injured during blindfolded field activities. 31 Although this omission does not make JZ a dangerous cult leader, it makes one wonder what else Melton left out of his book.

Criticism from the public caused JZ to withdraw from the public in the early 1990’s. During this period she devoted her time to her school and to Ramtha. Under Ramtha’s guidance, she reappeared to the public in the late 1990’s. As Ramtha’s school continues to succeed, it is receiving “signs of a certain legitimacy among the religious community.” 32 Today, JZ has an unprecedented number of students, and her books and tapes are selling well.

Scandals

Several scandals have marred JZ’s reputation among the religious community. The first involves a student of Ramtha’s who was hired to run stress management programs for the Federal Aviation Administration in 1984. This student, Gregory May, a psychologist from California, used techniques that were “far beyond routine.” Some of the training activities involved tying employees together for long periods of time, forcing women to shower together, sleep deprivation and verbal abuse. Several employees brought charges against the FAA for trauma occasioned by May. 33 These unorthodox techniques cannot be directly linked to Ramtha’s teachings. Nevertheless, the media was quick to point out the connection between bizarre training techniques and (what they perceived to be) a destructive cult.

Another scandal occurred because of JZ’s fondness for horses. Overstepping her boundaries as a religious leader, she advised some of her students to invest in Arabian horses. These students followed her advice as if advised by Ramtha himself. Many of them lost money in this venture and bitterly left the school. Later, JZ compensated them for their losses, but the damage had been done. She had given the critics ammunition to use against her. 34

In addition to these scandals, JZ had a turbulent personal life. She was married five times, and at least once she was caught in an affair with a young student. She divorced her fifth husband, Jeffrey Knight, in 1989. Jeffrey claimed that JZ used Ramtha’s influence to coerce him out of a fair divorce settlement. He took the case to court, embroiling JZ in an intense legal battle. 35 Meanwhile, JZ faced serious financial burdens from bill collectors and taxes. She kept these problems from the public, but eventually the media picked up on them.

Conclusion

Although Ramtha’s School of Enlightenment is surrounded by controversy, there is no clear evidence that JZ is a fraud or that the school is a danger to anyone. Sociologists and psychologists do not believe that students are “brainwashed” to follow this movement, nor are they held against their will. Ramtha’s students are searching for answers to life’s most important questions, and the School is helping them resolve these issues. Until undisputable evidence arises that JZ is harming people, the media and anti-cultists should be careful with their criticisms.

Bibliography

Brown, Michael. “The Channeling Zone.” Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press. 1977.

Carrol, Robert Todd. “Ramtha aka J.Z. Knight.” The Skeptics Dictionary. http://skepdic.com/channel.html

Diamond, Steve. “Into the Mystic: Ramtha Meets the Scholars.” The New Times. Accessed at http://www.newtimes.org/issue/9705/97-05-jz.html

McDonald, Sally. “J.Z. Knight Channeling New Support.” Seattle Times May 9, 1998. Accessed at http://archives.seattletimes.nwsource.com

McDonald, Sally. “Christianity vs. New Age.” Seattle Times May 9, 1998. Accessed at http://archives.seattletimes.nwsource.com

Melton, J. Gordon. Finding Enlightenment. Hillsboro, OR: Beyond Words Publishing, Inc. 1998.

Neill, Michael. “Sure, blame the caveman: channeler J.Z. Knight’s troubles put 35,000 year old Ramtha on trial”. People Weekly Oct. 12, 1992 p. 123.

“Ramtha’s School of Enlightenment – The American Gnostic School.” http://www.ramtha.com

“The Guru and the FAA.” Newsweek , March 6 1995 p. 32.

References

• “Ramtha’s School of Enlightenment, The School of Ancient Wisdom: FAQ’s.” http://www.ramtha.com/html/aboutus/faqs/students/how-many.stm
• Melton, J. Gordon. Finding Enlightenment. p. 3-4
• Ibid. 9
• Ibid. 4
• Ibid. 9-12
• Ibid. 7-9
• Ibid. 14-15
• Ibid. 14-15
• Ibid. 46-52
• Ibid. 108-109
• Ibid. 126-127
• “Ramtha’s School of Enlightenment, The School of Ancient Wisdom:RSE Store.” http://ramtha.com/html/rse-store/product-details/v1.42.stm
• “Ramtha’s School of Enlightenment, The School of Ancient Wisdom:About US.” http://ramtha.com/html/aboutus/faqs/school/gnostic-beliefs.stm
• Melton, J. Gordon. Finding Enlightenment. p. 58
• “Ramtha’s School of Enlightenment, The School of Ancient Wisdom:About US.” http://ramtha.com/html/aboutus/faqs/teacher/who.stm
• “Ramtha’s School of Enlightenment, The School of Ancient Wisdom:About US.” http://ramtha.com/html/aboutus/faqs/teacher/why-jz.stm
• Melton, J. Gordon. Finding Enlightenment. p. 58
• Ibid. 78-80.
• Ibid. 81-84
• Ibid. 85
• Ibid. 59- 61.
• Ibid. 85
• Ibid. 146
• Brown, Michael. The Channeling Zone. p. 12
• “Ramtha’s School of Enlightenment, The School of Ancient Wisdom:About US.” http://ramtha.com/html/aboutus/faqs/jz/proof.stm
• Diamond, Steve. “Into the Mystic: Ramtha Meets the Scholars.” http://www.newtimes.org/issue/9705/97-05-jz.html
• Szimhart, Joe. “Book Review/Essay on Melton’s Study.” http://www.kelebekler.com/cesnur/txt/ram2.htm
• Carrol, Robert Todd. “Ramtha aka J.Z. Knight.”
• Melton, J. Gordon. Finding Enlightenment. 137-139
• Ibid. 144-145
• Szimhart, Joe. “Book Review/Essay on Melton’s Study.” http://www.kelebekler.com/cesnur/txt/ram2.htm
• McDonald, Sally. “J.Z. Knight Channeling New Support.”
• “The Guru and the FAA.” Newsweek March6, 1995.
• Melton, J. Gordon. Finding Enlightenment. p. 147-148
• “Sure, blame the caveman.” People Weekly October 12, 1992

Created by Joseph M. Khattab
For Soc 257: New Religious Movements
Fall term, 2000
University of Virginia
Last modified: 07/23/01

MISSIONARIES OF CHARITY TIMELINE

1910 (August 26):  Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu was born in Skopje, Macedonia.

1919:  Nikola Bojaxhui, Agnes Gonxha’s father, died under suspicious circumstances.

1928:  Bojaxhiu joined the Loreto Sisters of Dublin.

1929:  Gonxha began her novitiate in Darjeeling, India. She also began teaching at St. Mary’s High School in Calcutta.

1931:  Gonxha took her first vows, and the name “Teresa,” for the patron saint of missionaries.

1937:  Gonxha, now Mary Teresa, took her final vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience and also took the name “Mother.”

1946 (September 10):  Mother Teresa received a call from God to work with the “poorest of the poor.”

1948:  Mother Teresa became a citizen of India and underwent brief but crucial medical training to further her work.

1950:  Mother Teresa received permission from the Vatican to establish a new religious order, the Missionaries of Charity.

1953:  The first novitiates of the Missionaries of Charity took their first vows.

1963:  The Missionaries of Charity Brothers was established.

1965:  Mother Teresa received the Decree of Praise from Pope John Paul VI.

1969:  The Co-Workers became officially affiliated with the Missionaries of Charity.

1979:  Mother Teresa received the Nobel Peace Prize.

1983:  Mother Teresa suffered her first heart attack, in Rome.

1989:  After Mother Teresa suffered a second heart attack, a pace maker was implanted.

1997 (September 5):  Mother Teresa died after a third heart attack, this time in Calcutta, India. Sister Nirmala was elected to succeed Mother Teresa.

2009:  Sister Mary Prema succeeded Sister Mirmala Joshi as head of Missionaries of Charity.

2017 (September 6):  Mother Teresa and St. Francis Xavier were named co-patrons of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Calcutta.

FOUNDER/GROUP HISTORY

Mother Teresa was born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu, August 26, 1910, in Skopje, Macedonia, in what was part of the Ottoman Empire. The day after her birth, when she was baptized into the Roman Catholic faith, became the day she later came to recognize as her true birthday. Her father, Nikola, who was an Albanian, a local politician and advocate for Albanian independence, died unexpectedly when Agnes was eight, possibly a result of politically motivated poisoning. Her mother, Drana, who is described as a compassionate and generous woman despite the poverty of her own family, dedicated herself to raising her children as devout Roman Catholics. She emphasized the lesson that one should always help others before helping themselves (Greene 2008:6).

Agnes was twelve years old when, on a yearly pilgrimage to the Chapel of the Black Madonna, she reports having felt a “calling” to live her life for God and service to others. After a childhood and adolescence spent devoted to church activities, including singing, playing the mandolin, participating in a youth group, as well as teaching the catechism to younger members, in 1928, at eighteen years old, Agnes left her home to join the Loreto Sisters of Dublin. She first travelled to France to be interviewed, and when found suitable, was sent her to Ireland where she learned English and took the name “Mary Teresa,” for Saint Therese of Lisieux, the patron saint of missions (Greene 2008:17-18). In 1929, during her novitiate period, she was sent to Calcutta, India, to teach at St. Mary’s High School for Girls. During her time as a novice, she learned Bengali and Hindi, taught geography and history, and took her initial vows in 1931. When she took her final vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience in 1937, she also took the name “Mother,” to precede Teresa, as is the custom in the order of the Loreto Sisters.

Mother Teresa continued to teach at St. Mary’s High School for Girls until she was made principal in 1944. Her experience at the school gave her a vivid, personal perspective on the poverty around her, and in 1946 on a train from Calcutta to Darjeeling, she received a “call within a call,” from Christ, who told her to leave the school and work with the “poorest of the poor,” those destitute, desperate, and alone. According to her account of the experience, God told her that she was as unworthy as any, and needed a woman like her to help the helpless and hopeless. In light of her vow of obedience to God and the Roman Catholic Church, Mother Teresa was unable to take up this calling until it was approved by the Vatican almost two years later (Van Biema 2007). She then became an Indian citizen in order to be able to receive some medical training in Calcutta. A few months later, Mother Teresa was living and working with the destitute.

By 1950, after working in the slums of Calcutta, establishing an open-air school for children, aiding in the education of impoverished adults, and opening a home for the dying, Mother Teresa had garnered financial as well as local community support. She obtained permission from the Vatican to start her own order with twelve other women who were either former students or teachers at St. Mary’s High School for Girls in Calcutta. They came to be called “Missionaries of Charity,” and were known for taking a fourth vow. After vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, the sisters of this new order also vowed to “give whole-hearted and free service to the poorest of the poor” (Greene 2008:48). Pope John Paul VI awarded Missionaries of Charity the Decree of Praise in 1965, which allowed the order to expand internationally. With the help of organized lay people and lay faithful, called Co-Workers, Missionaries of Charity opened over 600 hospices, schools, counseling services, medical care facilities, homeless shelters, orphanages, and programs for alcoholism and addiction in more than 120 countries by 1997. The Missionaries succeeded in reaching countries in six of the seven continents with their aid.

After multiple hospitalizations and heart problems during her last ten years, Mother Teresa suffered a heart attack and died in Calcutta on September 5, 1997 as a result of heart, kidney, and lung complications. Sister Nirmala was elected to succeed Mother Teresa and served as head of the Missionaries of Charity until 2009 when Sister Mary Prema assumed leadership of the Missionaries. Mother Teresa’s successors continue to assert as the the Missionaries’ mission providing free relief to those most in need (Greene 2008:139).

DOCTRINES/BELIEFS

As an order of the Roman Catholic Church, the Missionaries of Charity follow the doctrines and beliefs of the Church. Like many other Catholic orders, the Missionaries of Charity believe in self discipline and sacrifice, the renunciation of the outside world, and the seniority of the Pope (Johnson 2011a:58-84).In addition to generic Roman Catholic doctrine and doctrines of other renunciate orders, the Missionaries of Charity take a fourth vow, to wholeheartedly serve the poorest of the poor. It is not the goal of the Missionaries of Charity to correct what they may see as social ills, but rather to work with those that suffer on account of these ills, and to experience God’s love through service and their own poverty (Greene 2008:54-55). The daily rituals and traditions of the Missionaries of Charity are many, designed to ensure that no time is spent in frivolity. The Missionaries also believe that they should avoid temptation when out in the world; to do this, the Sisters are expected to keep “custody of the senses,” or avoid seeing, hearing, or touching anything unnecessary (Johnson 2011a, 2011b).

RITUALS/PRACTICES

Like the Roman Catholic Church in which Mother Teresa was raised, The Missionaries of Charity follow the core rituals that distinguish Catholicism from other Christian faiths, as well as their own traditions that distinguish themselves from the over-arching Roman Catholic faith. The four traditions most central to the Catholic Church are the celebration of the Eucharist, the prayers of the Rosary, Confession and Absolution.

The Eucharist, or Holy Communion, is celebrated during each Catholic mass. Bread (or wafer) and wine are used to represent the body and blood of Christ and presented to the clergy, those who have otherwise devoted themselves to the Church, and then the laity that have been confirmed within the Catholic Church. It is believed that during this time of communion, transubstantiation occurs, a change of the bread and wine to the true body and blood of Christ. This tradition is a recreation of the biblical Last Supper of Christ with his disciples.

The Rosary beads are used for prayer. Each bead is distinguished by repetitive grouping to represent specific prayers, Our Father, Hail Mary, or Glory Be. This repetition of prayer, facilitated by the pattern of the Rosary, is used for prayer and meditation on Mysteries of Christ, as well as for penance as recommended after confession.

The Sacrament of Reconciliation, or Confession, is a time during which clergy, those who have given their lives to the church, and laity, or the penitents, are given a chance to individually confess their sins to a priest. After the penitent confesses and expresses sorrow for his or her sins, the priest may offer an act of contrition, which may include praying the rosary or another act to benefit the community or attempt to right harm done. After the confession is heard, the priest offers Absolution, or releases the penitent of the guilt of his or her sin. Among many other daily rituals and traditions, the Missionaries of Charity pray the Act of Contrition nightly.

Other rituals distinct from the rest of the Catholic Church are two celebrations- Society Feast and Inspiration Day. Society Feast, held on August 22 of every year, is a celebration of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, their patroness. Inspiration Day, celebrated yearly on September 10, is the anniversary of the day that Mother Teresa received her call to work whole heartedly with the poorest of the poor. Another yearly tradition is an eight-day retreat. In addition to silent rest and renewal, the retreat is overseen by a priest who offers daily talks and general confession (Johnson 2011a, 2011b).

Chapter of Faults is a monthly practice during which The Missionaries of Charity come together to confess and ask forgiveness for any faults they have committed over the course of the month. Each sister kneels, one by one, kisses the floor, confesses her faults, and kisses the floor again. Another tradition observed monthly is known as “renewal of permission.” Each sister kneels privately before her superior, kisses the floor, confesses her faults, and asks permission for the use of material goods. In addition to the Chapter of Faults, the Sisters also perform public penance for their sins. This might include begging for a meal then eating it kneeling, touching one’s forehead to the feet of each sister, kissing the footsteps of one’s fellow Sisters, or reciting the Paters. Once a week, the Sisters observe a “day in,” a time for rest and community gathering. During this day in gathering, reflections, apostolic work, and instructions of the superior are shared within the community. Once a month, a day in is dedicated to a silent day of recollection.

In daily corporal penance, the Sisters wear spiked chains around their waists and upper arms for at least an hour. The Sisters also engage in spiritual reading from books approved by the superiors of the Order, individually, or communally while others work. Otherwise, the Sisters work and live in silence except during meals and brief recreation time. This is meant to allow each Sister time to commune with God. The Missionaries of Charity make their own rosaries, and pray them daily, even when walking through the streets or taking part in daily chores.

Every morning and night, the superior blesses each Sister by putting her hands on each one of their heads, and saying “God bless you in blue par sari.” After waking each morning, the Sisters devote an hour to Morning Prayer, which includes prayers vocally recited from a book specific to the Order. The Sisters also practice meditation, inspired by St. Ignatius, during which they visualize themselves in a scene from the Gospel. This meditation, preceded by a short prayer for inspiration, lasts about a half hour. After meditation, the sisters vocally recite a prayer to the Virgin Mary and then St. Ignatius’ prayer called the Suscipe. Before each meal, the Sisters recite Grace as a community, and three times a day, in call and response form, along with the ringing of a bell, they recite Angelus, a traditional prayer in remembrance of the exchange between the angel Gabriel and the Virgin Mary. Throughout the day, the Sisters recite parts of the Little Office of the Immaculate Conception, praising Mary. An hour every day is spent in adoration of and monstrance before the Eucharist, and prayers are said before and after Communion.

Just as their form of meditation is modeled after that of St. Ignatius, the Sisters also borrow from his tradition in an examination of the conscience, or the examen. Twice a day, the Sisters visit the chapel to reflect silently on the time spent since the last examen, and then reflect upon a specific virtue to practice or vice to avoid that the Sister has chosen as a focus for months or years. The day’s first examination of the conscience is a part of Midday Prayer, during which time the Sisters gather at the Chapel and pray together before or after lunch. In the evening, the Sisters recognize a time called Vespers. This Evening Prayer is part of the Liturgy of the Hours, including psalms and the Magnificat. The Sisters revisit the chapel after dinner to pray, and there is a night prayer during which individual examen takes place again, and the Sisters participate in vocal prayers. The Sisters recite the Paters before retiring to bed, which includes Act of Contrition, Our Fathers, Hail Marys, and Glory Be. Finally, the Sisters end their nights in Grand Silence, which does not end until the next morning’s mass (Johnson 2011a, 2011b).

ORGANIZATION/LEADERSHIP

The Missionaries of Charity began with twelve members. In 1963, a corresponding
group to the Sisters, The Missionary of Charity Brothers, was established. Three years later Fr. Ian Travers-Ball (Brother Andrew), a Jesuit priest from Australia assumed leadership of the Brothers and headed the group for the first twenty years of its history. Contemplative branches of the Missionaries of Charity, sisters and brothers, were established in 1976 and 1979, respectively, and are devoted to prayer, penance and service. Daily routine in the contemplative branches involves substantial time devoted to prayer, spiritual reading, and silence. The Corpus Christi Movement for Priests was formed in 1981, after expressions of interest by a number of priests. Finally, in 1984, Mother Teresa co-founded the Missionaries of Charity Fathers with Friar Joseph Langford. Other organizations affiliated with the Missionaries of Charity include The Co-Workers of Mother Teresa, The Sick and Suffering Co-Workers, and The Lay Missionaries of Charity (Greene 2008:140).

As the “foundress” of the Missionaries of Charity, Mother Teresa was Superior General until shortly before her death. The Superior General is elected by the Chapter General, which includes elected and appointed members. Every six years the Chapter General meets to review and evaluate the work of the Missionaries. The appointed members of the Chapter General include Superior General, Ex-Superiors General, Counselors General, and Regional Superiors. Elected members include representatives from every region covered, and representatives of Sisters in charge of formation (Johnson 2011a, 2011b). Sisters are expected to respect decisions of their superiors as result of prayer, and therefore these decisions are seen as the word of God. The Superior General oversees the active and contemplative Missionaries of Charity, Roman Catholics who not only take vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, but also “wholehearted and free service to the poorest of the poor.” The remaining three branches have their own hierarchy and Superior Generals.

To become a Sister of the Missionaries of Charity, the first six months are spent in aspirancy, both working and studying to further their commitment and understanding of the order. Following the period of aspirancy there is one year of postulancy, which also includes working and studying, and, for the first time, wearing of a white sari. The year of postulancy is followed by two years as a novitiate, the first including full days of prayer and study and the second including working and studying. The final novitiate period lasts six years, during which the novitiate takes temporary vows of chastity, poverty, obedience, and the wholehearted and free service to the poorest of the poor. The novitiate then begins wearing a white sari with a blue border. The novitiate works in the missions, is referred to as junior Sister, and takes her vows yearly. By the sixth year, the novitiate wears a blue sari and takes her final vows (Johnson 2011a, 2011b).

By the time of Mother Teresa’s death in 2007, the Missionaries of Charity had grown to five thousand sisters, nearly five hundred brothers, and over 600 missions, charitable organizations, shelters, and schools in over 120 countries.

ISSUES/CHALLENGES

The Missionaries of Charity, and Mother Teresa personally, have received both adulation and criticism. Criticisms of the Mothers of Charity and Mother Teresa have included the revelation of her long period of loss of faith even while she was presenting herself a doing God’s work, allegations of accepting donations from disreputable sources and accumulating massive funds in foundation bank accounts rather than expending them to assist the poor. The various criticisms notwithstanding, Mother Teresa has become a revered figure by world figures and ordinary individuals of all faiths around the world.

Mother Teresa’s crisis of faith became public as a result of personal letters, published posthumously in 2003. This crisis apparently began in the mid-1940s when she was working in the Calcutta slums and establishing Missionaries of Charity. According to the letters, this crisis of faith continued throughout the remainder of her life, even as she worked in response to her “call within a call.” Mother Teresa likened her lack of faith, her feeling of abandonment by Christ, to hell. At times, even as she worked in the name of God, she reported having doubted his existence. Though Mother Teresa asked for the letters containing these admissions to be destroyed, her confessors and superiors did not honor her wish, and they were published in Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light (Van Biema 2007). In one letter to Rev. Michael Van Der Peet in September, 1979 she stated that “Jesus has a very special love for you. As for me, the silence and the emptiness is so great that I look and do not see, listen and do not hear” (Van Biema 2007). The possibility that her career might be interpreted as hypocritical did not escape her, and she described her half of a century working without faith as in some ways “torture.”

A second controversy that has followed the Missionaries of Charity is their funding sources and use of charitable contributions. Mother Teresa reportedly received funding for her causes from disreputable sources, including Haiti’s Duvalier family and Charles Keating, the central figure in “The Keating Five” scandal that involved allegations of illicit protection of Keating by five United States Senators during the 1980s Savings and Loan crisis. The Missionaries of Charity has also been accused of allowing and ignoring squalid conditions to persist at Charity supported facilities, such as hospices and orphanages, while refusing to make public accountings of their expenditures of funds to support these facilities (Hitchens 1995). As one critic reported, “The donations rolled in and were deposited in the bank, but they had no effect on our ascetic lives and very little effect on the lives of the poor we were trying to help” (Shields 1998). Another critic has alleged that homes for the dying run by the Missionaries of Charity are known for having a lack of doctors to properly diagnose patients’ illnesses, using previously used or unsanitary hypodermic needles, refusing to administer pain killers to those in excruciating pain, and otherwise relying on outdated and dangerous medical practices (Fox 1994). An undercover volunteer authored reports of abusive treatment of children; he reports having seen children bound, force-fed, and left outside at night during monsoon rains (MacIntyre 2005). In addition to criticism from the medical personnel and investigative journalists, former co-workers and former Sisters in the Missionaries of Charity, including Colette Livermore (2008), have written similar accounts of the poor treatment of the suffering the Sisters were ostensibly committed to helping. According to Fox (1994), the Missionaries of Charity justify what would appear to be the furthering of suffering of the needy, abandoned, and afflicted, as reflecting Mother Teresa’s teaching that suffering brings one closer to Jesus. She allegedly has equated the suffering of man with that of Christ and therefore a gift. This “theology of suffering,” has caused the disillusionment among a number of former co-workers and Sisters (Livermore 2008), and caused skepticism about the organizations commitment to the fourth vow of “wholehearted and free service to the poorest of the poor.”

A final controversy has been whether Mother Teresa was deserving of beatification and canonization and whether the process was being handled in a fair and rigorous way or being unduly promoted by the Vatican in response to Mother Teresa’s enormous popularity. While the Vatican traditionally cannot begin the beatification process until five years after the candidate’s death, the Holy See, governed by Pope John Paul II, started the process in 1997. She was beatified in 2003, making her known to the Catholic community as “Blessed” Mother Teresa. The Holy See also abandoned the process of adversarial investigation, a process to critically explore her extraordinary work. Two miracles, involving the personal intercession of Mother Teresa, are also required as part of the process of consideration for sainthood. There is currently only one claim of a miracle, made by a Bengali woman who maintains that she was miraculously healed after holding a locket with a picture of Mother Teresa to her abdomen. However, this one claim is contested as both the woman’s husband and the attending physician insist that the woman’s cysts were cured after nearly a year of medication and treatment (Rohde 2003).

Though there are those who claim that Mother Teresa’s legacy of service is not as charitable as her champions view them, it is clear that through her world-wide efforts
and organizations, she has become a prominent and much loved figure in India, the Catholic community, and all over the world. In 1971, Mother Teresa received the Nobel Peace Prize for “bringing help to suffering humanity.” She was also awarded honors such as India’s Padma Shri and the Jawajarlal Nehru Award for International Understanding, England’s Order of Merit, the Gold Medal of the Soviet Peace Committee, the United States Congressional Gold Medal, along with over a hundred other awards, including honorary degrees from a number of other countries and organizations for her endeavors with Missionaries of Charity. Perhaps the most impressive indicator of widespread respect for Mother Teresa is that she was ranked first in the United States’ 1999 Gallup Poll’s List of Most Widely Admired People of the 20 th Century, ahead of luminaries such as Martin Luther King, Albert Einstein, and Pope John Paul II.

REFERENCES

Fox, Robin. 1994. “Mother Teresa’s Care for the Dying.” The Lancet 344 (8925): 807.

Greene, Meg. 2008. Mother Teresa: A Biography. Mumbai, India: Jaico Publishing House.

Hitchens, Christopher. 1995. The Missionary Position. London: Verso.

Johnson, Mary. 2011a. An Unquenchable Thirst: Following Mother Teresa in Search of Love, Service, and an Authentic Life. New York: Spiegel and Grau.

Johnson, Mary. 2011b. “More About the MCs.” 2011. Accessed from http://www.maryjohnson.co/more-about-the-mcs/ on 10 December 2012.

Livermore, Colette. 2008. “KERA’s Think Podcast: Leaving Mother Teresa, Losing Faith, and Searching for Meaning.” 15 December 2008. Accessed from http://www.podcast.com/I-451506.htm on 12 December 2012.

MacIntyre, Donal. 2005. “The Squalid Truth Behind the Legacy of Mother Teresa.” NewStatesman. 22 August 2005. Accessed from http://www.newstatesman.com/node/151370 on 12 December 2012.

Rohde, David. 2003. “Her Legacy: Acceptance And Doubts Of a Miracle.” The New York Times. 20 October 2003. Accessed from http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/20/world/her-legacy-acceptance-and-doubts-of-a-miracle.html on 15 December 2012.

Sheilds, Susan. 1998. “Mother Teresa’s House of Illusions: How She Harmed Her Helpers As Well As Those They ‘Helped’.” Free Inquiry Magazine Accessed from http://www.secularhumanism.org/library/fi/shields_18_1.html on 10 December 10 2012.

“Sister Nirmala: Mother Teresa Successor Passes Away.” BBC, Accessed from http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-33234989 on 10 July 2015.

Van Biema, David. 2007. “Mother Teresa’s Crisis of Faith,” TIME, 23 August 2007. Accessed from http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1655720,00.html on 10 December 2012.

Post Date:
3 January 2012

CATHOLIC WORKER MOVEMENT TIMELINE

1877:  Peter Maurin was born in Oultet, France.

1897:  Dorothy Day was born in Brooklyn, New York.

1926:  Dorothy Day’s daughter, Tamar Teresa, was born.

1927:  Dorothy Day converted to Catholicism.

1932:  Dorothy Day met Peter Maurin in New York City.

1933 (May 1):  Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin began publishing The Catholic Worker newspaper in New York City.

1933:  Day and Maurin started the first “house of hospitality” in New York City, which later became known St. Joseph House (later joined by Maryhouse).

1939-1945:  The Catholic Worker ‘s circulation dropped due to the pacifist stance of Day and the other editors during World War II.

1949:  Peter Maurin’s Easy Essays were published.

1949:  Peter Maurin died at the Catholic Worker farm near Newburgh, New York.

1952:  Dorothy Day’s autobiography, The Long Loneliness, was published.

1980:  Dorothy Day died at Maryhouse Catholic Worker in New York City.

1983:  A proposal for Day’s canonization was put forth by the Claretian Missionaries.

2000:  Pope John Paul II granted Day “Servant of God” status, the first step toward canonization.

2012:  The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops formally endorsed Day’s cause for sainthood.

2014:  Over 225 Catholic Worker communities existed around the world.

FOUNDER/GROUP HISTORY

The Catholic Worker was co-founded by Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin. While Day is the better known of the two, Maurin was the elder. He was born with the name Aristide Pierre Maurin in Oultet, France in 1877, the son of French peasant farmers and one of 24 children. Born into a Catholic family, as a young man he considered religious life, joining the Christian Brothers. A creative yet quiet person inspired by French personalist philosophy, especially the work of Emmanuel Mounier, Maurin sought to live a simple and dignified life of manual labor. In 1909, he migrated to Canada and later to the U.S., working in a variety of jobs as a manual laborer, which eventually brought him to New York City.

Twenty years after Maurin’s birth in France, Dorothy Day was born in Brooklyn, New York. Her father was a journalist, and the family moved to San Francisco and Chicago as he followed the work. Raised nominally Episcopalian, Day later reported having a strong attraction to faith and God as a child despite her parents’ lack of regular religious engagement. As an adult, Day became a journalist herself, writing for socialist and anarchist newspapers in New York City. A strong supporter of workers’ rights and feminist causes, Day rubbed shoulders with radical thinkers, politicians, philosophers, and artists in the bohemian culture of NewYork City in the 1920s, counting playwright Eugene O’Neill as a close friend. During her twenties, she became pregnant and had an abortion. Later, she fell in love with a biologist named Forster Batterham, who became her common-law husband. She spent four happy years with him, during which time she became pregnant. Out of joy and gratitude for her child, she began attending mass at a Catholic church near their home in Staten Island, New York. When she voiced her desire to convert to Catholicism and to have their baby baptized, Forster, an atheist who wanted little to do with religion, urged her not to go through with it. The two ended up separating, an experience that Day later described as one of the most painful decisions of her life: choosing the Church over her love for Forster.

Following her conversion to Catholicism, Day sought a way to bring together her belief in God and her long-standing commitment to social justice. She found a marriage of these two in Catholic social teaching and in the person of Peter Maurin, who she met in New York City in 1932. Together, Maurin and Day decided, in part because of her background in journalism, to start a newspaper focused on issues of workers’ rights from a Catholic perspective. The birth of The Catholic Worker newspaper happened in the midst of the Great Depression in the United States. In addition to publishing pieces relevant to the struggles of workers, Day and Maurin also sought a way to aid poor and unemployed people in material ways, performing what is known in Catholic tradition as the “Works of Mercy:” feeding the sick, giving drink to the thirsty, housing the homeless, welcoming the stranger, visiting the prisoner, clothing the naked, and burying the dead. Their response: the house of hospitality.

Day and Maurin began inviting people in to stay at their apartments in the Lower East Side of New York City, sharing their food and offering a bed (or even a floor) to people in need. Both believed that one of the problems with bureaucratic social service agencies was their impersonalism. In contrast, Maurin was strongly influenced by French personalist philosophers, who saw the key to a “society in which it was easier to be good” as directly tied to people reaching out to each other through personal relationships and helping their brother or sister at a
personal sacrifice. Over time, their efforts grew into a group of volunteers who lived in a Lower East Side building (eventually called “St. Joseph House”) with people seeking shelter from the streets, running a daily soup line that often stretched down the block and publishing pieces in The Catholic Worker newspaper critiquing the social, spiritual, and personal crises underlying problems, such as poverty and racism. Over time, the newspaper (and the Catholic Worker community) became focused on issues of violence and militarism as well, with the group’s pacifist stance and nonviolent civil disobedience becoming more central to its existence during the Spanish Civil War, World War II, the Vietnam War, and into present time.

As the newspaper’s circulation grew and word of the house of hospitality’s work spread, the Catholic Worker community gave birth to what has become known as the Catholic Worker movement. Houses of hospitality, often with their own accompanying newspapers describing their work, began to spring up around the United States. By 1940, over thirty Catholic Worker communities were formed by local groups around the country interested in the kind of work that Day and Maurin described in their newspaper. The movement’s growth was, and has continued to be, decentralized and unorganized. No one’s permission is needed to start a Catholic Worker community, nor do incarnations of Catholic Worker vision and practice need to follow a particular set of rules or models. Indeed, Day’s anarchist past nurtured her commitment to a movement that was informed by those directly involved, which left room for spontaneity and creativity rather than authority and leadership dictating the boundaries for communities. While the de facto leaders of different communities were sometimes familiar with each other, connections between different Catholic Worker communities rarely extended beyond informal friendships.

As of 2014, over 225 Catholic Worker houses and farms exist in the United States and around the world. Some observers thought the movement would disappear following Day’s death in 1980 given her centrality as a symbolic figure for the movement as a whole. And while the movement has evolved over time, including after Day’s death, it continues to thrive in many ways. Catholic Workers in the U.S., Ireland, Germany, Mexico, and other countries serve food to the hungry and house the homeless, publish newspapers critiquing social policy and reflecting on spiritual issues, and are arrested for protesting war and militarism worldwide.

DOCTRINES/BELIEFS

Because it is a decentralized movement, beliefs vary from Catholic Worker community to community and within communities as well. Still, many groups throughout the movement do share similar principles, the most common of which are stated in “The Aims and Means of the Catholic Worker,” published annually in The Catholic Worker newspaper. These aims and means focus on creating a society, as founder Peter Maurin said, “where it is easier for people to be good” centered in the “justice and charity of Jesus Christ.” They advocate for personalism (a focus on taking personal responsibility for changing conditions rather than reliance on the state for “impersonal charity”) as well as decentralization of societal institutions and a “green revolution” that cultivates agricultural and craft skills for self-sufficiency and meaningful labor. While these principles underlie the culture of many Catholic Worker communities, their actions tend to focus on the four practices listed in the Aims and Means: nonviolence, the works of mercy, manual labor, and voluntary poverty.

The Catholic Worker’s commitment to nonviolence has grown over the years. Dorothy Day’s pacifism took root before World War II, but it was strengthened during that period, when many people left the Worker or cancelled their subscriptions to the newspaper because of Day’s outspoken opposition to the war. These beliefs were rooted in an understanding of Jesus’ teachingand behavior in the gospels as being nonviolent (e.g., turn the other cheek) while also disrupting the status quo (e.g., when Jesus overturned the tables of the temple money lenders). During the Vietnam War, Catholic priests Philip and Daniel Berrigan (friends of the Catholic Worker) staged draft card burnings inspired by their Catholic faith. The Worker’s support of the Berrigans and similar anti-war activists solidified its reputation as a major force of nonviolent activism, opposition to war, and Catholic peace activism during a period when many young people had become disillusioned by war and violence. Increasingly, Catholic Worker communities around the country began to attract war resisters looking for communities where their views would be supported, especially if they were Catholics, since the Catholic Church’s official teachings were much more open to war and violence in certain circumstances.

The Works of Mercy (held by most in Catholic Worker tradition to be feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, clothing the naked, sheltering the homeless, caring for the sick, visiting those in prison, and burying the dead) are in some ways more central to the Catholic Worker’s beliefs, since the first house of hospitality was started in order to allow for their practice. In Christian tradition, especially Catholic tradition, the works of mercy are seen as central to the Christian life. In the twenty-fifth chapter of the gospel of Matthew, Jesus is reported as telling his followers that in order to enter the kingdom of heaven, they had to do these things for their brothers and sisters in need just as they would have done them for Jesus himself. Catholic Worker communities not only perform works of mercy, but also in encourage others to engage in similar practices. Also, these central Catholic Worker beliefs about what it means to be Christian are proclaimed in various works of art, which are often displayed in the houses as reminders of the importance of the works of mercy to Catholic Worker life.

Many Catholic Workers also believe in the importance of manual labor and voluntary poverty, though these beliefs are less central in that not all community members share these commitments. Still, most Catholic Worker communities place a premium on simplicity, living in small rooms with simple beds, eating donated food out of donated dishes, wearing donated clothes, and doing much of the work of the houses (washing dishes, mopping floors, repairing walls) themselves, regardless of whether full-time volunteers have college degrees or come from wealthy backgrounds. Most houses of hospitality are set up as places where people can work with their hands and where often well-educated, middle-class volunteers live in the same conditions as people from the street who have been invited to live in the house as guests. Belief in the importance of manual labor is rooted in the conviction that many of contemporary society’s ills are due to an alienation from the products of one’s labor as well as the belief that manual labor is good for both the body and the mind. Voluntary poverty is seen as important because it separates one from the rampant consumerism in modern capitalist societies as well as helping one to live in solidarity with the poor.

RITUALS/PRACTICES

Catholic Worker rituals are centered in the works of mercy and nonviolent protest against militarism, homelessness, and other issues facing many contemporary societies. Many communities also participate in traditional Catholic rituals, such as the mass and praying the liturgy of the hours (typically, vespers). Rituals also include intellectual endeavors such as reporting and writing as part of communities’ publication of newspapers and newsletters. Many of these rituals involve, whether intentionally or not, the act of distancing the Catholic Worker from other groups, such as the Roman Catholic Church and social service agencies (Yukich 2010).

Though each community is different, most Catholic Worker communities engage regularly in the works of mercy. Many have soup kitchens, food pantries, and/or clothing closets. Several books and articles have been written chronicling the work of the original Catholic Worker community in New York City. Many of these include details on the daily rituals of the community, which provide a sense of what Catholic Worker ritual entails. At St. Joseph House in New York City, there is a soupline Monday through Friday. Each morning, there is a volunteer assigned to make the huge pot of soup. Other volunteers show up later to butter bread and to brew pitchers of hot tea. Before the soupline begins, the volunteers all join hands and pray for God’s blessing on the community and all who will eat there that day. Then people began to file in the front door, sitting down at tables where they are served a bowl of soup by one of the volunteers. Volunteers also bring around tea and bread, serving the guests as one might be served at a restaurant. Often volunteers take a moment to sit and talk with one of the guests, especially if they see someone they know.

After the soupline ends, many of the volunteers head to their homes and jobs. Live-in volunteers then make lunch for all of the people who live in the house. The afternoon is typically a quieter time. Some volunteers accompany residents to doctor’s appointments, while someone else makes dinner for the community, which always begins at 5 PM. Someone from Maryhouse, the other New York City house of hospitality located two blocks away, comes with a grocery cart to pick up their portion of the dinner. After everyone is finished eating, the dishes must be done, tables cleaned, and floors mopped. On Tuesday nights, these rituals are followed by a Catholic mass: a priest comes to the house each week just for the occasion. On Friday nights, they are followed by open-to-the-public “Friday night meetings” on topics varying from the spirituality of St. Teresa of Avila to the prison at Guantanamo Bay.

In addition to the everyday rituals of the community, in which the works of mercy are central, many Catholic Workers are also regularly involved in acts of civil disobedience protesting war and other forms of violence. One of the most common locations for these protests is the armed forces recruiting center in Times Square. In a typical protest, activists from the Catholic Worker and similarly-minded groups take signs to the recruiting center, stand outside with the signs, and block the entrance to prohibit anyone from entering. After a certain period of time, police officers come and arrest those blocking the entrance. Usually a few activists stay behind to collect the posters and take them back to the house. After spending a short time in jail, the protestors are typically released, though they later have to appear in court. Most use the court appearances as an opportunity to share their views about the immorality and illegality of war and violence.

While these are some of the rituals common in the New York City community, since each Catholic Worker community is different, each community’s rituals differ as well. Some do not hold regular masses at their houses of hospitality. Some are not regularly involved in civil disobedience. However, most have some form of a meal shared with the homeless and other impoverished populations: if there is any ritual common to most communities, it would be this type of activity. The rituals of shared meals, shared time in jail, shared celebration of mass, and others not only enable Catholic Workers to live out their beliefs but also serve to bind them together, creating close-knit communities.

ORGANIZATION/LEADERSHIP

As of 2014, there are over 225 Catholic Worker houses and farms around the world. Most of these are located in the United States, particularly in the Northeast, Midwest, and West, where a higher percentage of the general population is Catholic than in the South. Approximately twenty five communities are located in other countries, most in Western Europe though a few are in places like Central America, New Zealand, and Africa. Communities vary in size, and because of the decentralized and informal character of the movement, there is no membership list. As an example, in the New York City community, around fifteen people are full-time volunteers living in or near the houses of hospitality. Another thirty people live in the houses as guests, some long-term and some short-term, staying there until they get back on their feet. The larger local community of “friends of the house” (around fifty people at any one time) includes regular volunteers as well as people who attend Friday Night Meetings, house masses, or other community activities. In terms of wider interest and support, the community’s newspaper, The Catholic Worker, has over 20,000 subscribers around the country. The community is financed entirely through private donations from individual supporters, who might loosely be considered part of the movement due to their support of its ongoing work.

In smaller Catholic Worker communities, often a couple will start a house of hospitality, running it in their home with one or two other full-time volunteers and inviting three or four guests to stay with them. In terms of size, most communities lie somewhere in the range between the New York City community and the small, family-run community, with communities in urban areas often larger in size than those in more rural areas, where most of the Catholic Worker farms are located. Catholic Worker farms often provide rest for volunteers from urban areas as well as a place to engage in manual labor, to connect with the land, and to grow food that can be served in urban soup kitchens.

The Catholic Worker is better characterized as a movement than an organization. Catholic Workers seek to differentiate themselves from mainstream society; they also seek to challenge it through providing what they see as a better way to live. The movement is decentralized and relatively unorganized and has no official leader. While Dorothy Day was long considered the unofficial leader of the movement, since her death no single figure has arisen to fill that role. However, certain communities are often seen as particularly important or as role models for other communities. As the original community, the New York City community is often looked to as the standard-bearer by communities elsewhere. Still, some other communities consider it to be too influenced by Day’s legacy and too slow to adapt to current times, demonstrating the diversity of views regarding the Catholic Worker vision within the movement. Authority rests primarily within the local community, and each of these communities organizes that authority differently. In the New York City community, theoretically a designated person “on the house” is in charge for a fixed amount of time, after which someone else is in charge. But in practice, much authority rests on the full-time volunteers who take the majority of those house shifts, particularly volunteers who have lived in the community for a long period of time. In other communities, particularly nonprofit organizations, there is a board of directors or full-time staff members who are in charge of the community.

The Catholic Church is authoritative in the Catholic Worker movement only insofar as most of the communities see themselves as Catholic and wish to engage with the church rather than to ignore it. However, many communities openly disagree with certain Church teachings and practices, claiming that the teaching of the “primacy of conscience” gives them the right (even the duty) to dissent from teachings they believe are against the will of God. Some communities do not identify as Catholic at all, such as Haley House in Boston. Though certain communities adhere more closely to Church teachings and practices than others, the variation in the degree of adherence at times creates conflict within the movement, with some wishing to impose greater uniformity and conformity on communities in the movement.

Most Catholic Worker communities refuse 501(c)3 status and government funding because they do not want to cooperate with what they see as a corrupt, violent system. Instead, their work is supported entirely by private donations. These include cash donations from supporters as well as donations of food and clothing from local businesses and community members. As a result, communities are in theory beholden to the donors who support them. While the degree to which this is actually the case certainly varies by community, in many communities the donors in fact have little impact on decision-making. Because Catholic Workers are attracted to the community based on a commitment to shared principles, they are unlikely to shift those principles simply to makedonors happy. There is a history of this refusal to compromise within the movement. As mentioned earlier, during World War II, Dorothy Day wrote in The Catholic Worker newspaper about her unwillingness to compromise her pacifist stance on the war. Her views were very unpopular, and the paper lost thousands of subscribers (and donors) as a result. Still, Day was convinced that she was right and that God would provide for the community in other ways, and the community survived that period and other rough periods in its history.

Catholic Workers see donations as gifts from God and affirmations of their work rather than as justification for donors to influence the movement. Indeed, most people who donate to the Worker do so precisely because they want to support an anti-authoritarian group that is not beholden to any particular set of interests. In line with their personalist philosophy, community members seek to maintain good relationships with their donors, caring about them as people and showing gratitude to them for their gifts. These relationships form the basis for continuing donations, not just adherence to the same ideas and principles.

ISSUES/CHALLENGES

The Catholic Worker movement has faced several challenges over time, some common to the movement as a whole and some specific to particular communities. On a broad scale, Dorothy Day’s death in 1980 left the movement a bit rudderless. Her charismatic personality and leadership had been central not only for the New York City communities but also for the Catholic Worker vision in general. Still, the movement’s decentralized and unorganized character allowed it to adjust, survive, and thrive even after the death of its co-founder and central figure. No individual has arisen to take Day’s place as an overarching inspiration for the movement as a whole, though it is not clear that this is necessarily a challenge for the movement and its future other than making it less prominent in the mainstream media.

This may become more of a problem as the Catholic Church moves forward in efforts to make Dorothy Day a saint. Because of her strong association with the Catholic Worker movement, she remains the public face of the movement and all it stands for. But as the Church moves Day toward sainthood, it has systematically downplayed certain aspect’s of Day’s life and thought while emphasizing others that were far less central to her daily work but are more in line with the Church hierarchy’s teachings. For instance, while Church discussions of Day’s life often gloss over her anarchism and pacifism, they often emphasize her regret for her abortion and her orthodox beliefs about sexuality.

Catholic Workers disagree about many things. Some believe all Catholic Worker communities should be Catholic (and, further, some think they should agree with all of the Church’s teachings), while others do not believe in these restrictions. Some maintain strict rules about the use of technology, following Day’s and Maurin’s positions on the ways in which technology was harmful in general and in particular to the poor, while others have slick websites and/or Facebook pages. Some communities refuse to apply for nonprofit (501(c)3) status, arguing that communities should practice noncooperation with the state and should avoid bureaucratization, while others see nonprofit status as a way to perform the works of mercy more effectively. These disagreements are important, but because the movement is decentralized, they rarely threaten the movement’s existence because groups are independent and often have little concrete interaction with each other, freeing each to operate as it wishes.

The movement’s largest challenges emerge not from conflicts between communities but from demographic changes within them. Many local communities were started by a single family or even one couple. While they typically grow to include larger numbers of people, those people are often more transient, with the founders remaining the glue holding the community together. As those founders age, sometimes it is difficult to know who, if anyone, will be able to run the community in the future.

The question of who will keep local communities running is important in larger and more established houses as well. As long-time community members and leaders age, they sometimes worry that not enough new people are becoming involved in the Catholic Worker to keep the houses, and the movement itself, going. In the New York City community, for instance, there are still people in the house who knew Dorothy Day when she was alive, but most of them are in their sixties or seventies or have passed away in recent years. It is possible that the Catholic Worker remained strong after Day’s death because some of her contemporaries were alive to keep her vision going. The real test may be whether these communities will survive once that era is decisively over.

The lack of young people in particular is a pressing concern in some Catholic Worker communities. In many communities, people in their twenties and thirties volunteer once or twice a week or even for several months at a time. However, some communities have difficulty finding young people committed to joining the movement for the long haul. This makes it difficult to predict what the trajectory of communities will be and whether they will have stable leadership in the future. The Catholic Worker’s strong critiques of consumerism and technology are especially challenging for young people in an age in which both are integral parts of daily life. Demographic shifts in the Catholic Church may also present a challenge to continued longevity: increasingly, committed young American Catholics come from more “traditional” Catholic families, with children of more “liberal” Catholics (and most young Catholics in general) increasingly just leaving the Church altogether (Smith et al. 2014). The pool of likely Catholic Workers may be shrinking, at least in the U.S.

In spite of these challenges, new Catholic Worker communities continue to emerge. Recently, the first Catholic Worker community in Africa started in Uganda. Perhaps more established communities will eventually close, while communities in other places, including outside of the U.S., will grow. While they may find it sad to imagine the decline of their own communities, many Catholic Workers would also acknowledge that the ebb and flow of communities is in line with the Catholic Worker vision. Dorothy Day liked to say that the Catholic Worker was like a school where students came to learn and then went away to incorporate the works of mercy into other endeavors (Riegle 2014). She believed that the movement would continue to exist as long as there was a need for it. Today, poverty, militarism, consumerism, and excesses of technology remain central issues in American society. The question is whether they are still seen as problems and whether a specifically Catholic approach to these issues still has resonance on a broad scale. As long as the answer to both of these questions is yes, the Catholic Worker movement is likely to stay vibrant, offering its simple yet prophetic response to the world’s suffering: “the only solution is love” (Day 1952:285).

REFERENCES

Aronica, Michele Teresa. 1987. Beyond Charismatic Leadership: The New York Catholic Worker Movement. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books.

Cornell, Tom. 2014. “A Brief Introduction to the Catholic Worker Movement.” The Catholic Worker website. Accessed from http://www.catholicworker.org/historytext.cfm?Number=4 on 4 November 2014.

Coy, Patrick G. 2001. “An Experiment in Personalist Politics: The Catholic Worker Movement and Nonviolent Action.” Peace & Change 26:78–94.

Day, Dorothy. 1952. The Long Loneliness. San Francisco, CA: Harper & Row.

Forest, Jim. 2014. “Peter Maurin: Co-Founder of the Catholic Worker movement.” The Catholic Worker website. Accessed from http://www.catholicworker.org/roundtable/pmbiography.cfm on 4 November 2014.

McKanan, Dan. 2008. The Catholic Worker after Dorothy: Practicing the Works of Mercy in a New Generation. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press.

Murray, Harry. 1990. Do Not Neglect Hospitality: The Catholic Worker and the Homeless. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.

Riegle, Rosalie G. 2014. “The Catholic Worker Movement in 2014: An Appreciation.” The Montré al Review, August 2014. Accessed from http://www.themontrealreview.com/2009/The-Catholic-Worker-Movement.php on 4 November 2014.

Smith, Christian, Kyle Longest, Jonathan Hill, and Kari Christoffersen. 2014. Young Catholic America: Emerging Adults In, Out of, and Gone from the Church. New York: Oxford University Press.

Spickard, James V. 2005. “Ritual, Symbol, and Experience: Understanding Catholic Worker House Masses.” Sociology of Religion 66:337-57.

Thorn, William J., Phillip M. Runkel, and Susan Mountin, eds. 2001. Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker: Centenary Essays. Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press.

Yukich, Grace. 2010. “Boundary Work in Inclusive Religious Communities: Constructing Identity at the New York Catholic Worker.” Sociology of Religion 71:172-96.

Zwick, Mark, and Louise Zwick. 2005. The Catholic Worker Movement: Intellectual and Spiritual Origins. Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press.

Post Date:
9 November 2014

CATHOLIC WORKER MOVEMENT VIDEO CONNECTIONS

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE TIMELINE

1821:  Christian Science founder, Mary Morse Baker, was born in Bow, New Hampshire.

1843:  Mary Morse Baker married George Washington Glover who died six months later.

1853:  Mary Baker married dentist Daniel Patterson.

1856:  Mary Baker Glover Patterson suffered debilitating illness for the next several years and tried a variety of popular alternative remedies.

1862:  Mary Baker Glover Patterson visited healer Phineas Parkhurst Quimby and was temporarily healed.

1866:  Mary Patterson fell on the ice and was seriously injured; three days later she was healed.

1870:  Mary Patterson maintained a healing practice and began teaching classes on spiritual healing.

1873:  Mary Patterson divorced her husband on grounds of desertion.

1875:  Mary Patterson p ublished the first edition of Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures , which became the mainstay of Christian Science theology and practice.

1877:  Mary Patterson married Asa Gilbert Eddy.

1879:  Mary Baker Eddy and her students formed a church, Church of Christ (Scientist); Eddy was its ordained its pastor.

1881:  Eddy founded the Massachusetts Metaphysical College to teach spiritual healing.

1881–1891:  Eddy began a period of intense publication, including books and journals.

1889:  Eddy closed the Metaphysical College, dissolved the church and moved from the Boston area to Concord, New Hampshire.

1892:  Church of Christ (Scientist) was re-instituted as The First Church of Christ, Scientist.

1893:  Construction of the Mother Church in Boston began.

1894:  Eddy abolished the positions of pastors of branch churches and ordained Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures as pastor of first the Mother Church and later of all the branch churches.

1895:  Eddy produced the Manual of the Mother Church , which continues to be the sole authority for the organization, publications and practices of Christian Science.

1906:  The Mother Church Extension, with a capacity for 3,000, was completed.

1908:  At the age of eighty seven, Eddy established The Christian Science Monitor .

1910:  Mary Baker Eddy died.

FOUNDER/GROUP HISTORY

Christian Science founder, Mary Baker Eddy (1821-1910) was born to Mark and Abigail Baker in Bow, New Hampshire. The Bakers were active Congregationalists. Though Mary’s father, Mark, held fast to the Calvinist notion of predestination, she indicates that even at the age of twelve she disagreed and had heated theological disputes with him. According to Eddy, she joined the Congregational Church her family was attending when she came of age, but only after informing the pastor that she did not subscribe to the doctrines of either the fall or predestination (Eddy 1892).

Illness plagued Mary Baker, first in childhood and later during her adult years. In her autobiographical writing, Eddy notes that her father was taught that her illnesses and frailty arose from her brain being “too big for her body” (Eddy 1892). These constant illnesses precluded her attending school, and so her brother Albert tutored her at home.

In December, 1843, Baker married contractor, George Washington Glover. Two weeks later the Glover’s moved to his job sites, first in Charleston, South Carolina and soon after in Wilmington, North Carolina. George Glover died from yellow fever in June of 1844. Alone and carrying her first and only child, Mary Glover returned to her parents New Hampshire home.

In 1849, Mary’s mother, Abigail died. Within a year Mary’s father remarried. A strained relationship with her new step-mother led Mary to move in with her sister, but Mary’s son, named George Washington Glover for his father, was sent to live with another family. Mary Glover married again in 1853 to dentist and homeopath Daniel Patterson and the newlyweds relocated to be near Mary’s son. In 1856, the family raising George moved to Minnesota; Mary Glover Patterson would not see her son again for more than twenty years.

For the next six years, Mary Patterson suffered a variety of illnesses. Like many other white, middle and upper class nineteenth century women, she suffered from ailments that were, at times, debilitating (Ehrenreich 1978). Seeking a cure, she tried many of the alternative medicine treatments popular at the time, including hydropathy (water cure) and Sylvester Graham’s nutritional system. In 1862, she heard of healer Phineas Parkhurst Quimby and traveled to his practice in Maine. Quimby had studied mesmerism and developed his own system for healing, sometimes called, Mind Cure. The cure rested on the idea that since illness arose in the mind, freeing the mind of diseased thought would lead to healing.

Mary Patterson found relief through Quimby’s methods as she spent time discussing metaphysical healing with him. Though a variety of sources cite Quimby, not Eddy, as the source of the healing system that became Christian Science, Gillian Gill’s thoroughly researched biography of Eddy soundly puts that idea to rest (Gill 1998).

In 1863, Mary Patterson left Maine and rejoined her husband in Lynn, Massachusetts where her illnesses reappeared. Like other Quimby patients, she needed to be in close proximity to Quimby to sustain the healing. Life in Lynn was difficult for Mary Patterson. Her son, George, had been wounded fighting for the Union, husband Daniel was struggling to establish himself in a new location, she was often on the verge of homelessness, her marriage was faltering, and she was ill.

In 1866, not long after Quimby died, Mary Patterson suffered a fall on the ice in Swampscott, Massachusetts. Her later writings indicate that her injuries were life threatening, but that she was completely healed by reading her Bible. She would come to see this moment as the key to her discovery of the principles of Christian healing. She began healing others, writing, teaching her ideas, and formulating what would become the basis for Christian Science.

In 1875, she published the first edition of Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, which, together with the King James Version of the Bible , constitutes the core of Christian Science theology and practice. Over the years, Eddy produced over four hundred editions of what she called the Christian Science textbook.

In 1879, she married Asa Gilbert Eddy, a former student who she had healed and who had become a Christian Science practitioner under her tutelage. In that same year, Mary Baker Eddy and a small group of students formed the Church of Christ (Scientist). Soon after, Mary Baker Eddy was ordained its first pastor. In 1881, she founded the Massachusetts Metaphysical College with a curriculum that included courses such as “The Principle and Practice of Christian Science or Mind Healing” and “Mental and Physical Obstetrics.” Mary Baker Eddy was a master of marketing and had a valuable product to offer. Americans had little trust in allopathic medicine and were turning to alternative forms of healing. In 1883, she published the monthly Journal of Christian Science that included articles on Christian Science Theology and testimonies of healing making her ideas available beyond the Boston area. The success of Mary Baker Eddy’s healing practice and her Metaphysical College solved the financial problems that had followed her since her first marriage.

From the time she began teaching her healing system to the end of her life, there were attempts to wrest control of Christian Science away from her. In response, she carefully orchestrated the process of institutionalization. In 1889, she abruptly closed the Metaphysical College, dissolved her church and moved from Boston to Concord, Massachusetts. In 1892, she re-organized the church as the First Church of Christ Scientist. A year later, Eddy ordered the construction of a church building in Boston to be called the Mother Church, with a seating capacity of 1,000.

In 1894, Eddy ordained Science and Health, as Pastor of the Mother Church in Boston. A year later she replaced all the men and women pastors of the branch churches with this text and the Bible. She continued developing the church organization and produced the first edition of the Manual of the Mother Church in 1895. A comprehensive text, it contains rules determining all functions of the organization from the order of worship in services to the election of the Board of Directors. The material in the 1908 Manual (the last version) cannot be changed without the permission of Mary Baker Eddy.

DOCTRINES/BELIEFS

Christian Science is known as a healing tradition, and indeed it is that, but it is quite distinct in its understanding of the nature of God, the nature of man (this is the term Science and Health and contemporary Christian Scientists use to discuss what others might call human individuals), sin, sickness and atonement. Christian science differentiates itself from most other forms of Christianity by insisting that the body, sin and sickness do not exist.

Examining Mary Baker Eddy’s interpretation of the opening chapters of the book of Genesis as she presents them in Science and Health provides a basis for understanding fundamental Christian Science doctrine. For Eddy, the first chapter of Genesis represents Truth and the second and third chapters exemplify error.

Genesis 1:26 begins with the statement: “ And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. . .” ( King James Version). And it continues in 1:27: “ So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.” Eddy explains that these verses mean, first, that humans are created through Divine Mind in the exact image of God, second, that God is Father-Mother, and third, that the entire creation including “man” is like God, spiritual, not material.

For Christian Scientists, humans are the reflection of the Father–Mother God. In Science and Health, Eddy uses the metaphor of a mirror to explain what she means.

Your mirrored reflection is your own image or likeness. If you lift a weight, your reflection does this also. If you speak, the lips of this likeness move in accord with yours. Now compare man before the mirror to his divine Principle, God. Call the mirror Divine Science, and call man its reflection. Then note how true, according to Christian Science, is the reflection to its original. As the reflection of yourself appears in the mirror, so you, being spiritual, are the reflection of God. The substance, Life, intelligence, Truth, and Love, which constitute Deity, are reflected by His creation; and when we subordinate the false testimony of the corporeal senses to the facts of Science, we shall see this true likeness and reflection everywhere.

Since the all-loving Father – Mother God created “man” as God’s image and reflection, “man” is not material, and consequently is not subject to sickness, sin, or death since these are not part of God’s creation and hence are not real. To realize that the creation is spiritual, not material, is to exist in the reflection of God and to be well. To be sure, people can feel ill, but this is an error of the material sense.

The second chapter of Genesis describes the creation of Adam from the dust and Eve from Adam’s rib. In Science and Health , Eddy asserts that this account is an example of error because it “ portrays Spirit as supposedly cooperating with matter in constructing the universe, is based on some hypothesis of error, for the Scripture just preceding declares God’s work to be finished. Does Life, Truth, and Love produce death, error, and hatred? Does the creator condemn His own creation? Does the unerring Principle of divine law change or repent? It cannot be so” (Eddy 1906).

God did not, in her view, create Adam from matter, perform a surgical procedure to make Eve, or create sin, sickness, and death. Eddy sees the Adam and Eve story as an allegory that explains how the concept of material entered the world. For Eddy, the “deep sleep” Adam experiences as his rib is removed represents the entrance of the erroneous idea that the creation is material into the world. It is a mental thought, an “Adam-belief,” and “Adam dream” that has held sway over humanity.

According to Christian Science, Jesus came to awaken the world from the error of the Adam-belief by revealing the true nature of God, creation and “man.” In his life, Jesus healed the sick and raised the dead by overcoming material error. His resurrection shows the eternality of “man,” the triumph of spirit over matter, and an awakening from material error to spiritual truth. Jesus, for Eddy, is the way-shower of the truth that “man is never born or dying” but is “coexistent with the Creator” (Gottshalk 2006).

By diligently praying and reading Science and Health and the Bible, individuals can come to know their true nature and ultimately realize their perfect being. Christian Scientists do not believe illness to be real because the loving Father – Mother God would not create it. When someone suffers illness, it is because he or she is participating in the error of the material senses. Seeking medical treatment for an illness, though not prohibited by the church, is discouraged because participation in the belief in the materiality of illness through medical, rather than spiritual, treatment would accentuate the erroneous belief and actually lead away from true healing.

Christian Science offers its own version of professionalized healers. Called “Christian Science Practitioners,” these individuals are trained through a twelve session course, The Primary Class, that was designed by Mary Baker Eddy and is offered by church approved teachers. According to one of the church’s websites, Healing Unlimited, authorized practitioners are considered professionals by the church and charge for their services, which focus on the prayerful resolution of problems that include “the whole spectrum of human fears, griefs, wants, sins, and ills. Practitioners are called upon to give Christian Science treatment not only in cases of physical disease and emotional disturbance, but in family and financial difficulties, business problems, questions of employment, schooling, professional advancement, theological confusion, and so forth” (Healing Unlimited 2012). Practitioners work with individuals seeking Christian Science healing by praying with and for them and guiding them to appropriate passages in Science and Health and the Bible.

The six tenets that appear in Science and Health and The Manual of the Mother church express Christian Science beliefs. The format is reminiscent of the Apostles’ Creed but the content is distinctively Christian Scientist.

1. As adherents of Truth, we take the inspired Word of the Bible as our sufficient guide to eternal Life.

2. We acknowledge and adore one supreme and infinite God. We acknowledge His Son, one Christ; the Holy Ghost or divine Comforter; and man in God’s image and likeness.

3. We acknowledge God’s forgiveness of sin in the destruction of sin and the spiritual understanding that casts out evil as unreal. But the belief in sin is punished so long as the belief lasts.

4. We acknowledge Jesus’ atonement as the evidence of divine, efficacious Love, unfolding man’s unity with God through Christ Jesus the Way-shower; and we acknowledge that man is saved through Christ, through Truth, Life, and Love as demonstrated by the Galilean Prophet in healing the sick and overcoming sin and death.

5. We acknowledge that the crucifixion of Jesus and his resurrection served to uplift faith to understand eternal Life, even the allness of Soul, Spirit, and the nothingness of matter.

6. And we solemnly promise to watch, and pray for that Mind to be in us which was also in Christ Jesus; to do unto others as we would have them do unto us; and to be merciful, just, and pure.

RITUALS/PRACTICES

Christian Science services, worldwide, follow the format set out by Mary Baker Eddy in The Manual of the Mother Church. There are two weekly services, the Sunday Morning Worship and the Wednesday evening Healing Testimony Meeting. There is a Thanksgiving service on a date corresponding with the United States holiday. In addition, branch churches hold a Communion Service twice yearly. The order of worship for services is prescribed by the Manual. Sunday services open and close with organ music; other music includes a performance by a paid soloist and hymns from the Christian Science Hymnal. There are no clergy in Christian Science; instead the service is led by a First and Second Reader who are elected for a three year term. The First Reader, always a female, opens the service with a brief statement and reads from Science and Health. The Second reader, a male, reads from the King James Version of the Bible. The passages are prescribed by an anonymous committee in Boston. The Bible Lesson, used in all churches, is read by the First and Second Readers. Through the Christian Science Quarterly, congregants have access to the weekly Bible and Science and Health passages along with the Bible Lesson in advance and can study them prior to attending the Sunday service.

The Wednesday evening Testimony Meeting includes prayer, hymns, and readings from the Bible and Science and Health. The testimonies of the people present are the focus of this meeting and include a variety of topics. People recount healings, solutions to difficult problems, and/or finding something lost. Those testifying at these meetings are not pre-screened; the forum is an open one.

Although Christian Science speaks of the believer’s baptism and holds two communion services a year at the branch churches, they use neither water at baptism nor bread and wine at communion since they see these rituals as purely spiritual. Shirley Paulson (2013) writes, “Rather than a one-time ceremony with water, baptism is a conscious submergence in Spirit. Baptism in Christian Science is a frequent, holy, sincere purification alone with Christ. Ritual baptism with water is neither practiced nor required.” The Communion Service resembles the Sunday order of worship but includes an invitation by the first reader for the congregation to kneel in silent communion.

ORGANIZATION/LEADERSHIP

Mary Baker Eddy developed the organizational structure of Christian Science and presented it in the Manual of the Mother Churchwhich states that “ The Church officers shall consist of the Pastor Emeritus, a Board of Directors, a President, a Clerk, a Treasurer, and two Readers” (Eddy 1910). Mary Baker Eddy is the Pastor Emeritus; she abolished the role of pastor completely in 1894 so there are no Christian Science clergy. Baker Eddy included several committees in her institutionalization of the church. These include the Board of Education and the Board of Lectureship. The Committee on Publication was tasked by Eddy with directly addressing any misinformation appearing about Christian Science. Branch churches are administered by their local members who must abide by the Manual. No emendations to the Manual (or the by-laws) can occur without the written permission of Mary Baker Eddy.

There is an annual meeting held at the Boston church (and broadcast online) in early June. Members are not required to attend, but occasionally turn out in numbers large enough to require the meetings to be held in the 3,000 seat Church Extension. In 1899, Eddy established Christian Science ReadingRooms where material approved by the Board of Directors would be available to the public to read free of charge. Staffed by Christian Scientist volunteers, the Reading Rooms also distribute copies of Christian Science materials.

ISSUES/CHALLENGES

Many new religious movements and their founders have encountered opposition as they proffer their theology to the world. Mary Baker Eddy and her tradition, Christian Science, have not been exceptions to this.

A woman presenting a new theology that challenged both the dominant Protestant religion of the nineteenth century and allopathic medicine encountered the wrath of both the religious and medical establishments of the day. Without meeting or examining Eddy, the Journal of the American Medical Association diagnosed her as suffering from “neural instability, obsessions, phobias, imperative ideas, catalepsies and well-poised megalomania” (“Editorial” 1907). In 1898, the Massachusetts State Legislature attempted to outlaw spiritual healing. Noted psychologist of religion, William James voluntarily testified in opposition to the bill.

During Eddy’s life, newspaper coverage of her and her church were sometimes quite negative. Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World featured poorly researched articles about Eddy. A scathing fourteen-installment series by Willa Cather and Georgine Milmine appeared in McClure’s Magazine between 1906 and 1908. In response to what she believed were unfair press reports, Eddy founded the Christian Science Monitor in 1908 in order to print the news fairly and thoroughly. Ironically, the Monitor has gone on to win several Pulitzer Prizes.

During her life there were internal issues as well. From time to time, Eddy’s students attempted to usurp her authority. She filed lawsuits against people she felt had wronged her, and she was the defendant in suits brought against her. The church by-laws she crafted were aimed to address these threats and by and large have succeeded. However, these regulations currently represent a challenge, since changes to the church structure are proscribed by the Manual without the written permission of Eddy.

At the end of the twentieth century there were several, high-profile cases of parents whose children died while being treated with religious based healing; a few involved Christian Scientists. In response to these deaths, state legislatures began weighing the thorny issue of protecting both religious freedom and children’s health; several states overturned the protections their laws had afforded parents who turned to religious healing methods. Currently, thirty-one states legally protect parents from prosecution when their children die from causes attributed to spiritually or religiously-based healing. Of those, sixteen allow a judge to mandate medical treatment in life threatening situations. (Child Welfare Information Gateway 2014) State laws are amended frequently and can be interpreted in a variety of ways (Abbott 2009).

In the 1990’s, a difficult issue emerged within the group; it began with the purchase of a television station by the Board of Directors in order to communicate Christian Science ideas more broadly. This expensive and unsuccessful venture into new media seriously strained church finances. In 1992, the possibility of receiving a substantial influx of money from the estate of the relativesof Bliss Knapp emerged. Knapp had been a devoted follower of Eddy and had written a book in 1947, The Destiny of the Mother Church , which proclaimed Eddy to be the Second Coming of Christ (Knapp 1991). In light of the large amount of funding this would bring to the recently diminished church coffers, the Board of Directors agreed to publish the book. Many Christian Scientists took issue with this decision and several protesting groups coalesced. This was not the first time the issue of who exactly Eddy was had presented itself, and Eddy herself had prohibited what she called “deification of personality” when she felt some followers where aligning her too closely with Jesus (Eddy 1894). The protestors saw Eddy’s prohibition of “deification” as clearly precluding publication of the Knapp text. The Board excommunicated several vocal protesters, a move that was rare but not unprecedented. Several key staff resigned, and the Board found themselves in a very contentious Annual Meeting in 1993. Ultimately, the Board left the decision of whether or not to carry and/or sell the Knapp book up to the local Christian Science Reading Rooms, and published a wide range of other biographies of Eddy. By the time the Mary Baker Eddy Library and archives opened in 2002, the protests were subsiding.

In the twenty-first century the primary challenge to Christian Science is shrinking membership. Although Christian Science does not publish membership figures, the sale, relocation, and merger of hundreds of Christian Science churches in the United States and abroad and the declining number of Christian Science practitioners worldwide indicate a significant drop in membership. Reproductive rates that fall below what is needed to replace members who die (Stark 1998), coupled with the prohibition against proselytizing, make it difficult for Christian Science to maintain its membership. Competition from New Age healing techniques and fascination with Indian practices, especially yoga, also contribute to the substantial membership decline.

REFERENCES

Abbott, Kevin. 2009. Law and Medicine: Pediatric Faith Healing.” Americn Medical Association Journal of Ethics 11:778-82.

Cather, Willa and Milmine, Georgine. 1906-1908. “Mary Baker G. Eddy.” McClure’s Magazine, December 1906 – June 1908 .

Child Welfare Information Gateway. 2014. “Definitions of Child Abuse and Neglect” Accessed from https://www.childwelfare.gov/pubpdfs/define.pdf on 23 June 2015.

Eddy, Mary Baker G. 1910. Manual of The Mother Church, Eighty-eighth edition. Boston, MA: Allison V. Stewart.

Eddy, Mary Baker G. 1894. “Deification of Personality.“ Miscellaneous Writings 1883-1896. Boston: Christian Science Board of Directors.

Eddy, Mary Baker G. 1892. Retrospection and Introspection. Boston: Christian Science Board of Directors.

“Editorial.” 1907. “Mrs. Mary Baker Eddy’s Case of Hysteria.” Journal of the American Medical Association 7:614-15.

Ehrenreich, Barbara and English, Deidre. 1978. For Her Own Good: Two Centuries of the Experts’ Advice to Women. New York: Anchor Press.

Gill, Gillian. 1998. Mary Baker Eddy. Cambridge, MA: Perseus Books.

Gottschalk, Stephen. 2006. Rolling Away the Stone: Mary Baker Eddy’s Challenge to Materialism. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Knapp, Bliss. 1991. The Destiny of the Mother Church. Boston: The Christian Science Publishing Society.

Healing Unlimited. n.a. “What is a Christian Science Practitioner?” Accessed from http://christianscience.org/index.php/whats-new/368-what-is-a-christian-science-practitioner on 23 June 2015.

Paulson, Shirley. 2013. “A Self-Understanding of Christian Science.” Boston: n.p.

Stark, Rodney. 1998. “The Rise and Fall of Christian Science.” Journal of Contemporary Religion 13:189-214.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

Peel, Robert. 1977 Mary Baker Eddy: The Years of Authority . New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.

Peel, Robert. 1971. Mary Baker Eddy: The Years of Trial. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.

Peel, Robert. 1966. Mary Baker Eddy: The Years of Discovery. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.

Peters, Shawn Francis. 2008. When Prayer fails: Faith Healing, Children and the Law. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Post Date:
26 June 2015

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE VIDEO CONNECTIONS