c. 1998 Religion News Service
UNDATED _ In the early 1980s, in the wake of more than 50 children’s deaths, Indiana lawmakers pushed to eliminate protections for faith healers and require parents to provide medical care for their children. Four times the bill passed the Indiana House of Representatives, and four times it died in the state Senate after Christian Scientists flooded senators with mail and jammed hearings.
“It was impossible to get it by the Christian Science Church,” said Robert Alderman, a Republican legislator from Fort Wayne. “I would get it through the House, and the Christian Science Church would get it killed in the Senate.”
The Christian Science Church, the nation’s largest religious organization favoring spiritual healing over medical care, has been effective in promoting the protection of faith healing in both state and federal laws. Its lobbying has helped keep religious immunity alive for other, less politically active faith-healing churches.
In 1995, when Oregon legislators were considering changing the state’s murder by abuse law to strengthen penalties for child killers, Christian Scientists asked for exemptions for faith healers. Not knowing that 70 children in the Followers of Christ Church had died since 1955 _ the highest number of documented child deaths for any denomination in the United States _ lawmakers quickly agreed to increase legal protections for believers in faith healing.
Christian Scientists, with a largely upper-middle-class membership of 200,000 across the nation, are considered more mainstream than many of the smaller faith-healing churches.
Unlike some of the smaller faith-healing churches, the mortality rate among Christian Science pregnant women and children is comparable to the rest of the nation, in part because doctors are often consulted during pregnancy and childbirth. A national study published in the medical journal Pediatrics said Christian Science parents had 25 preventable child deaths between 1975 and 1995, far fewer than some other faith-healing religions.
Critics argue the church’s mainstream status should not offer legitimacy to religious shield laws that protect faith-healing parents if their children die from a lack of medical care.
But Gary Jones, manager of the Committee on Publication, the Christian Scientists’ public relations and publishing arm, says such laws aren’t just to protect faith healing but to protect everyone’s constitutional right to religious freedom.
“I don’t think we’re talking about religious immunity, we’re talking about accommodation,” Jones said. “The reason for the accommodation is that there’s a public demand for it.”
The 1995 change to Oregon’s murder by abuse law created stiffer penalties for parents who neglect their children, and it introduced a new clause to Oregon’s homicide statutes: a defense based on religion. A faith-healing defendant can raise a religious defense just as others would claim self-defense or extreme emotional disturbance.
Christian Science lobbyists played a behind-the-scenes role in getting the religious defense into the 1995 Oregon law and again in 1997 when Oregon legislators strengthened penalties in the murder by abuse law but also added religious shields to the state’s first- and second-degree manslaughter statutes, giving faith healers a legal defense to those crimes.
Before 1974 only a few states included such shields in their statutes. But that year, in response to Christian Science lobbying, the federal government required states to include religious immunity in their civil and criminal codes if they wanted to continue receiving federal money for child abuse prevention programs. Most states complied.
It wasn’t until 1982 that prosecutors began challenging the laws. A year later, the federal government rescinded the requirement, leaving it up to states to decide. Massachusetts, Maryland, South Dakota and Hawaii have rescinded the religious exemptions from their requirements that parents provide medical care for sick children. In most other states, the influence of the 1974 federal law remains.
Christian Scientists believe sickness is a result of fear and the symptoms of an illness have no ultimate reality and can be overcome by the spiritual powers of a person’s mind. The way to heal or prevent disease is to draw closer to God, they say.
Disease in young children is caused by the fears, ignorance and sins of the parents, in the Christian Science view. Disease is an illusion, and recognition of it gives it reality, according to church literature. So when a child becomes ill, a practitioner prays not only for the child’s well-being but for the thoughts of the parents.
By doing that, critics say, the church is pushing parents into withholding basic, necessary medical care from children. They argue the church’s strict doctrines and rules offer little wiggle room for parents.
But Jones said the No. 1 message the church directors want members to receive is that they have free choice. There are no absolutes, and individual decisions are respected and supported. He said parents must always make the choice that they feel is best for their children.
DEA END LARABEE
