Christian Science `Faith Healing' -- Practitioner Calls Illness `A Mistake'

In his gray wool slacks and navy blazer, his full white head of hair and gracious, assured manner, David Driver is central casting's idea of the perfect family doctor.

If you saw him bending over a sick child, you'd expect him to pull out a stethoscope and prescribe medications with unpronounceable names.

Instead, Driver carries a Bible, and he prescribes prayers, not pills.

An accredited Christian Science practitioner, Driver knows little about diseases or medical care. Although he often deals with the sick, he believes God is the only healer.

"Prayer includes the sense of acknowledging the total perfection of God," says Driver. "His kingdom, his spiritual creation, is as whole and perfect as the original."

Driver sees illness as a mistake, just as if he saw "4 x 3 = 13" on a blackboard, he says.

Anything made in God's image has to be good, and "anything else is a denial of that," he says. Evil, for Christian Scientists, is "sin, disease and death."

So when he recently felt the beginning of the flu, he was ready: "I say `No, absolutely no!' If God is the only power, this has no power. `Absolutely no,' " Driver says. "You can come in and say that doesn't belong to you. . . . You can have dominion over that.

"It's really releasing the sense that you're in any way separate from God and letting that divine power really take over."

He would never advise parents to seek medical help, Driver says, and if they did, "I would step off the case" since Christian Science prayer involves "giving all power to God."

The Church of Christ, Scientist, has relied on prayer to heal since Mary Baker Eddy founded the church in Boston in 1879.

The church, which draws heavily from the middle and upper-middle class, has helped pass laws in many states exempting parents who rely solely on spiritual healing from prosecution for neglect or abuse, so long as they are acting in "good faith" in accordance with a recognized religion.

But increasingly, prosecutors and state legislators have taken a dim view of the church's stand. More recently, the American Academy of Pediatrics has taken on a campaign to end the exemptions.

Recently, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on the criminal prosecution of the Christian Scientist parents of a Minnesota boy who died after they prayed for his healing rather than seeking medical help.

In that case, the court ruled that Minnesota law (since changed) protected the parents.

In Washington, laws protect the right of a person "to rely exclusively on spiritual means alone through prayer to alleviate human ailments, sickness or disease, in accordance with the tenets and practice of the Church of Christ, Scientist. . . . "

When it comes to children, Christian Science practitioners, like other practitioners, are required to report suspected child abuse. And a parent's decision to have a "duly accredited" practitioner treat his or her child "shall not be considered, for that reason alone," evidence of neglect.

It is not as strong a protection for Christian Science parents as in some other states, but is protection, says Cliff Armstrong, local church spokesman.

Despite the difference, he and Driver say they are very respectful of the medical profession.

"You won't find Christian Scientists having an anti-doctor attitude," says Nathan Talbot, national spokesman for the church. "I think probably Christian Scientists are less dogmatic about the mode of treatment they turn to than most people are with medical care."

Personally, however, he chose to see a Christian Science practitioner when he broke some bones because "I just felt more comfortable turning to Christian Science treatment," Talbot says. "But I wouldn't feel that I couldn't or shouldn't (seek medical help)."

Armstrong also has had experience with prayer healing of broken bones, he says.

"The choice that people make to rely on Christian Science is one of experience," he says. "It isn't a situation where you're afraid of eternal damnation if you don't. It's reasonable people taking a look and deciding this is the most reasonable way to take care of themselves or their families."

"Any Christian Scientist would come down on the side of children, if that's what the issue really was," Talbot says.

Cathy Skeen, a Bellevue mother of two, says she can't imagine a situation that would bring her to call a doctor.

"We've been hit with some pretty tough challenges and every one has been met by Christian Science," she says. In her family, with everything from chickenpox and earaches to her daughter's knee injury and broken foot,spiritual healing has never failed, she says.

"It's not miraculous, not supernatural - it's divinely natural. That's what spiritual healing is," Skeen says.

Christian Scientists don't like the term "faith healing," because it implies that the practitioner does the healing.

"The treatment is of the patient's thought," Armstrong says. "It's a change of thought that brings about healing."

In Christian Science lingo, one of the synonyms for God is "truth," Armstrong says. "The practitioner's job is to open the patient's thought to that truth. The healing always takes place in the patient."

Christian Scientists, Armstrong says, "have a sense of confidence that God's way has already met the need, given us what's necessary to defeat the problem."