Christian Scientists want spiritual care in federal health package

For many octogenarians, doctors’ visits are a common occurrence.

But that isn’t the case for Dick Roeder, an 82-year-old Christian Scientist living in Colorado Springs. Roeder says he hasn’t been to a medical doctor since the 1940s, when he was in the Army, and those visits were at the Army’s insistence.

His understanding of God, developed through Christian Science and its healers, is the reason for his remarkable health, Roeder said.

“People have a very fixed belief about sickness,” he said. “They feel they are the complete victims of what matter brings them. But matter is subject to God’s control.”

Christian Scientist leaders in Colorado Springs and around the country want to spread the news about what the faith offers. One way to do this is through spiritual care’s inclusion in the federal health care package. The church’s lobbyists want to get a provision for spiritual care inserted into the package before it takes effect in 2014.

Phil Davis, national spokesman for the church, said its legislative division is working with regulators and congressman to insert the spiritual care option, which would mandate that U.S. insurance companies offer coverage for the provision.

Spiritual care coverage under the provision would be available to anyone, not just to Christian Scientists, Davis said.

Church members, including Tad and Melissa Foster of Colorado Springs, have written their representatives in hopes of generating political muscle behind the provision.

“Christian Scientists respect others’ choices,” said Foster, a 65-year-old lawyer who claims to have gone only twice in his life to a medical doctor, and then only for checkups. “We are not at war with doctors. We just make a different choice.”

Christian Science was founded by Mary Baker Eddy in 1879. The denomination has remained small, with about 1,800 churches worldwide, including one in Colorado Springs on North Cascade Avenue, which has about 225 members.

The church is best known for its reliance on prayer rather than traditional medical care to resolve health issues. In her seminal book, “Science and Health,” Eddy explains the relationship between God and health, writing that God created people as perfect, so health maladies are not their true nature. This is a core belief within the faith.

The church has endured some controversy over the years involving members opting for prayer rather than medical treatment for their children. In some instances, courts have ordered treatment for children. In very rare occasions, a child has died.

Peter Van Vleck, a Colorado Christian Science spokesman, said the biggest misconception about the church is that it advises members not to go to doctors. “Individual members make the decisions on what treatment they will seek for their children,” Van Vleck said.

Church members tend to recount a litany of healings they’ve had over the years, from sprained ankles to cancer. Healings occur, they say, either through individual prayer or a church healer, known as a practitioner.

There are some 1,500 church practitioners worldwide who charge anywhere from $20 to $60 a day to help heal maladies. People signing up for spiritual care receive treatment during phone conversations and in-person visits with these practitioners.

Patsy Gantt Reiman of Colorado Springs has been a Christian Science practitioner for 24 years. She has many clients and charges each $20 a day for services.

Christian science healing should not be confused with the laying on of hands in healing services organized by evangelical groups, said David Weddle, professor of Christianity and American religions at Colorado College.

“One is faith healing, the other is mind healing,” Weddle said. “Christian Science is the most cerebral religion in America. It’s not emotional.”

Christian Science spiritual care involves practitioners and non-medical nursing care, the latter of which is already covered in Medicare, the Federal Employees Health Benefits Programs and Tricare, a civilian health benefits program for U.S. military personnel.

Spiritual care, which includes nursing care and prayer treatment, was in the federal health care package before being yanked last fall because of objections, mainly from atheist groups.
One of those groups was the Freedom from Religion Foundation, a Madison, Wis., watchdog group advocating separation of church and state.

“The Christian Science lobby should not be in charge of health care,” Freedom co-president Annie Laurie Gaylor said. “This would be a congressional stamp of approval for using prayer as medicine.”

But Van Vleck sees a need for a spiritual care option in the health care package.

“If we are force to buy health insurance,” he said of Christian Scientists, “we would at least like to have the policy covered that we prefer to use.”
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For Barna's interview with a Springs Christian Scientist healer, go to his blog, “The Pulpit,” at www.thepulpit.freedomblogging.com.