Posted by:
caffiend
(
)
Date: February 28, 2018 12:16PM
As an ex-Christian Scientist, I see several parallels between LDS and CS. In this case, decline and fall. Some demographic studies suggest that CS numerically peaked in the 1930s. A scholar of my acquaintance believes that it was the advance of sulphide drugs in WWII that doomed CS. Until then, CS's claims of parity or superiority over secular medicine had some validity, but medicine's new power over infection left CS in its dust.But that was not recognized in the mid-20th Century.
In the 1960s, the CS "Mother Church" built a large headquarters campus in Boston, designed by the famous I.M. Pei:
https://archpaper.com/2010/08/boston-reflects-on-peis-brutalist-plaza/As with TSCC, the 1960s started as a period of cultural, spiritual, and economic optimism. Then came the "Counter Culture." I suppose the CS leadership thought an exotic building project would give "the Movement" a shot in the arm of an anemic religious body.
Since the 1970s, CS has been in obvious decline. Sound familiar? But whereas LDS tried to resist the spiritual and cultural changes in the country, CS tried to accommodate them, even buying exhibition booths at New Age gatherings (admitting, inadvertently, a spiritual kinship). The CS Monitor has moved from the political right to the left; what was once "the newspaper that everybody respects but nobody reads" is now merely an on-line shadow of NPR.
They're developing a 68-story development on CS land, ultra-luxury hotel/retail/residential tower, but various attempts to work a link through the anti-spam guard were unsuccessful. Simply understand that it will be very tall and very lucrative.
"Feed the flock of God which is among you, taking the oversight thereof, not by constraint, but willingly; not for filthy lucre, but of a ready mind; Neither as being lords over God's heritage, but being examples to the flock." (1 Peter 5:2,3)
Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 02/28/2018 12:39PM by caffiend.