Christian Scientists view prayer as flu preventive

Nineteen-year-old Dan Johnson said he held in his pocket the key to preventing a bird flu pandemic.

After watching television news reports warning of a potential outbreak, the University of Southern California sophomore picked up a copy of “Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures,” a seminal text of the Christian Science Church.

On a 3-by-5-inch index card, Johnson wrote: “Disease is an experience of so-called mortal mind. It is fear made manifest on the body.” He stuffed the card in his pocket and carried it with him for more than a week.

While the U.S. government stockpiles antiviral medications, scientists work on developing new treatments and vaccines, and infectious disease experts try to detect and contain a virus, Christian Scientists are taking their own line of defense: They are praying.

Christian Scientists believe in spiritual, rather than medical, healing. They believe in the power of prayer to both prevent a bird flu pandemic and heal those who are sick should an outbreak occur.

Those beliefs have led to controversy over the years, particularly in the 1980s and early 1990s, when a number of charges were brought against Christian Scientists whose children had died of curable ailments.

A recent article in The Christian Science Monitor, the daily newspaper run by the church’s headquarters in Boston, stressed “how invaluable a spiritual component would be in this campaign for preparedness” against bird flu.

In the Nov. 14 issue of the weekly Christian Science Sentinel, Bea Roegge, a Christian Science practitioner – someone who heals others through prayer – wrote that during the 1918 flu pandemic, her husband’s parents got the flu. No one was willing to help but a benevolent Christian Scientist, who nursed the couple back to health with her prayers.

“I don’t believe in flu. I don’t believe in sickness and sin,” Roegge said in an interview. “My heart goes out to anybody who’s afraid of it.”