Second Church of Christ, Scientist. Foothill Drive, Salt Lake City. 10:30 am service, Sunday September 10th, 2023.
This is my second visit to a Christian Science church, previously I had attended a wednesday testimony meeting at the downtown Boise location in 2007.
This building is extremely mid century modern, it may be the most intensely mid 1960's building I have ever been inside. The decore has not changed.
Organ prelude, pleasant.
I counted a total of 13 in the service, including me. All white and over 40 save two, a man and a woman, who appeared to be of Pacific Islander decent. The Pacific Islander woman was the conducter and soloist. It occurs to me going to all these churches, that they are a useful outlet for the frustrated musician, she was rather good, as was the organist.
Seated on the same row as me was an elderly woman on some kind of breathing machine, I could hear it's low pumping sound all through the service.
Pre service, multiple people came up to me, provided me with materials, two different guides to the service, one more detailed then the other. There were hymn books in little slots on the back of the pews, but they provided me a second supplementary hymnal, as one of the hymns this week would be from that.
The service is very structured, very standardized, I've never seen one more so.
There is an organist, a conducter/soloist and two, I think they are called 'readers'. The pulpit has two microphones for the two readers, other then hymns the serive is almost all recitation. Female reader conducted, her accent was either Bristish or a kind of 'high Boston', ironically the female reader at the service I attended in 07, also spoke with such an accent, I suppose it could be the same person. There is a painting of the Boston Mother Church in the foyer.
Lord's Prayer recitation with congratulation, pretty standard, save the female reader inserting "correlative passages" from Mary Baker Eddy between each line. There was also the reading of a poem by Mary Baker Eddy, then we sang a hymn based on that poem. Mary Baker Eddy (1821 - 1910) is referred to as "the discoverer and founder of Christian Science". She seams a bigger deal to Christian Scientists then Jospeh Smith is to Mormons,
There is a brief catechism, then the "sermon/lesson". This is also a kind of catechism, reader one reads some Bible quotes, then reader two reads commentary from Mary Baker Eddy, this is read word for word, I could follow along in the more detailed version of the sermon guide.
Ends with hymn, tithes and offerings, reading of a sort of Christian Science creed which seems to double as a prayer.
After the service I talked to a woman who said they have a total of 26 topics they go through twice a year. New correlated readings come out each year from the "Mother Church" in Boston. The Bible and Eddy quotes may change, but always the same 26 topics. This week's topic was "Substance", which the CS define as spirit because they don't believe that matter really exists, everything is a degree of spirit. This is an interesting inverse on Joseph Smith's ideas on everything, including spirit, being a form of matter, but "refined" to varying degrees.
The lady I talked to said the testimony meetings are around half recitation, then attendees (they don't have to be members) can speak as they feel prompted. So kind of like a Quaker meeting.
There is a First Christian Science Church downtown, but it has been sold and is no longer used for services. I commented on the current building to the lady I talked to after the service. She said it had been designed by a member of the congratulation who was an architect, and built by a construction company owned by another member of the congregation. This was circa 1963.
Attending this odd service, in a sparsely attended and very dated building, I had the thought, though I generally don't like this word, that it was a cult that had fallen on hard times. It was not hard to imagine the place full 60 years ago.
I had a harder then usual time, in trying to see what it was about the serive which people would find spiritually fulfilling. It had a nice calm vibe, but other then that really did nothing for me.
