Search: science and health with key to the scriptures

I am a fourth generation Christian Science practitioner living in Tennessee with my husband, Bill. Starting from the time I was in grade school, I had opportunities to put into practice the ideas that I was learning in the Christian Science Sunday school with classmates. I also discovered, during those years, that I loved the arts, especially visual art and singing. It became clear to me in my continuing study of Christian Science that God is the source of all good and that the talents I was expressing all came from infinite God, good. I knew the ability to heal also came from that same source of infinite Love and so it just felt natural to become a full-time Christian Science Practitioner in 2005. I have such deep gratitude for the healings my family and I have experienced, that I want to share with anyone seeking to have a better understanding of God and those who have questions about Christian Science.

In 1923 my grandfather was given a copy of Science and Health, and through reading it, healed his five-year-old son (my father) of terminal cancer and polio, whose case had been given up by five physicians. I felt a natural affinity for Christian Science as a young child, and early developed a desire to heal.

Find out how you can:

• Apply for Mother Church membership

• Learn about giving — how you can donate or pay your Per capita tax (PCT) online

• Advertise in the Journal as Christian Science practitioner or as a Christian Science nurse

• Request a lecture

• and more! 

It was in college that I first learned the importance of being more consistent in accepting spiritual harmony as the only reality. It was a modest step of spiritualizing thought, and one that I’ve had to relearn at times.  But it brought more healing into my life, and led to my entering the full-time public practice of Christian Science after I graduated. Since becoming a teacher of Christian Science, I have grown to appreciate even more the loving demands on all of us to grow spiritually, to love God and our fellow man, and to demonstrate the truth of Christian Science in healing.  Over the years I have worked for The Mother Church at different times: as a Regional Assistant talking with Christian Science college organizations in the Midwest; as a staff editor for the Christian Science Journal and Sentinel; as Assistant Manager of Practitioners and Nursing Activities, and then Manager of Practitioner Activities. Most recently I was Editor of the Christian Science Journal, Sentinel, and Herald.

This page offers topics with curated articles and audio from the Christian Science magazines — showing how Christian Science can be practical in your life.

Being raised in a home where both my parents were Christian Science practitioners, and my father a teacher, was an incredible privilege. Spiritual healing was such a natural, joyful daily occurrence that I somehow always knew I wanted to be a Christian Science practitioner myself. After growing up in Louisville, Kentucky, and Boston, I went to Smith College. My husband, Talbot, and I married soon after graduation, and raised our two children in Miami, where he practiced law. A Baptist when we met, he discovered Christian Science was what he’d always believed in—and joined The Mother Church and the branch church where I belonged.

Phillip is accepting lecture invitations from branches only in the United Kingdom during the 2024-2025 lecture year. Although humble beginnings and hard knocks taught Phillip the value of being honest and hardworking, for oneself and others, that lesson did not last long into adult life.

I grew up in Minnesota, attended high school in Missouri and college in Iowa. After college, I took steps to align my first career decisions with my growing understanding of God. I felt it would be simpler and more efficient to let God lead those first few steps.

I learned of Christian Science in my middle teens. Our family came to it through a “miraculous” healing of a relative. I tested it, and was amazed at the consistent results. The Science proved to be genuinely scientific. Its practice became the basis of my studies and early career. That career took some radically different zigs and zags. From research director at an international relations and mediation institute in Italy, to labor organizer in New England, to foundation director, to university professor, to peace and civil rights activist, to founding an anti-racism project which was the basis of the YWCA “Social Justice Award”. The focus, the common denominator of these careers, was solving problems.