Enlarging our tents

I have read Preface and Chapter 1 of The New Birth of Christianity by Richard Nenneman and made some notes.

COMING HOME

On page 5 I was impressed with his phrase “coming home.” He says, “...man needs a spiritual home.” He explains: "For me, as for others, Christian Science was the means of returning, coming home, to the underlying message in the life of Christ Jesus—for it is the example of his life that is needed today more than theories and doctrines about that life."

On page 6 the theme continues. We find “homeless.” He says that Christian Scientists have found "a sense of purpose and place in a modern world in which man has become increasingly one of the homeless—as assuredly as are the physically homeless in New York City who seek shelter at night in the subterranean levels of Grand Central Station."

What a sad thought: to be spiritually homeless!

I am reminded of Mary Baker Eddy’s words in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (S&H):

I saw before me the sick, wearing out years of servitude to an unreal master in the belief that the body governed them, rather than Mind.

The lame, the deaf, the dumb, the blind, the sick, the sensual, the sinner, I wished to save from the slavery of their own beliefs and from the educational systems of the Pharaohs, who to-day, as of yore, hold the children of Israel in bondage. I saw before me the awful conflict, the Red Sea and the wilderness; but I pressed on through faith in God, trusting Truth, the strong deliverer, to guide me into the land of Christian Science, where fetters fall and the rights of man are fully known and acknowledged.
(Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy, pp. 226:22–2)

She has said too that Love yearns. Oh! How she yearned to bless mankind with the truth of being. Today her students continue that yearning.

 

THINGS TO LEARN

On page 12, Nenneman points out that in today’s world we have found a way to use computers which has demanded that we up-date our knowledge past mere typewriters. (This book was published in 1992. How computers and technology have raced ahead since then.) I am reminded that Christian Science makes demands on students to learn the language of Christian Science, which includes knowing the Holy Scriptures and, for example, the synonyms of God: Mind, Spirit, Soul, Principle, Life, Truth, and Love (S&H p. 465: 9). Plus, I would add, the scientific statement of being: 

Question. — What is the scientific statement of being?

Answer. — There is no life, truth, intelligence, nor substance in matter. All is infinite Mind and its infinite manifestation, for God is All-in-all. Spirit is immortal Truth; matter is mortal error. Spirit is the real and eternal; matter is the unreal and temporal. Spirit is God, and man is His image and likeness. Therefore man is not material; he is spiritual.
(Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy, p. 468:8–15)

 

THE AUTHOR

The reader will be enlightened about Richard Nenneman by reading David Cook’s* appreciation of him which was printed in The Christian Science Monitor of December, 2007.

And there is also information to be found on the Internet about a book published the year after his passing, i.e.

Nenneman, Richard A.  A Spiritual Journey: Why I Became a Christian Scientist. USA: Nebbadoon Press, 2008.

The website csbibliography.org comments:

In his book dedicated to his grandchildren, Nenneman declares up-front that his interest in Christian Science was due not to its healing message, but to Eddy’s deep spirituality and theological answers regarding the nature of God and Jesus’s mission. Nenneman dedicates a chapter each to three great thinkers who prepared his thought for Christian Science: Ralph Waldo Emerson, William James and Dietrich Bonhoeffer—all of whom stressed the importance of personal and independent religious experience over dogma or metaphysics alone. He also documents how certain prophetic thinkers wrestled with similar visions of reality that Mary Baker Eddy articulates in her writings—thinkers he identifies in the Hebrew Scriptures, the Christian New Testament, and in the flourishing exchange between Jews, Muslims and Christians in the Middle Ages. He writes: “By bringing myself up to date on what other religious thinkers have been doing, I thought it remarkable that we were arriving at much the same point” (134).

Nenneman also speculates on his own Christian Science church experience, providing ideas for its rejuvenation and its need to relate to the larger Christian covenant community—the body of Christ—by placing “both spirituality and health in a broader setting than merely individual well-being” (115).

David Cook* finishes his tribute with these words:

His well-lived life brings to mind words he spoke while moderating a panel discussion of Monitor journalists in 1984. "No matter how comfortable each of us may be at home," Nenneman said, "the demands of authentic love should impel us all to enlarge our tents, to include that sense of family that knows no division of time or place."

Joyce Voysey

Ed. On enlarging our tents, see Isa 54: 2

The search for home

I have read the Preface and Chapter 1 of Richard Nenneman’s book The New Birth of Christianity. 

The writing is somewhat complex, and it lacks a rhythm to help the reader find flow in the text. Nevertheless, the topic is an important one - What is the place of Christianity in today’s world, and more particularly, what is the place of Christian Science in today's world?

Some of Nenneman’s basic points are put attractively, e.g. that, like Nicodemus (John 3: 1-13), we all need to seek the answer to how to be born again and thus find a true sense of home. That home the author describes as “that inner place of spiritual peace where we can gather the strength, intelligence, and grace to meet life’s challenges” (p. 12).  A nice description!  He posits that modern scientific discovery will never satisfy that need; that medicine and psychology might seem to have usurped spirituality as the answer to all our troubles, but that there remains that need for spiritual answers to life’s deepest questions.

The core element of Christianity, Mr. Nenneman says, is in looking at and living life from a spiritual standpoint. But he is concerned that these days much of Christianity no longer concerns itself with practice so much as with a system of beliefs. This has weighted it down.

Another trend he identifies is that Christianity has become merely an ethical system, devoid of spiritual force. Many of the Christian churches’ primary involvement is in social justice, while the core elements of Jesus’ Christianity are neglected: how to exercise mental discipline, how to manage relationships with others, and how to manage health.

These are valid questions. So let’s see how they are developed in subsequent chapters.

Marie Fox

The flow of mainstream Christianity

Our book this month – The New Birth of Christianity: why religion persists in a scientific age –  was published in 1992. 

The world has surely moved along in the intervening 33 years. Is the book's message still relevant? What is the message? 

And who wrote this book? 

The author is Richard A. Nenneman. Blog readers may recall that Mr. Nenneman wrote a biography of Mary Baker Eddy titled Persistent Pilgrim: the life of Mary Baker Eddy (published 1997). Our book club read the book in 2016.

In a thoughtful tribute at the time of Nenneman's 2007 passing, The Christian Science Monitor's David Cook described the author and former Monitor editor-in-chief (1988-1992), as having

"a high-octane intellect and love of world affairs... The tall and refined Harvard graduate came to the paper after service as a US Army counter intelligence operative in Germany and an early career in banking." 

https://www.csmonitor.com/2007/1231/p08s01-cogn.html.

The Preface of our book indicates that the author's purpose was "an attempt to communicate where Christian Science stands vis-à-vis the historical Christian tradition" (p. viii). And contrary to what others might believe, Nenneman suggests that "Christian Science lies ... near the flow of mainstream Christianity" (p. vi).

So, let’s get reading.

Julie Swannell

For information: The Reading Room at Redcliffe has two copies of this book: one for sale and one in the lending library.