A Soulful Solution for Montclair's Christian Science Church

On Easter Sunday, the congregation of the First Church of Christ, Scientist—Montclair returned to its home of 85 years on Hillside Avenue after a hiatus of worshiping at the rented chapel of St John’s Episcopal Church in Upper Montclair. Although technically no longer its own, the space will better serve the congregation's needs so that members, in turn, can more effectively serve God. In 2009, after years of prayerful reflection, the Board of Trustees of the Christian Science Church reached a decision to sell the building that had become burdensome with a dwindling congregation, a contemporary problem facing many churches. 

In a December 2010 article in The Montclair Times, Board President Fran Hall explained that the “large granite structure on Hillside Avenue lost its usefulness for a congregation straining in numbers and financially strained to maintain it.” The 85 year-old stately structure on the corner of Orange Road is gracefully imposing, but utilized for only two hours a week by a group of about 100 to 150 people. Whereas annual maintenance costs have never been made public, one can only imagine what it costs to merely heat 23,000 square feet while oil prices steadily rise.

“It seemed we were at a point where we were servicing the building and not serving God,” Hall said.

But even for a group of Christians Scientists who define themselves by the rejection of the material, emotions surely must have been at play in the matter. Selling the building that had been home to their Sunday worship for close to 85 years was not a decision to be taken lightly. Board meetings, careful reflection, and prayer were forceful factors.

The congregation of Christian Scientists came together in Montclair in 1896, but by the 1920s it was very well realized that they needed a space of their own. 

Built in 1926, 8 Hillside Avenue was architecturally rendered by a name known by many Christian Scientists throughout the world. Charles Draper Faulkner of Chicago, Illinois built a total of  33 Christian Science churches throughout the country, Montclair’s First Church being one of them.

Present members of the Board of Trustees have told stories of having to hold three different Sunday services throughout the 1930s and 1940s in Montclair. Wednesday prayer meeting were also held in triplicate. This corresponded to a time in the Church’s history where Christian Science was growing rapidly, a time where modern medicine turned to dangerous means of treatment, such as the prescription of cyanide. Christian Scientists believe their line of thinking still holds great relevance today. For the past half century, for example, The Harvard Medical School has offered courses in Spirituality & Healing in Medicine, suggesting that while great strides are being made in modern medicine, the brightest medical minds still recognize that there is a mind-body connection to healing that is powerful and effective.

One cannot understand the development of the physical churches without some understanding of Mary Baker Eddy, the discoverer and founder of Christian Science, and her method of prayerful thought. Originally a Congregationalist who never felt bound by the Calvinistic shackles of predestination, Eddy began to understand a more Truthful nature of man: one that at core level was Good.   This Goodness in every person gave each person a divine connection to God.  That divine connection is All-Powerful and can even heal the sick. 

Mary herself was an infirmed child, suffering what many thought to be psychosomatic ails. But in 1866, after a very serious fall in Lynn, Massachusetts that led to a spinal cord injury, she was told she had little time to live. She asked for her Bible and prayed. 

The result was her discovery of  Christ’s Truth on human consciousness. She prayed herself well and spent the next several years of her life dedicated to biblical study and authoring Science and Health with a Key to the Scriptures.  The method of prayerful thought and how it could heal was eventually coined a Science in that it was based on Scientific principles that could be taught to others. These individuals are currently known as Christian Science Practitioners and are available at very low cost to those who need help finding a prayerful resolution to what may be construed as a physical problem. These problems are not restricted to those of physical health, but of other issues that weigh on the mind and cry for resolution.

Eddy thought that her line of prayerful thinking would be adopted by other religions as more of a system of religious thought and less of a religion in its own rite. When that did not happen, she and her followers decided to found a physical church in which to come together in prayerful contemplation twice weekly. In 1879, the Church of Christ, Scientist was founded in Boston, for which bylaws were established. The physical structure, The Mother Church of The First Church of Christ, Scientist in Boston followed, built in 1894. Soon thereafter, she wrote a church manual that is still in use today, outlining the guidelines for the running of a church that now has no pastor. 

Whereas Eddy had much involvement in the acquirement of the land in Boston’s Back Bay on which to build a church, the funds for its building came from Church members nationwide. With a clear vision of making Boston the worldwide home of Christian Scientists, Eddy herself never even attended the dedication service, where a decree was read declaring that no pastor would preach in the name of Christian Science. Instead, the Bible and Science and Health with a Key to the Scriptures are a Christian Scientists’ only pastors.  Sunday Services are administered by members of the church who read from the Key to the Scriptures and the Bible.

Eddy herself only entered the church a handful of times in her life, suggesting that the physical location of prayer was not of utmost importance to her. Her Scientific method of religious thought was a way of life, but not a ritualistic practice to be bound. Gillian Gill, a non-Christian Science scholar and author of the biography Mary Baker Eddy, very ably describes the dichotomy of  the existence of a beautiful physical structure in which to worship God by Mrs Eddy’s Scientific principles of Divine Mind:

“…even though the Mother Church was the realization of an old dream, it also represented for Mrs. Eddy her old fear of Christian Science becoming institutionalized and thus materialized. By not attending the triumphant dedication services, by staying home, by continuing with the daily discipline she had set herself, by eschewing the praise and adulation she could expect, Mrs. Eddy was teaching by acts what she had long taught in words—that the material and public successes of Christian Science could be won only be a heart striving for good, that healing became possible only when the Christian Scientist was attuned to God and seeking actively every day to raise the level of his or her own thoughts and actions.”

And therein lies the beautiful irony of a congregation losing the deed to its physical property. It is irrelevant in the most important of ways, yet symbolic in the same ones: by freeing up the burden of maintaining the physical structure, as Hall stated to The Montclair Times, they have “discouraged a cult of personality” and turn again to their true mission: a metaphysical connection to God.

The prayerful resolution made by The Board of Trustees brought about many other positive benefits. The property was acquired by a team of three developers, Bob Silver, Jay Schweppe and Jack Finn, the latter a contractor who is also managing the significant renovations to the Church structure, which will now house more than a dozen professional offices. They offered the church a space to lease back, so that they would be free to worship in their ancestral home for years to come without being beholden to the structure itself.

With its interior space designed by Rachel Grochowski, the task will not be hard on the eyes. The development itself has garnered much attention, along with other renovation projects where Silver has taken old buildings and resuscitated them using “green” technology, offering them new life as architecturally interesting and relevant office space. The building is ripe with original details and repurposed artifacts, including pipes from an organ used in the signage at the entry, a rough hewn conference room table made from found timber frames under the glassed-in original columned vestibule, and reclaimed floors in the common hallways. In addition, the town has gained tax revenues for the re-zoning of such properties as commercial ones. For a town recently ensconced in debate over budget shortfalls, one cannot dispute the blessing of added income.

Other Christian Science churches have looked for creative ways by which to worry less about the financial strain of maintaining their physical structures, none as perfect as Montclair’s. The Fifth Church of Christ Scientist in New York City, for example, has sold their air rights while maintaining the ground level as their gathering place. The handsome, Georgian brick Third Church of Christ, Scientist on the corner of Park Avenue and 63rd Street has even contracted out their building for parties. One can only wonder how they handle the serving of alcohol issue, as Christian Scientists are teetotalers. Personal experience, however, has revealed that although Christian Scientists do not imbibe so that they always have full faculties and retain a healthful living style, they do not judge others who choose to take a drink.

It seems as though a perfect solution to the Montclair Church’s problem was found. It is hard to believe it was possible, in what the physical world would describe as an abysmal real estate market. One might actually give credit to a Higher Power for a situation so highly regarded by all.

For some spectacular photographs of the transformation in progress, please see: http://www.hillsidesquare.com/#10

For more information about Mr. Silver’s other development projects, please see: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/02/realestate/commercial/02montclair.html

Local writer Christine Adams Beckett is married to Mark D. Beckett, a member of the of the First Church of Christ, Scientist, Montclair.