Faces on Faith: Spiritual revolutionaries
On July 4, l776, the Continental Congress formally adopted the Declaration of Independence, written largely by Thomas Jefferson. Those early signers, along with Jefferson, were brave revolutionaries. Nearly 250 years later, as we celebrated the Fourth of July, modern revolutionaries are making their voices heard on issues such as the environment, racial justice, and income inequality.
At the same time, there is a hunger for spiritual independence. This awareness led The Mother Church in Boston to create a podcast called “The Daily Lift,” accessible at christianscience.com. Hundreds of young people, many with no religious affiliation, click on the site daily for inspirational ideas and a fresh perspective. Recently, Christian Science practitioner and teacher Chet Manchester challenged listeners of the Daily Lift to become spiritual revolutionaries – to declare their right to freedom from fear, from stress, from disease and inharmony of every kind.
A revolutionary thinker in her own time, author Mary Baker Eddy states in the preface to her textbook, “Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures”: “The time for thinkers has come. Truth independent of doctrines and time-honored systems, knocks at the portal of humanity. Contentment with the past, and the cold conventionality of materialism, are crumbling away. Ignorance of God is no longer the stepping stone to faith.” Eddy continues: “Christian Science raises the standard of liberty and cries: ‘Follow me! Escape from the bondage of sickness, sin and death.’ Citizens of the world, accept the glorious liberty of the children of God, and be free! This is your divine right.”
Manchester’s Daily Lift suggests that each time we encounter an angry and unlovable person, and mentally affirm their goodness; each time we express compassion for a tired, overworked store clerk, and refresh our views of them; each time we pray about an illness, we are protesting that vision of ourselves as vulnerable, and take on the mantle of a spiritual revolutionary, giving us a vision of the world and ourselves, that will uplift, regenerate, and restore harmony for ourselves and the world.
June Sieber is affiliated with the Sanibel Christian Science Church.