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Courtesy Rita Swan
God is My Doctor: When Religion Clashes with Modern Medicine
October 18, 2016

Matthew Swan died of a curable infection in 1977. His mother, a former Christian Scientist, says she was persuaded by her church to rely on prayer alone to heal her son.

Bad Faith
The Ultimate Test of Faith October 18, 2016
Jehovah's Witnesses avoid blood transfusions because of the Biblical mandate to "abstain from blood." Christian Scientists understand sickness as an illusion that can be corrected through prayer. It's one thing for an adult to choose spiritual approaches to healing, but what if a child’s life is at stake? We talk to two guests: a medical doctor who studies vaccinology, and a former Christian Scientist who says she was persuaded by her church not to take her dying son to the hospital in the late 1970s. From August 2015.

Rita Swan, founder of Children's Healthcare Is a Legal Duty (CHILD)
Dr. Paul Offit, author Bad Faith: When Religious Belief Undermines Modern Medicine
Christian Science Seal
"It's a Religion of Choice": A Christian Scientist's Perspective October 18, 2016
Christian Scientists believe that illness is a spiritual problem, not a physical one, and that it can be eliminated through careful thoughts and prayers. When we spoke to the former spokesperson for the church back in 2009, he told us that Christian Scientists would never insist that parents forgo medical treatment for a sick child, and that their religion does not require believers to avoid all modern medicine. From August 2015.

Phil Davis, national spokesperson for the Church of Christ, Scientist from 2004-2010
Sisters of Mercy
Nuns Now: On the Frontlines October 21, 2016
Continuing our Nuns Now series, we talk to Sister Kathleen Erickson about how she assumed as a girl she would get married and live on a farm... and then became a  Sister of Mercy instead. Deeply concerned about justice, peace and the poor, her work has taken her to immigration detention centers, to scruffy border towns, and even into police custody as she protested nuclear weapons. She represents a kind of religious activism popularized in movies like "Dead Man Walking," and she says her work has also been an education in the long-term consequences of U.S. policy in Central America.

Sr. Kathleen Erickson, Sister of Mercy of Omaha, Nebraska


Sr. Kathleen at work