Religion: Ban on Christian Science

Every Christian Science Church, hall and reading room in Germany was padlocked by the Gestapo last week and all Christian Science literature and other property was seized. Fortnight ago the Gestapo had arrested most of the Church’s German officials. Though some were released last week, Christian Science is obviously in for suppression for the duration of the Nazi regime.

Explanations suggested by Christian Science headquarters in America: 1) the Nazis consider it hardly patriotic for Germans to be affiliated with any organization whose headquarters are in the U.S. (they blithely suggested that The Mother Church move from Boston to Berlin); 2) U.S. Christian Scientists at their annual meeting last month came out for the democratic system, declared that the evil forces in charge of the dictatorships exist “only as a subjective state of erroneous thought, and therefore possess neither power, permanence, nor reality”; 3) Nazis have always denounced Mary Baker Eddy’s philosophy as an un-German “liberalistic ideology with a strong pacifist concomitant.”