Schism In Rochester

The sharp sword of schism fell last week upon the Christian Science Church. Keen-eyed Scientists found the news in a small story buried among the ads on page 2 of the Christian Science Monitor: "The Mother Church ... in Boston, Massachusetts, received from the Fourth Church of Christ Scientist, Rochester, N.Y., notice of its withdrawal as a branch of the Mother Church . . ."

All of the Rochester church's approximately 50 members were in favor of the split. Actually they had been working up to it ever since 1943, when two Rochester board members published pamphlets under the pseudonym "Paul Revere," reviving an old controversy over whether the Mother Church should operate under the Deed of Trust left by Founder Mary Baker Eddy. The deed, they argued, would have had the effect of making branch churches independent of the Mother Church in Boston.

When the authorship became known last year, the two board members were "excommunicated" by the Mother Church's board of directors. This, the Rochester Scientists decided, was the final stroke in a pattern of "increasingly despotic control" from Boston. By week's end the directors of the Mother Church had not made a formal statement on the split. But the Rochester dissenters happily announced that they had already received a flood of approving mail from Christian Scientists all over the U.S.

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