Vol. 7, No. 9, 1990

Articles on Cults and New Religions

James Walker

Few churches have more involvement with the secular media than Christian Science. The flagship of their media department is the Christian Science Monitor, a highly respected, Pulitzer prize winning, daily newspaper with about 400,000 readers. The daily circulation, mostly covering the U.S., is supplemented by a weekly "world edition" that is distributed in 147 countries. Begun in 1908, the Monitor focuses almost exclusively on non-religious news and offers little evidence of the religion's metaphysical belief system. It has been a valuable aid in building a respectable image and giving a relatively small church national name recognition.

Crisis In Print And In The Pew

However, for several decades the newspaper has been facing a challenge of increased publication costs and stagnant circulation growth. By the early 1980's the newspaper was described as, "widely respected but not widely read." John H. Hoagland, Jr., Editor-in-Chief of Radio and Television Broadcasting, described the crisis saying, "At the Monitor we were facing all these issues by the 1960's.... Our circulation and advertizing kept declining, and the annual operating deficit kept growing, with no ceiling in view," (Christian Science: A Report For The '90s, p. 57).

Outside sources point out that the decline of the Church's newspaper is symptomatic of worse declines in the Church itself. While the Church releases no official figures, "...employees estimate that Christian Science now has fewer than 170,000 members, many of them elderly, compared with about 270,000 just prior to World War II. "While there are active memberships today in 37 countries, in the last two decades nearly 500 churches have closed, leaving just 1,886 functioning congregations in the United States. More than a third of those have fewer than the 16 members required to form a new church," (U.S. News & World Report, 6 Nov. 1989, p. 75). While "nobody knows why the church membership is declining, let alone how to go about reversing the decline," the church reacted to its publishing problems by boldly expanding to broadcast media, and a monthly news magazine (Ibid).

Radio

The Church first developed a broadcast strategy to reach the United States through Public Radio and the rest of the world through shortwave. In 1984 they launched a news service in cooperation with American Public Radio called MonitoRadio. Produced in studios in Boston, the Church's headquarters, the service is carried on over 200 public radio stations with an estimated audience of over 1.5 million (A Report for the '90s). Even more ambitious is the Monitor's shortwave efforts. The Church claims that its shortwave program, The World Service of The Christian Science Monitor, is the "largest independent radio broadcasting system in the world." It reaches all seven continents and broadcasts "news and features" 20 hours a day to an estimated 5 million listeners (Ibid).

Television

In the fall of 1988, the Church of Christ, Scientist launched World Monitor a nightly television news program on cable TV's Discovery Channel. The broadcast is supported by Church owned television bureaus in London, Tokyo, Manila, and Washington, as well as the home bureau in Boston.

News Magazine

By October of 1988, the Church began a monthly version of a news magazine similar to Newsweek or Time which are published weekly. The magazine has a circulation of more than one quarter million and offers, "...in-depth news and analysis, by expert contributors, in a graphic setting that invites repeated readings over the course of a month," (Ibid). Some have seen the Church's move to alternative publications and broadcast media as a desperate last gasp effort to save a dying newspaper which has lost nearly $200 million in the last 30 years. The stakes are high as the Church spent more than half of its $120 million budget in media in 1988 alone, quite a gamble for a program that, "...so far, has drawn critical acclaim but disappointingly small audiences (U.S. News).