Christian Scientists Want Health Bill to Include Prayer

With the Senate nearing a vote on health reform, one constituency is still pushing for its cause to be reinserted in the package—Christian Scientists, who want the legislation to recognize that many Americans rely on religious and spiritual healing, and to ban discrimination against those practices and their practitioners.

“It’s our intention that the health care bill recognizes the fact that medical care is not the only form of health care,” a church rep tells the San Francisco Chronicle, saying that the measure won’t violate church-state separation because no funding would be involved. “We are advocates, not just for Christian Scientists, but for the public at large.” Counters an opponent: “If they get this in, other groups are going to say the same thing. All these tent-revival faith healers will say, ‘What we’re doing is medicine, and we want to charge for this.’”
(More Christian Science stories.)