In 2016, a newspaper reporter asked a Christian Scientist what his church was doing to respond to the refugee crisis happening at the time. The article excerpted and linked below was written in response to that question. It is still relevant in giving insight into how Christian Scientists care for the world’s most pressing humanitarian needs, such as those in Afghanistan and Haiti, today.

EXCERPT: 

The current refugee crisis has stirred concern and controversy all over the world.  “A quarter billion people,” The Christian Science Monitor noted last year, “have either fled disasters or migrated to escape poverty.” How should our nation respond? What can we do as individuals to help—as churches, temples, cities and towns, businesses, civic organizations? Can anything be done, practically and realistically, to meet this enormous need?

These questions have prompted many people of faith—and many people of conscience who don’t embrace a religious faith—to ponder their responsibilities to fellow human beings in need.

As a Christian Scientist, I’ve wrestled with these concerns as both the humanitarian crisis and the political controversies have deepened. My church doesn’t tell its members what to think or do on these matters. We make our own decisions as individuals, based on our highest sense of what’s right, and what prayer and spiritual leading inspire us to do.

Many Christian Scientists have participated in aid efforts over the years, both as volunteers and professionals. One church friend here in Washington, for example, worked in the Middle East for some years for a nonprofit organization that supported refugees and longer- term economic development.

The Christian Science Monitor reports on the troubles of the world and often takes strong positions in its editorials. The aim isn’t to express a “church view” but to draw attention, in a spirit of healing, to what needs attention and constructive practical response. Our churches as a denomination have participated in relief efforts in the past and continue to contribute where it can make a difference. But the human needs are bottomless and often far beyond our ability to meet them with even the most dedicated human efforts.

This isn’t cause for inaction, but it forces us to ask, What more can we do? The most significant contribution a church can make, I’ve come to feel, relates ultimately to the spiritual light that a church can bring to humanity. This light isn’t just a theology. It changes people’s hearts and understanding of themselves. It shines on each of us our true worth and spiritual nature as, in the Bible’s words, the “image and likeness” of God.

This vision is “very powerful,” as my church friend who worked in the Middle East stated. “When we get this vision of man as the reflection of God, as the way God expresses His own nature … then we see the preciousness of each individual man or woman or child.”

This spiritual understanding of man is also very practical. Another church colleague, now living in the Democratic Republic of Congo, became a refugee himself during the genocide in Rwanda in the 1990s…

Click here to read the full article.