Media reporting on religion in the United States often focuses on the challenges many denominations are having as their membership numbers have trended smaller. The following letter to the editor, sent to the Chicago Sun-Times, addresses this widespread concern.

Christian Scientists have lived and worshiped in communities around the world for over a century. This year, the thoughts, and earnest prayers, of our church’s members turned toward Ottawa, Canada, following the news in May of an assault in a Christian Science Reading Room which took the life of a fellow member (and for many of us, loved friend).

For many people today, the phrase “sending thoughts and prayers” has become a meaningless cliché. Christian Scientists’ annual meeting on June 4 offered the view that it doesn’t have to be that way.

Someone asked what the reason for my hope is. For me, God's saving presence is more than an innate optimism and merely hopeful religious thinking. It's a question of actual experience: my life - and the lives of others - radically altered by our experience of God.

I was fascinated by this ancient graffiti when I visited Jerusalem. The city itself is one of momentous history but also, I found, extraordinary vitality, making it an inspiring place to visit. Historically, it has often been a center of turmoil.

As people of many faiths, Christian Scientists take the Golden Rule as basic ethics. It guides our relations with society, and while we can’t claim to have been always perfect in this regard, we feel strongly about respecting the rights of our neighbors and fellow citizens, and not imposing our own religious choices on others.

Below is our original response to a Sunday Telegraph book review of Emily Fridlund's debut novel "History of Wolves," which includes a couple of characters described as Christian Scientists.

Your article “The joy of sects” (Feb 2nd, 2017), inaccurately states Christian Scientists “do not believe in conventional medicine”, perhaps suggesting to some readers that we are opposed to it.

Headlines warning of the social fallout from alcohol and drug addiction often fail to record the remarkable fact that hundreds of thousands of people worldwide have successfully “recovered” from these often devastating dependencies. The highly lauded “12 Steps” programme, that has fronted the decades long efforts of both Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous, as well as similar organisations, have undoubtedly saved many lives. At the heart of this success story is an acceptance of a spiritual “higher power” available to all, one which supersedes mere will power and puts them on the road to recovery.

Varsity has the honour of being the oldest student-run newspaper at Cambridge. Its article by the newspaper's science editor, entitled ‘The death of Cambridge’s anti-medicine cult’. The piece described the Christian Science church in Cambridge and elsewhere, but was incorrect in many of its assertions and assumptions.