Fairfield, Iowa is a small town with a gulf between those who adhere to The Movement, and those who don’t. The uneasy peace - or coexistence - between the meditators (as people call them) and the townies has shown cracks before. The brutal murder of Mrs. Nohema Graber by two former Maharishi School students - Chaiden Miller and Jeremy Goodale could finally rip away the facade. Former adherents, national and local news outlets, various states courts, and even the Journal of the American Medical Association have been blowing the whistle on the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi for decades. Selling the promise of health and wellness, radical healing and if you spend enough money, work enough hours, buy enough product and spread the good word and bring in property investors - the Maharishi can teach you to fly.
Shirley Jackson’s mother prayed over her brother’s broken arm; her grandmother known as Mimi, joined in. For two days this went on, the boy in excruciating pain. Finally, Jackson would later recall in her writings, her mother and Mimi relented and took him to the doctor. Mimi claimed faith healing worked, claimed she was proof, claiming that she had once broken her leg and after a feverish night of prayer, she walked down the stairs for breakfast completely healed.
Unlike Jesus, Mimi had no witnesses to her miracle. But it was taken as gospel all the same.
It’s no wonder Jackson’s mother would consider prayer as a first line of defense against shattered bones; she was raised that way. Mimi was (for a time) a Christian Science practitioner, took clients and saw patients in the affluent Burlingame neighborhood in the San Francisco Bay Area, where Jackson lived until her family moved out east.
The subtle genius of Jackson’s literary works - The Lottery, Hangsaman, The Haunting of Hill House, We Have Always Lived at the Castle - is in part due to her experiences living under the roof of a Christian Scientist family.
It was a time of spiritualists, Ouija Boards, seances in the 1920s. How could a childhood shot through with paranormal as normal not imprint on the kid who lived it? Not in practice (she didn’t carry on the family faith healing tradition) but instead as long shadow back to her little brother, a broken arm and two able bodied adults that left him to languish in pain on the living room couch.
Mimi would die from untreated stomach cancer some time after Jackson had her own children. When one of her daughter’s asked how Mimi died? Jackson told her she “died of Christian Science,” according to Biographer Ruth Franklin.
Some have described Christian Science as a quasi-cult rather than a religion (don’t ask me, I was raised Roman Catholic where literal blood and flesh are consumed weekly) - and guidelines have shifted tremendously since the days of praying over broken limbs. The church is clear medical intervention is in fact necessary when lives are at risk.
If you haven’t read History of Wolves by Emily Fridlund, I encourage you to get a copy. It’s set in rural Minnesota through the seasons we know well in the Midwest - scorching lava hot summers and frigid, nose hair freezing winters. Without spoiling things, there is a thread through the book that is unspooled eerily through the memories of a once-teenaged girl.
This heartbreaking story out of Idaho recalls the thread from Wolves, and shows what belief run riot can do.
In 2015 the Idaho Governor assembled a task force to investigate the rise of child deaths in Canyon County. A group based in the county relied on faith healing alone. According to the task force report:
That is a huge disparity in child mortality: “about 10 times the Idaho pediatric population as a whole”
Canyon County is home “The Followers of Christ Church” who believe in faith healing. It is their children buried in Peaceful Valley cemetery. in 2020 an investigation by The Idaho Statesman found 11 more members died in the preceding 5 years alone.
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