The Church of Christ, Scientist was founded in 1879 in Boston, Massachusetts, by Mary Baker Eddy, author of Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, and founder of Christian Science. The church was founded "to commemorate the word and works of Christ Jesus" and "reinstate primitive Christianity and its lost element of healing".
Faith healing is the practice of prayer and gestures that are believed by some to elicit divine intervention in spiritual and physical healing, especially the Christian practice. Believers assert that the healing of disease and disability can be brought about by religious faith through prayer or other rituals that, according to adherents, can stimulate a divine presence and power. Religious belief in divine intervention does not depend on empirical evidence of an evidence-based outcome achieved via faith healing. Virtually all scientists and philosophers dismiss faith healing as pseudoscience.
Christian Science is a set of beliefs and practices which are associated with members of the Church of Christ, Scientist. Adherents are commonly known as Christian Scientists or students of Christian Science, and the church is sometimes informally known as the Christian Science church. It was founded in 1879 in New England by Mary Baker Eddy, who wrote the 1875 book Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, which outlined the theology of Christian Science. The book became Christian Science's central text, along with the Bible, and by 2001 had sold over nine million copies.
Child abuse is physical, sexual, emotional and/or psychological maltreatment or neglect of a child, especially by a parent or a caregiver. Child abuse may include any act or failure to act by a parent or a caregiver that results in actual or potential wrongful harm to a child and can occur in a child's home, or in organizations, schools, or communities the child interacts with.
Child protection refers to the safeguarding of children from violence, exploitation, abuse, and neglect. It involves identifying signs of potential harm. This includes responding to allegations or suspicions of abuse, providing support and services to protect children, and holding those who have harmed them accountable.
Vaccination and religion have interrelations of varying kinds. No major religion prohibits vaccinations, and some consider it an obligation because of the potential to save lives. However, some people cite religious adherence as a basis for opting to forego vaccinating themselves or their children. Many such objections are pretextual: in Australia, anti-vaccinationists founded the Church of Conscious Living, a "fake church", leading to religious exemptions being removed in that country, and one US pastor was reported to offer vaccine exemptions in exchange for online membership of his church.
The Baby Doe Law or Baby Doe Amendment is an amendment to the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act of 1974, passed in 1984, that sets forth specific criteria and guidelines for the treatment of disabled newborns in the United States, regardless of the wishes of the parents.
In the United States and Canada, a mandated reporter is a person who is legally required to report observed or suspected abuse or neglect in children if the alleged perpetrator is a parent or legal guardian of the child, or a person who lives with the child such as a sibling. Mandatory reporting laws generally apply to professionals who come into contact with children while in other places, it applies to all adults. If a mandated reporter fails to report, they may incur civil penalties, criminal prosecution, or both.
Children often acquire religious views approximating those of their parents, although they may also be influenced by others they communicate with – such as peers and teachers. Matters relating the subject of children and religion may include rites of passage, education, and child psychology, as well as discussion of the moral issue of the religious education of children.
Commonwealth v. Twitchell, 416 Mass. 114, 617 N.E.2d 609 (1993), was the most prominent of a series of criminal cases, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, in which parents who were members of the Christian Science church were prosecuted for the deaths of children whose medical conditions had been treated only by Christian Science prayer.
Religious abuse is abuse administered through religion, including harassment or humiliation that may result in psychological trauma. Religious abuse may also include the misuse of religion for selfish, secular, or ideological ends, such as the abuse of a clerical position.
Marci Ann Hamilton is the chief executive officer and academic director at Child USA, an interdisciplinary think tank to prevent child abuse and neglect. She is also a scholar of constitutional law and Robert A. Fox Leadership Program Distinguished Scholar and Professor of Practice at University of Pennsylvania with dual appointments to Department of Political Science in Penn's College and Graduate School and Penn's Law School. She is an advocate for the enforcement of the Establishment Clause of the United States Constitution. Hamilton also promotes adequate protection for minors, individuals and landowners who suffer as a result of actions which are claimed to be constitutionally protected on religious grounds. Hamilton is critical of provisions within Federal and State Religious Freedom Restoration Acts.
Sara Gelser Blouin is an American politician from Oregon. She is a member of the Democratic Party.
Karly’s Law is a law that reformed child abuse investigation standards and procedures in the state of Oregon. Karly’s Law is named for a three-year-old girl, Karly Sheehan, who died as a result of child abuse and neglect in 2005.
Law and religion is the interdisciplinary study of relationships between law, especially public law, and religion. Over a dozen scholarly organizations and committees focussing on law and religion were in place by 1983, and a scholarly quarterly, the Journal of Law and Religion, was first published that year. The Ecclesiastical Law Journal began publication in 1987. The Rutgers Journal of Law and Religion was founded in 1999. The Oxford Journal of Law and Religion was founded in England in 2012.
The Equitable Access to Care and Health Act is a bill that would amend the Internal Revenue Code, with respect to minimum essential health care coverage requirements added by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, to allow an additional religious exemption from such requirements for individuals whose sincerely held religious beliefs would cause them to object to medical health care provided under such coverage. Individuals could file an affidavit to get this exemption, but would lose the exemption if they went on to later use healthcare. The affidavit would be filed with their tax returns.
The Republic of Palau has had a turbulent history over the last 450 years, with many states claiming ownership over them. Since World War II, the Islands came under United Nations' trusteeship and were administered by the United States. After becoming a sovereign state in 1994, Palau joined the UN and ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1995, the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and the optional protocol to the latter in 2013. In 2011, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights in 2011 and other core human rights treaties were signed. These treaties are yet to be ratified.
In the United States, a religious freedom bill is a bill that, according to its proponents, allows those with religious objections to oppose LGBT rights in accordance with traditional religious teachings without being punished by the government for doing so. This typically concerns an employee who objects to abortion, euthanasia, same-sex marriage, civil unions, or transgender identity and wishes to avoid situations where they will be expected to put those objections aside. Proponents commonly refer to such proposals as religious liberty or conscience protection.
The Christian Science movement is a religious movement within Christianity founded by Mary Baker Eddy that arose in the mid to late 19th century and that led to the founding of The First Church of Christ, Scientist.
A religious exemption is a legal privilege that exempts members of a certain religion from a law, regulation, or requirement. Religious exemptions are often justified as a protection of religious freedom, and proponents of religious exemptions argue that complying with a law against one's faith is a greater harm than complying against a law that one otherwise disagrees with due to a fear of divine judgment. Opponents of religious exemptions argue that they mandate unequal treatment and undermine the rule of law.
