The Gospel According to Germs: Rita Swan, Christian Science, and the Holy War for Children’s Lives
Saturday, April 19, 2025. This is for my client, W, who told me of her heartbreaking struggle with Christian Science. Thank you for your story, and the history lesson..
There are martyrs, and then there are whistleblowers.
And then, in rare tragic convergence, there’s Rita Swan—who started as a devout Christian Scientist and ended up public enemy number one in the First Church of Christ, Scientist.
Her sin? Believing that her child’s life mattered more than doctrine. A radical idea in some circles.
This is the story of what happens when faith meets fever and refuses to blink.
When Prayer Was Medicine and Medicine Was Heresy
Christian Science was invented in the late 19th century by Mary Baker Eddy, who believed that sickness is a misperception of spiritual truth.
Mary Baker Eddy: Visionary Prophet… or Grandiose Narcissist?
Mary Baker Eddy (1821–1910), founder of Christian Science, claimed to receive divine insight into the metaphysical nature of illness, taught that disease was a mental error rather than a physical reality, and vehemently opposed medical intervention.
She dictated, rewrote, and defended Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures obsessively throughout her life.
She is remembered for not only founding a religious movement, but also starting a publishing empire, and maintaining a relentlessly tight, and sometimes paranoid control over her devotees.
That gives us three possible psychological profiles that historians and clinicians have floated:
Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD)
Evidence For:
Grandiosity: Claimed unique access to divine truth; believed herself to be God's mouthpiece.
Need for Admiration: Surrounded herself with acolytes, punished dissenters.
Fragile Ego: Reacted strongly to criticism; issued excommunications liberally.
Exaggerated Self-Importance: Her writings often placed herself in a quasi-messianic role.
To be fair, some of this could simply be 19th-century religious zealotry in a woman trying to claim power in a patriarchal society. Grandiose Narcissism may have been a compensatory survival tactic.
Paranoid Personality Disorder
Evidence For:
Persistent distrust of others: She believed doctors, former followers, and even close aides were conspiring against her.
Hypervigilance: Often changed staff, wrote long letters accusing people of betrayal.
Control-seeking behavior: Maintained secret codes and spies within her own organization.
Eddy did face intense public scrutiny, lawsuits, and media attacks (including the famous New York Times “Next Friend” case). In other words, some degree of paranoia may have been prudent.
Somatic Symptom Disorder / Conversion Disorder (formerly Hysteria)
Evidence For:
Eddy had a long history of mysterious ailments, fainting spells, and miraculous recoveries.
Her “healing” from a fall—which she claimed as the founding moment of Christian Science—was likely a psychosomatic episode or a conversion disorder manifestation.
This diagnosis risks replicating 19th-century misogynistic pathologizing of women as “hysterical.” I need to be careful here.
However, the historical frequency and pattern of her illness, followed by dramatic spiritual insight, complies with what we now call somatization or conversion disorders.
Honorable Mentions:
Factitious Disorder (formerly Munchausen Syndrome): Less likely, but some argue she used illness theatrically to control others.
Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Traits: Her compulsive editing and rigid moral codes suggest this structure.
So What’s the Final Answer?
Likely a cluster of traits, not one clean DSM label. If forced to hypothesize using today's manual, she might have met criteria for:
“Other Specified Personality Disorder (Mixed Narcissistic-Paranoid Traits) with somatic features.”
But as a rule: the dead don’t get chart notes. Especially not from armchair history buff therapists like me.
Still, understanding Eddy’s possible personality structure can shed light on why Christian Science is so psychologically rigid and resistant to outside reality.
She wasn’t just building a theology—she was systematizing a psychological defense.
Medicine, in this worldview, was not just useless; it was dangerous, a betrayal of God’s healing power. You weren’t sick. You were spiritually misaligned.
The Holy War for Real Science
By the time Rita Swan was raising her son Matthew in the 1970s, the religion had hardened into ritualistic denial: germs weren’t real, doctors were illusionists, and God was your HMO. It was faith healing dressed up in polite middle-class language.
You called a Christian Science practitioner instead of 911.
Which is what the Swans did when Matthew got a fever.
And then, when he started convulsing.
And then, when he couldn't walk.
By the time they broke ranks and rushed him to a hospital, it was too late. Like my mother’s first born son, my infant older brother, Daniel Samuel Dashnaw, He died of meningitis. I was his replacement.
But Matthew died more from belief than meningitis.
From Believer to Heretic
Rita and her husband Doug could have pulled the covers over their grief and whispered “God’s will” until the pain fossilized.
That’s the standard playbook. But instead, they did something more offensive than apostasy: they got angry.
They got loud.
In 1983, they founded CHILD, Inc.—Children’s Healthcare Is a Legal Duty.
The mission was blunt and blasphemous in the eyes of their former faith: stop religious groups from letting children die in the name of God.
CHILD, Inc. didn’t mince words.
It named names. It lobbied legislators. It dragged state laws into the light and asked, “Why are parents allowed to withhold antibiotics while quoting Leviticus?”
This was not well-received by the Christian Science establishment, which would have preferred a quiet burial and a discreet theodicy.
In the Trenches with a Law Degree and a Grudge
Here’s where things get messy—in that beautiful, American, separation-of-church-and-state kind of way.
See, in the 1970s and ‘80s, several U.S. states actually had religious exemption laws for child medical care.
These laws meant that if you withheld life-saving medical treatment from your child for religious reasons—and they died—you might avoid criminal charges.
Because in America, you’re free to kill your children slowly as long as you’re praying while you do it.
Rita Swan thought that was insane.
Not metaphorically. Clinically.
So she marched into state legislatures armed with horror stories, dead-child statistics, and an unholy zeal for reform.
And sometimes she won.
Over the decades, Swan and her allies helped roll back religious exemptions in multiple states, forcing the legal system to confront a question it had long dodged: Is freedom of religion a license to harm?
The Quiet Closure of CHILD, Inc.
In 2017, Rita and Doug Swan quietly shut down CHILD, Inc. after over three decades of battle. They’d made major legislative gains.
Our nation had begun to slowly wake up. And the Swans were so profoundly tired.
As of their retirement, more than 30 states had revised or repealed religious exemption laws for child medical care (Asser & Swan, 1998).
But no victory can bring back Matthew. But that attachment loss changed the course of American culture.
Chapter Five: America’s Addiction to Exceptionalism
Let’s be honest: Many Americans still love stories about faith triumphing over science.
It’s got that invigorating, ain’t we special, manifest destiny smell.
The problem is, children make terrible martyrs.
Especially when they never got to choose the altar they died on.
Rita Swan’s story sits at the crossroads of parental rights, religious freedom, and the moral limits of tolerance.
In a culture allergic to nuance, she asked the unaskable: What if some belief systems are dangerous to children?
Not inconvenient. Not eccentric. Fu*king Dangerous.
Epilogue: Where Is She Now?
Rita Swan passed away in 2023 at the age of 81.
Not canonized. Not sainted. But deeply remembered by anyone who thinks a feverishly sick six-year-old deserves antibiotics more than New Age Horsesh*t.
In a better parallel universe, there’s a statue of her in every pediatric ER waiting room.
In ours, there’s just the echo of her voice—clear, fierce, and profoundly inconvenient.
Be Well, Stay Kind, and Godspeed.
REFERENCES:
Asser, S. M., & Swan, R. (1998). Child fatalities from religion-motivated medical neglect. Pediatrics, 101(4), 625–629. https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.101.4.625
American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Bioethics. (2016). Religious objections to medical care. Pediatrics, 138(4), e20161597. https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2016-1597
Wessel, M. (1995). Faith and healing: Christian Science and child neglect. The New England Journal of Medicine, 333(13), 885–887. https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJM199509283331311
Frazier, I. (1993). Not faith, but medicine. The Atlantic Monthly, 271(5), 70–82. [Historical coverage of Swan's advocacy]
Swan, R. (2006). When children die from religion-based medical neglect. In D. K. Stevenson & M. P. Kutz (Eds.), Pediatric Bioethics (pp. 247–256). Johns Hopkins University Press.