Christian Science: A Deeper Look with the Peoria Society

What would it be like to walk into a church you've never heard much about, where healing happens with prayer and illness and suffering are seen as illusion? In this episode of Branches of Faith, Kate and Ben visit the Christian Science Society in Peoria and share their honest reflections and discoveries. With warmth and curiosity, they explore the unique beliefs rooted in the teachings of Mary Baker Eddy, the power of spiritual healing, and what it was like to step into a church that felt more like “grandma’s living room” than a sanctuary.

Whether you're curious about Christian Science, intrigued by the idea of faith-based healing, or just love hearing about real people exploring unfamiliar faith traditions, this episode invites you into an enlightening and surprisingly down-to-earth conversation you won’t want to miss.

Transcript

 
Thank you for joining us for the Branches of Faith Podcast, where we explore faiths across all religions by visiting a different house of worship. Every week here, we share our reflections and observations. Thanks for listening.

Hello. Hello. Welcome back to the Branches of Faith podcast. I'm Kate and joined here again by my husband, Ben. This past Sunday, we visited the Christian Science Society of Peoria. Found them just by kind of random chance I was doing a search for different places, wanted to stretch out a little bit, do something that I really don't know anybody in my life who is a practicing Christian scientist.

Do you, Ben? Have you have, you don't. Anybody don't think so. A lot of the places we've gone to, we've known somebody that either practices that religion or maybe had a friend there, went there. Not always, of course, but in some way. It's connected to our life, and this is one that I really didn't feel like I could find any connection other than.

Driving by the Christian Science reading rooms. I'm sure you've seen those out and about in different cities. I know Peoria had one which we'll talk a little bit more about. I've seen them anytime we're going, you know, up to Chicago or places like that, I see them in random little shopping centers, so always kinda wondered what they were, what that was all about.

And followed my intrigue and found that we do have a Christian science church in Peoria, so that's where we decided to go. 

Yeah. You wanna start with a little bit of a background on the church or. Yeah, where do you wanna start today? 

Gosh. Um. Yeah, let's start 

with something like that. Before we actually get there.

We actually went in the front door. Is 

that where you wanna start? 

Well, no, before we get to the front door. Before the front door, you got some, you got a laptop open and you got some literature in front of you. Yeah, let's get through some of that. 

Yeah. Because I didn't know much about Christian science and of course there's this other religion called Scientology.

I'm like, is this a. Same thing. And I think a lot of people wonder that it is not, it's not the same thing, not anywhere close. So they just both happen to have the same word science in their name. They are not at all connected in no way, shape, or form. So let's just go ahead and get that out outta the way.

Yeah. I don't even know if there's any Scientology practitioners in Peoria area. I need to look into that. So has nothing to do with either Tom Cruise. With Tom Cruise or Kate Hol, Katie Holmes. 

I don't know if she was part of that. 

I think, I think she was while she was married. Tom, maybe. Yeah. Anyways 

maybe we go to that one next.

Yeah, I don't even know if we'd be allowed. I 

don't know. 

I don't even know how it works. 

Who knows? All right, so we gotta get an 

invite from Tom. So, Tom, Tom, you're listening. You're listen to the branches of fame. Come on. 

So. I found this church decided to check it out. It said they had a picture on their website.

It said, all are welcome. And I thought, okay, here we go then we are welcome. Let's go check this out. Yeah. Um, there is another church that I've been trying to see if we can get into that. I'm not totally sure if we are. Welcome to go to. So more to on that. Hopefully to come. Oh, 

you're such a tease with stuff like that.

So, um. But I have to say the website for this church wasn't super helpful for knowing what to do, what to expect, that sort of thing, which, ah, 

I remember we were driving there and you're like, where you were like pushing through. I have no idea for the address. I think it 

took me a little bit even to find the address.

I did find it finally, I knew where we were going then. It just basically talks about their service times 10 30 to 1130 on Sundays. They also have something on Wednesdays around 1230. Their testimony meetings, which is a common practice for Christian scientists is to do testimonies on Wednesdays where they get together and talk about times when their beliefs have resonated in their life or shown up or.

I, well, I think we're gonna get into the, a little bit of the length of it, but I think a lot of the Christian science is about healing. Mm-hmm. And it is about, and of course we're healing from ailments so it's about healing, it's about ailments and that testimonial stuff comes in as like evidence to their practice.

Absolutely. So I mentioned the reading room. They used to have a separate location in Peoria, but now their reading room is located in their church building. The church building was very nice. It's in close to a neighborhood in Peoria, kinda north Peoria area in Mount Holly Road. Actually looks like a home that would be in the Mount Holly neighborhood.

It's brick and nice and built, I think in the early eighties. So I don't think I mentioned this to you, Ben, but I know when I walked in I felt. Like, I was walking into like my grandma's house. 

Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, and the carpet. Mm-hmm. The wallpaper, the decor, the wallpaper. Not in a bad way. No, no. It felt very, very comfortable.

It was very, yeah. It was very well maintained. Yeah. And it was very clean. Obviously. But yeah, it, there was a little bit of dating in some of those things, like the, not that the carpet was shabby. No. But it was just an older color. Mm-hmm. You know, that we have this like, generational use of.

Color palettes. You know, like what colors are in and what colors are not. Right. It was definitely not 

millennial gray No. That you see in some of the more modern churches. Yeah. Which was actually, I mean, I say this all very positively. I really liked walking in. Yeah. I thought it was very comfortable.

The bathroom I know you, the lights turned out on you while you were in the bathroom, but while I went in the ladies' restroom, they had little cups for water. They had a, like a magnifying mirror. So you could check your makeup or whatever. It does seem to be 

the first thing that we do, we get into a church.

It's how the bathroom, let's 

get into the bathroom. Yeah. We're probably nervous and have to go to the bathroom. 

I think so, yeah. When it's like hide and seek a little bit, you know, like you play hide and seek with somebody and you find a good spot and you're like, oh 

yeah, now 

I have to stay here. It's a good 

chance to kinda get acclimated, I guess, to the space for sure.

And then come back out and be like, okay, here we are. 

Well, my bathroom had a motion sensor. Mm-hmm. But it was really. Short, I guess, you know, so be long to go. Yeah, there's no, so I had a little scary moment there. There's no light other than the overhead light in the bathroom and the lights turned off on me and I'm just standing there waving my arms like an idiot.

Okay. 

Like somebody saved me. Oh 

my gosh. All right. So anyways, it was very nice. It felt like a home, which I thought was very nice. It did. And I don't think I've experienced that in a church yet. Um, and it felt 

like a grandma home. It 

did, but like a really good, a good grandma. Oh, loving. Um, yeah. Very sweet and welcoming.

Um, yeah. Not my grandma. 

Okay. More like my grandma. More like your grandma. Yeah. There you go. Okay. So we walked in, we were first actually in the parking lot, somebody saw us. There weren't many cars in the parking lot, this was one of those churches that we definitely stood out as new people there.

There was only maybe five or six cars in the parking lot, but there was a lady getting out of her car and right away she said hello and welcomed us, shook our hands, introduced ourselves, herself to us. And then we walked up and another woman answered the, or opened the door, not answered the door, opened the door for us and greeted us, was very happy to see us there.

And then she was sweet. 

All of them were, 

they weren't, everyone was so nice. So then we found the restroom and then she's like, well, let me show you where to go. And then she got us the booklet they call it a quarterly, so every quarter, the Christian Science Church main, I guess the main Christian Science Church.

I'm not probably using the right terminology. 

Headquarters, 

yes. Publishes a quarterly with all of the readings for each week, all of the scripture, maybe the hymns that they're going to use so that every Christian Science Church, I think in the world is organized in the same way I think. I don't know if it was in the world or just in the United States, but everybody is practicing the exact same lessons.

I would be curious to know if, and you have your laptop there, are there Christian science churches? I. Internationally. 

There are. 

There are. 

Yeah. 

That's amazing. 

Yep. 

Because part of the backstory is that this originated from Boston. Mm-hmm. In the 1880s. 

Yeah. 

Is that right? I 

think so. Let me look here real quick about 

Mary Baker.

Eddie. Eddie, 

yep. Let's see. International is the founder. There are Christian science, churches, societies, and informal groups in over a hundred countries throughout the world. Wow. So there you go. So, and another thing says over 70 countries worldwide, but still their numbers are changing and shifting just like every church.

Of course. So I 

didn't even know there were 70 countries. That's a lot. 

Now we need to look how much, how many countries there are in the world. Yeah. Okay. Or I just need to learn geography. Yeah. Pay attention, Ben. Yeah. All right so that was something about the quarterly that I thought was really interesting, that everybody's practicing the same thing.

It's not just decided by this one church. The other thing to note about Christian science churches is they don't have. A leader in the sense of like a pastor, a minister preacher, anything like that. They elect people from their congregations to be the readers, and that is all, that is their way of doing their sermon.

So there's not actually a sermon like you experience in almost any other church. The process. And we can talk about the order of things, but the sermon really is reading bible verses and then corresponding texts from Mary Baker Eddie's book. So we're kind of jumping around a little bit.

Let's give a little background on Mary Baker. Eddie, do you have that or do you want me to share some stuff about her? I don't have 

much. 

Okay. No. So Mary Baker, Eddie was the founder of Christian Science of the religion because she faced 

some health complications. 

You're right. Yeah, I think she fell and got hurt and she found a Bible verse and as soon as she read it, she was overcome with this sense of healing.

They didn't think she was going to walk again, and apparently she got up out of bed, walked into the other room and astonished everybody. And then at that moment is when she realized that the Bible. And Jesus's teachings can be used for healing, which is why they're called Christian scientists. So they're not bringing science in the way that we think of like science.

Yeah. You know, biology, that sort of thing. Into play. They're using the Bible as a science. Am I saying that? Yeah. Explaining that fairly well.

Keep in mind as always, we've done a crash course in this religion. And so we might be not totally correct, but we're doing the best that we can here. And if somebody who ever wants to correct us, please feel free to send us a message as always. So she decided to form this religion based on a faith healing church.

So they feel like they are being. Any ailment that they might have, any problems that they can use their faith to heal rather than traditional medicines, doctors, treatments, things like that. For anything. And I'll read a story here in a little bit out of the Christian Science Journal just to highlight and help explain that a little bit more.

I have a little bit of something to add to that. 

Yeah, 

I think there's something unique about, I think there's something unique in the way that. Mary Baker. Eddie was and a lot of her writings that they use as part of their source material has, how do I put it, that anything that is of disease and of ailment or of sin.

Is not part of the physical world. And that we have, society in a lot of ways has convinced people that these are all physical things. Even death itself is a physical thing. But in her understanding of it, it's that these things are all illusions. Right. And that if you can kind of see past, or through these illusions, you can rewrite the scripture.

The scripture is more of a, like a rewrite. The script, the common script, the narrative. Mm-hmm. The one that people. Believe to be reality. You can use a, a, a way of looking through it to choose your own path. I'll to believe that maybe God has a different path 

for you. I'll read something here that might summarize that here for you.

In daily life, practitioners focus on seeing beyond material appearances to spiritual reality. This might mean addressing challenges at work, in relationships, or with health through prayer and seeking to understand God's perspective rather than accepting problems as inevitable material facts. And so one example that I read.

Or as a way of kinda explaining it is like if you've ever had a dream that feels so real to you, that you can almost feel things and you can feel the sensations and the emotions tied into it, 

and that our reality is that dream 

is that dream. Yeah. But then you wake up and you're like, oh, mm-hmm.

That was, that was just a dream. And so their way of trying to explain their beliefs to people is what we are experiencing is like a dream. An illusion. Yeah. It's an illusion, but we're going to wake up from it. And if we pray. In the proper way or study in the proper way and believe you know what they are taught then.

They'll wake up from that illusion and from that dream to clarity and reality in their sense. So it's a good analogy and I apparently a lot of Christian scientists use that analogy when trying to share that with people. And I thought that was really good. What else? What do you wanna add then?

I know we've jumped around a little bit. What do you wanna add? Maybe about our experience when we got there, what that was like? Anything from there. Yeah. Before 

we get into that experience, I thought I remembered saying something to you on the way home was that this had a little bit of a feeling of like an eastern religion, although it's centered on Jesus Christ and Right.

A God figure. It had this kind of. Um, sense of almost like a Buddhist Taoist. Mm-hmm. That our pain and suffering is not part of like, that we make our own pain and suffering. Mm-hmm. Is what a lot of eastern religions would say. Buddhism would say that like, that's the vinegar of life. You know, if we can see it that way, then we could begin to accept that these are things that, some things we can control and some things we can't.

And so it had a little bit of a feel of like that I think. I think on the way 

there, we expected more Eastern religion vibe. Out of it. And then we didn't really experience that. 

Oh, I had no expectations at all. Oh. I had no idea what to expect. 

Well, but I mean, you alluded to that, like think from listening to something, doing a little bit of research.

Oh, just a little bit of, yeah. Research and so I guess maybe research. I had some expectations. Mm-hmm. I, I probably can't. You're right. Can't help to not have expectations. We were on the bridge going over, I didn't know maybe. It might have a sense of an Eastern religion to it, but it really didn't Nope. At all.

Once you got there we just felt like maybe it picked up on that, like there that's a spot that this faith might interact inter intersect. Yeah. With an eastern religion. Somebody 

Yeah. Somebody from of an eastern religion could relate to a budhist could relate to that. 

Sure. Absolutely.

So, yeah, so we got there, we sat down we grabbed the quarterly found out which hymns were going to be sung. There was a lady that sang who was just magnificent. She was like, operatic opera style Yeah. Type singing for the hymns, which was awesome. There weren't many people there. This unfortunately is another situation of a really nice, beautiful building a church that it makes me really sad.

I think I told you on the way home. Yeah. Like, it really depresses me to see these. These churches that were once really vibrant communities for probably a large group of people. I mean, there was, this church easily could probably fit 150, 200 people in its pews. And there was a handful of us there, which is why we stood out so much.

Yeah. Um, and it, this is not, it's not just the Christian Science Society. This, we've seen this so many times over and over and over again. And we 

were too of. 10. Yeah, yeah, yeah. 

So nothing against, you know, who knows what's going on. And I know that there were some people absent 

too. Mm-hmm. 'cause they didn't make a comment though.

They did mention there's on one of the families is on a vacation. And then the reader that we had today was a, she called herself like a substitute. Mm-hmm. Normally 

there's somebody else on vacation that she was filling in for on, so there's person, people on Zoom. So I mean there, there's people there.

Oh yeah. There were nine more people on Zoom. She said, yeah, there's people paying attention. It's just, something, you know, you know, I love community and so it's sad to see communities dwindle mm-hmm. And for whatever reason causes that dwindling. Of what, when we are there, we're experiencing really good people, um, that are still, and again, this is, you know, it 

should be noted as always that these are just snapshots.

Right. You know, we're only going one time. Yeah. So it's not an accurate picture. 

Yeah, exactly. So, um, okay, so then we went through some readings and some prayers and some hymns, and then it got to. The main part, which they would maybe refer to as like the sermon. It's not a sermon though. And that's where they had six different.

Sections of biblical readings. Yeah. Bible passages. Yes. Bible passages, but next to it where they'd have just like the numbers, whatever that was, John three 16, I'm just giving an example. I don't have it in front of me. Mm-hmm. But

on the other side, there were the correlative readings from the book, science and Health, which is what Mary Baker, Eddie wrote to spread her religion to help people understand it and to study from it and use it as a guide. So, um, first 

published in 1914. 

Actually, no, like 1875 is what I see here.

Oh, yeah. I think she died in 1910. Oh, so that's okay. Misinformation you got there. I don't know where that, yeah, there you go. Okay. Maybe the addition that we had sitting in front of us, if that was there. I don't know. Um, was that from Yeah. Republication? I'm sure there's, yeah. Yeah. It was first published in 1875 and read by more than 8 million people is what Amazon has to say about it.

Oh, isn't that amazing?



Basically it took it from the Bible passages and re-explained it in their own terminology so that people could understand it and learn from it from a science and health perspective. So they went through that.

There was a lot there was probably 40 to 50 Bible passages with also 40 to 50 correlative readings from science and health. So that took a while. Being that it's not something that we understand, it was hard for me to continue to pay attention and really learn and understand from it.

But it looked like as I looked around the room that the other people were soaking it up really well. I thought. They had the lady who was singing 

I liked silent and Prayer moment. 

Remind me what that was. It was just, I mean, it sounds like a silent purpose. You know what it was? I'm just trying to remember when that was.

Yeah, 

it was near to the beginning after the, um, scripture from Chronicles. Okay. Praise our Lord. And there was silent prayer. Okay. And there was silent prayer. It was like a minute and a half. 

Okay. 

And it was no leading or anything like that. Just everybody with the head, their heads bowed.

And what was your favorite 

part? 

Well, I just favorite, I liked it because it's not typical, you know, in most churches. Yeah. Mm-hmm. I think right. To allow people to have, there's a power in silence. And when you're sitting in a room with a bunch of people that are all. Silent and doing the same thing.

Mm-hmm. I think that's, I think that's

formative. Yeah. Okay. So let's talk a little bit about their reading rooms. So if you are listening and you've driven around different town cities, you've maybe seen a Christian science reading room. Some of them are open a lot.

The one in Peoria was only open for a couple hours before or over lunch. It's just staffed by volunteers from the church. They have moved it to their main church building. So it used to be. The one that they had in Peoria was in, I think it was on Sheridan, like in a little shopping center. So they often are located in very easy, accessible places because they wanna reach people where they are.

And so the reading rooms are. This is straight from the internet, quiet public spaces designed to provide access to Christian science literature in a peaceful environment for study and prayer. They also serve as outreach centers where anyone, regardless of religious background, can explore Christian science teachings.

So they have one now still at their church, but it's open even more limited. I think because it is a pretty small congregation, it's probably hard to find people to staff it. So it's open for about a half hour after church service. Between, 1130 and 12 on Sundays. I'm sure if you called and you wanted to go check it out, that they would be more than happy to greet you there.

They were very nice. Mm-hmm. And willing to share and talk all about things. They did invite us to come to one of their Wednesday testimony meetings if we ever want to do that. They meet around the noon hour on Wednesdays for that. Now's 

a good time for you to read some of the testimonial, 

so 

you 

have 

the 

journal.

Yep. So there's different publications along with the Christian science faith. This is the Christian Science Journal. You've maybe seen the Christian Science Sentinel and then the Christian Science Monitor Weekly. I feel like I have seen the Christian Science Monitor. I don't know, maybe a doctor's offices or something.

I'm not sure where I've seen these, but there's definitely a core memory that was unlocked when I saw this that I've seen these, so I'm not sure where. That was in my life. But all of these have a information, sharing knowledge and things like that. But then there's also big sections of all of these publications that I could find that have written in testimony.

So if we can't make it to a Wednesday testimony, these are also good to read, to kind of understand what is happening and where. How their beliefs really come into play. So I picked one to read to help everyone understand. So this is from the February, 2025 issue of the Christian Science Journal.

A again, a reminder that a large part of Mary Baker Eddie's, platform, I guess, you know, or her initial founding of the religion was based off of her healing. Mm-hmm. So you're gonna find a lot of these testimonies are probably going to be about people's mm-hmm. Process and their healing. 

Absolutely. So this one is called Healing of an Animal Bite. In an earlier chapter of my life, I was fortunate enough to find myself in a research and rehab camp for orangutans in EO Indonesia. Sometimes wild orangutan infants were captured and kept as pets. Inevitably, they grew too large and were kept in cages too small.

Fortunate ones were discovered and sent off to camp, such as the one that I was at, and over time they were reintroduced to the wild. There were probably about two dozen ex captive orangutans living around the camp of them. Yeah, two were adolescents from a distance. They looked almost identical. However, Rombe, I guess that's how you say his name was friendly.

And the other one, Rico was dangerous. In fact, he had been terrorizing people in the camp, especially women. One afternoon I was by myself. When a lone orangutan met me on the trail, I recognized the face or so I thought. So I wasn't afraid. For anyone who isn't familiar with these wonderful orange apes, a full grown orangutan has five to seven times the strength of a human.

As the animal quickly approached, I suddenly realized it was Rico. Within seconds, he was mulling me. I yelled for help. Very soon some of the staff arrived and frightened Rico away, but by this time my legs were bruised and scratched, and there was a nasty bite wound that was bleeding. After being helped to my cabin, I did what I've always done in times of crisis.

I reached for my pocket size copy of Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker, Eddie, with shaking hands. I opened it randomly my eyes fell on this passage. Quote, have no fear that matter can ache swell and be inflamed as the result of a law of any kind. When it is self-evident that matter can have no pain nor inflammation, your body would suffer no more from tension or wounds than the trunk of a tree, which you gash, or the electric wire which you stretch, or it not for the mortal mind, unquote.

It's from page 3 93 of that book. It was exactly what I needed.

Immediately I was able to calm down and begin contemplating how this truth related to my situation. Shortly, I.

There was a knock at my door. It was one of the indigenous diac trackers who worked for the camp. He practiced a type of traditional medicine that included appealing to gods that he was accustomed to praying to. I thanked him for his offer, but told him I had my own method of spiritual treatment and that I would be fine.

He expressed concern that there would be an infection due to the bite wound and the humid jungle climate. I had already cleaned the wound as best as I could, and again assured him that I would be all right. In addition to the fear of infection, there were two other matters I needed to address in my prayers.

One was the feeling that I was cut off from help should my condition worsen. The closest town was a six hour boat ride away. Only there was no boat available. Neither was there a telephone, only a poorly operating two-way radio, and the other issue was the feeling that Rico was an evil animal.

I'm grateful that neither of these concerns lasted long. I grew up attending a Christian Science Sunday school and had learned that God is everywhere, so a sense of my safety was soon restored. Also, I'd have a lifelong love for all animals. It was natural for me to want to see Rico as God's perfect creation and therefore harmless and useful.

While I was cautious of him, I also had a sense of love and compassion. He'd spent years in a cage after his mother was killed. I did have to deal with the evidence of an infection for quite some time. The flesh surrounding the wound was not normal. Eventually, I was able to call a Christian science practitioner who lived a thousand miles away to ask for treatment.

Over the next few weeks, he prayed for me, though it appeared the wound was not healing. One day when I was talking on the phone with him, I asked what else is there for me to know? Or pray, I feel like we've done it all. The practitioner said, so why not just accept that you've been healed? Oh, I thought alright, then I will.

And I did. I stopped checking the wound and turned my attention and prayer to other things. I can't say exactly when, but at some point the wound closed up and the texture of the flesh returned normal and added bonus to this healing was hearing that a while after I left Camp Rico was removed to a location far into the jungle where he could happily live in the wild, far from humans.

In the subsequent 40 years, I've experienced countless healings through prayer, including of marital difficulties, smoking, unemployment, bursitis, and a crushed disc in the spine. I'm so grateful for Christian Science and the practitioners who have supported, guided, and loved me. I feel I've glimpsed something of the truth in this statement, quote, God is the life or intelligence which forms and preserves the individuality and identity of animals as well as of men, unquote.

There 

you go. 

Yep. And so they mentioned something in that story that also got brought up that day was that there are practitioners, Christian science practitioners, a man that was there at the end right. Mentioned he, that his mother 

was one. 

Yep. He asked another one. So we were all standing around afterwards, we asked if we could see the reading room.

So we all went down there and a group of us were there and he. He just made the comment or question he said is, are there any practitioners in Peoria? And they said, no, not that they knew of, but he's mentioned that his mother was, so they explained what a practitioner was, and that's somebody that has, I think, I'm not really sure how they get to be a practitioner, but they are the ones that people go to for their healing. So there's also Christian science nurses, so that's the intermediate level that you could call on if maybe your child is sick or you're dealing with something.

Maybe small. Sometimes they'll go into people's homes, almost like a caretaker to be there and pray with the person. Or you can go to them wherever they're located. So there aren't any in central Illinois that I could find. The closest one was I think Jenna Co Illinois, if I'm saying that right.

Yeah. 

That I found when I looked on their website, so you can hop on the Christian science. Main website and you can search for practitioners, nurses obviously the reading rooms, any churches in there and find any of 'em. So I think there's only about 20 Christian science churches in Illinois, so there's not a lot.

I don't know if there's more reading rooms or what that looks like, so, right. Yeah. What else? 

I don't know. Yeah, I mean, you pretty much summed it up. 

Yeah, they were very nice. They, of course, welcomed us back. Like you said, they invited us to come one of their testimonies. They gave us a pile of literature here.

So we have quite a bit of information if we ever wanna flip through it and learn more about it or share it with anybody, I. There's just book, magazine after magazine. I think these things are published a lot.

It's well done. 

Yeah, these are professional. I mean, this is not 

some Microsoft art No.

Science Monitor 

Weekly. They're putting this thing out every week and it actually, 

this is professional looking, 

pretty interesting. It looks like they deal with a lot of social issues.

What do you mean? 

Well, so this first one here from March 24th, just of this year is all about, the cover says data sprawl.

So one reporter travels home to see how the data centers that power the cloud are encroaching, unfamiliar landscapes and ways of life. So these are just social issues that they're addressing. Oh, um, the other one is executive power has been expanding for over a century. As President Trump presses its limits, how will the US Courts and Congress respond?

Just dealing with social issues, modern day things, and probably doing it from a Christian science lens and yeah, sharing it with their people, so.

All right. Anything else that you wanna add about our experience there? 

I don't think so. Okay. You? 

I don't think so. I will say before we wrap up here we are, oh yeah. Really excited. If you've heard of Interfaith Alliance, it's a national, possibly worldwide organization. I'm not totally sure, but definitely a national organization based out of Washington, dc.

There was a chapter in Peoria for a number of years, of course, just like everything with COVID it struggled and finally just fizzled out. But there's a group of people reinvigorating it, getting it getting the chapter started again. They heard about our interview, our article on the local WCBU station reached out to us.

I met with the lady, I think I mentioned this in a prior podcast, and they have now invited us to come to their first meeting to be speakers at it and share about what we've been doing with the podcast. So, 

and what is the Interfaith Alliance?

Interfaith Alliance is a group of people sometimes church leaders, sometimes just people that are passionate about breaking down the barriers. A lot like what we've been trying to do with our podcast. So breaking down the barriers of religion and uniting people for good. And for the core reasons that people are practicing their religion.

So, understanding, compassion, all of those things. So that's the Sunday at two o'clock at the Peoria North Library branch will be there. To chat. We gotta figure out what we're gonna talk about, but what's cool is one of the people from Washington DC from the Interfaith Alliance headquarters is going to be flying in for it too.

So we're really excited about that. Ooh. I know. Should be cool. All right. All right. Thanks for joining us again. We're excited Yep.

Thank you so much again for joining us on this Branches of Faith podcast.

Thank you for joining us again on this Branches of Faith Podcast. We hope that you enjoyed the discussion and found it enlightening. Your thoughts and feedback are really important to us, and we'd love to hear from you. 

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Thanks again for being part of our journey. We're looking forward to connecting with you in the next episode.