Seattle's Center for Spiritual Living keeps growing

At a recent Sunday service at the Center for Spiritual Living on Sand Point Way Northeast, the singing was joyous, the clapping enthusiastic.

Much praising of Spirit was expressed and many thanks given for the blessings in life.

The place was fairly pulsating with smiling, positive energy.

"I thought everyone was nuts," said Peter Hannah, remembering his first service there some five years ago.

Two months after that, Hannah was one of those singing, clapping members.

And so it goes at this spirited church that today will hold the grand opening of its new and far bigger digs next door to its current home.

With about 4,000 congregants and a 30,000-square-foot home, the Center for Spiritual Living has become a kind of megachurch for people who don't like traditional churches.

Over the years, the center — part of a denomination called Religious Science — has grown steadily, attracting members with its emphasis on positive thinking, empowering messages, guilt-free spirituality and practical tools for living.

That it's become the second-largest Religious Science church in the country is probably not surprising, given the sizable number of people in Seattle who say they're spiritual but not into organized religion.

Members tend to say the religions they grew up with didn't resonate with them anymore, but upon hearing their first sermons at the center they felt a spark of recognition — that this was what they had always believed about God but had been unable to articulate.

The theology says "there's this great force for good that we can all tap into," said Hannah, a 42-year-old Seattle psychotherapist. "It just fit what I'd always thought inside."

Religious Science was founded in 1927 by Ernest Holmes, a former farm boy from Maine who studied various religions and philosophies.

Members believe in God as a universal spirit, or power, that is in everyone and everything. They believe anyone can learn to access that spirit and that all major religions offer principles that help people in doing so.

Such principles include the law of cause and effect — that actions and thoughts have consequences, and the law of attraction — that whatever we focus our attention on, we attract and get. The latter was the focus of the controversial best-selling book and DVD "The Secret."

Similar to Christian churches, the center has pastors and offers Sunday services with sermons and a choir. But there are major differences, too.

While the denomination sees Jesus as a great example of someone who realized and connected with the divine within himself, it regards him as the son of God only insofar as all people are children of God.

It borrows from Eastern traditions, including the Buddhist notions of mindfulness and "right thinking." But it does not necessarily believe in reincarnation.

Some believers of Religious Science may also consider themselves Christians or Jews or Buddhists. There are no rigid creeds.

But there are certain practices — including "spiritual mind treatments" that use affirmative prayers and visualizations intended to help people heal from illness and free themselves of suffering, fear and other woes.

Paula Harvey, 52, a life coach from Redmond, said the teachings have helped her connect with "the divine within me" and to realize that at each moment of her life she has a choice in how she responds to things.

The result: "My life is smoother. I'm more at peace."

The Center for Spiritual Living has its roots in a group begun in downtown Seattle 87 years ago. It went by different names and met in various neighborhoods before settling into its Sand Point location 16 years ago.

Back then, the building was big enough for the 400 people who came to Sunday services. These days, about 1,200 people — mostly white and middle class, though there is some diversity — attend Sundays.

Religious Science as a whole has grown, too, with some 200 centers and study groups, most in the U.S.

Dell deChant, a specialist on new religious movements, said the teachings of groups such as Religious Science have been around for a century but have only recently become widespread in popular culture.

Maybe it's because "basic belief systems of people are being challenged in a variety of ways and people are more willing to experiment," said deChant, associate chairman of the religious-studies department at the University of South Florida.

At the same time, increased visibility has brought greater scrutiny to certain teachings. The "law of attraction" as depicted in "The Secret," for example, has been criticized for being too simplistic and for suggesting people bring about their own suffering through negative thinking.

Critics have said this line of thinking ignores the role of larger social and institutional forces. Does a child get caught up in war, for instance, because she thought the wrong thoughts?

The denomination's spokeswoman, Judy Morley, suggested such a thing may happen not because a person consciously wished for it but because of unhelpful thinking within a larger culture.

In any case, Morley said, the focus is not on blame but on helping people see they have control over how they react to situations — even bad ones.

"We realize life isn't always Pollyanna and fabulous," she said. "The idea is this philosophy can give us tools to work with that, to help turn it around rather than spiral downward."

Harvey, the life coach from Redmond, says there are concepts in Religious Science she struggles with — including why large groups of people sometimes suffer — but that on a personal level it's benefitted her.

She grew up Catholic but going to church became a chore. "I did not enjoy it. I was not uplifted," she said. "The message wasn't anything I could apply to my life right then and there."

Harvey said the first time she heard a sermon by the center's longtime pastor, the Rev. Kathianne Lewis, she cried, experiencing "a bigger God than I've known before" — one who didn't have a list of things she should or shouldn't do.

The center's teachings helped her most last year, she said, when her father died of cancer. She saw she had a choice: to be in denial and miserable or to accept his death and bless the time they had together.

"Without that, the experience would have been much worse," she said. She realized, "within me, I have the power to decide how I'm going to respond."