So we have a small college in rural Illinois, set up to advance the agenda of a cult, what could possibly go wrong?
For part 1, see People with Devotion to a Cause.
If we were writing a story, we would need a relatable protagonist who is thrust into a terrifying situation. This should be easy enough, Principia is full of college students, many from solidly middle class backgrounds, a few with scholarships, and a decent percentage with financial aid. You could pick almost any of them at random. Some might be more aware than others of what is actually going on, but most do their best to get to class, get their work done, and socialize a bit.
To foil this relatable protagonist, the villains/antagonists don’t even need to be alive, there simply need to be enough people willing to carry out the bureaucracy, carry on their memory, and preserve their legacy. Mary Baker Eddy, Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, and Mary Kimball Morgan, founder of the Principia Schools and College have both been dead for decades, and yet their legacy, and the lasting damage it has inflicted, lives on.
As previously pointed out in the post, Everything is Fine & Other Lies Principians Tell Each Other,
In Christian Science we are to correct our thought, if we perceive something is amiss, we are to correct our thought. If CS are perceived to be behaving in any way that is less than Perfect, it is a Failing on our part and we must work to correct it.
This applies to mental issues as well as physical ones. I’d like to think some of the issues Prin failed at would be obvious in a different school, the physical ones, the reasons people went to Cox Cottage. The reasons people snuck off campus for medical care (yes, that happened).
Let’s be honest, most CS are pretty good at putting on a good show. Unless something was truly horribly wrong, they showed up for classes, meals, etc. and even if they didn’t, we were all so busy with our own lives we wouldn’t have noticed unless they were our roommate, and even then, with some extreme exceptions, there were no “red flags” — and even the ones we did see we didn’t know how to act on.
During my time at Principia, there was a 10-week quarter system with very, very few breaks. It was a constant grind, with a full course load of 15-18 hours of classes, 15-20 hours of work to aid with tuition-assistance, lectures, extra-curricular activities, Church and church-adjacent events (optional, but not really). Pressure to actually graduate in the four years to keep costs down.
The “threat” often had to take a backseat to get that research paper turned in on time. It was more of the passing observation of “that girl is no longer showing up in class, I wonder what happened to her, I guess she left” which in some ways is more chilling, because while her disappearance was noted, it was assumed that it was “a private matter” between herself and the school. The real “threat” was the underlying worry that you too might be disappeared, but if it happened to you, at least you’d know why… and it would never happen to you, you follow the Prin Code (since I wrote that post, Principia has changed some of it’s admissions policies, but the majority of them still stand).
[Besides] if the problem was really truly bad, they’d be disappeared in the night. Disappearances during the academic term are jarring, the ones that happen between breaks are more subtle. Some people just don’t come back after Spring Break, are they on an Abroad, were they asked to leave, is it Academic Probation, did they run out of funds, did they transfer out, is it some combination of all of these?
Eventually the missing fade into the background while you try and cope with the grueling quarter system (apparently this has since been changed) and stresses of trying to maintain a good GPA so you don’t loose your sources of funding. Really, there isn’t much time for speculation. (from Everything is Fine & Other Lies Principians Tell Each Other)
How would this all play out? Would our relatable protagonist realize they were in danger, what would the danger be? Would there be an academic or social issue? Would they have some sort of incurable (by prayer alone) illness or accident and be forced to seek care at Cox Cottage, or worse, the local hospital?
Let us assume the protagonist follows the Principia Code of Conduct, and instead falls ill. What would happen?
kind-ism 