The practitioner's place in Christian Science is fixed by the Manual of The Mother Church, the compact book of bylaws Mary Baker Eddy left as the denomination's governing instrument. The Manual sets the terms: who may advertise in The Christian Science Journal, the standards of conduct expected, the relationship between practitioners and the teachers who instruct them.
Teachers hold the higher credential, having passed through Normal class instruction, and each maintains an association of pupils that meets for continuing instruction; together the teachers and practitioners form the tradition's equivalent of a professional order, credentialed, listed and accountable, without constituting an ordained clergy, since Christian Science has none. The vocation's public history has two threads.
Within the movement, practitioners are the everyday evidence of its central claim, the healers whose published testimonies of recovered health fill the periodicals. Outside it, reliance on spiritual treatment in place of medicine has drawn recurring controversy, most sharply in court cases involving gravely ill children whose parents relied on practitioners, cases that produced convictions, reversals and continuing debate over religious exemptions in medical neglect law. The church's stated position is that members are free to make their own decisions about care and that Christian Science treatment is chosen, not imposed. The number of Journal-listed practitioners has declined markedly since the mid-twentieth century, a trend the church acknowledges, yet the role persists wherever the denomination does, and remains its defining office.