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The strange story of Val Kilmer and the Christian Science religion
A Hollywood actor believed in Love and “Healing”
His death on April 1st caught the world by surprise, and so did a detail in his obituary. Val Kilmer was a lifelong member of the Christian Science religion?
He had a famous fight with throat cancer and died of pneumonia—and all the while, he was a member of a Christian denomination whose most famous belief was ‘miracle’ healing?
I went in for a look at the actor’s Christianity.
He was born in Los Angeles in 1959 into a family of Christian Science members.
It was then over a half century since the death of the denomination’s founder, Mary Baker Eddy, but her field of influence remained strong. The Christian Science church is most often associated with the idea of health problems — or any problems — being a result of how people think about those problems.
Val Kilmer attended a Christian Science school, Berkeley Hall, through 9th grade, and kept up engagement with fellow ‘practitioners’, the church’s term for spiritual advisors or clerics. In his 2020 memoir, I’m Your…
