The Christian Science Society of Coconut Grove – one of Miami’s oldest churches – is hanging on, barely, thanks to a rock-drumming evangelist determined to share the gospel of both music and religion.
On a recent Saturday evening, Kevin John Simon set up his Ludwig drum kit outside a storefront in Center Grove and, as he welcomed arriving bandmates, unfolded eight chairs on the sidewalk for the audience. Minutes later the Jazz Cats launched the first set of the night with a swinging version of “It Had to Be You.”
This free concert – like those staged weekly here during the winter, monthly in summer – was designed both to entertain and to spread the word about Christian Science and the church’s Reading Room at 3456 Main Highway, which provided the backdrop for the performance.
“We’ve been in the Grove since the 1890s,” Simon often tells audiences, a reference to the founding of the church here by some of Miami’s earliest and most prominent pioneers, including Isabella Peacock, whose family gave its name to the palm-shrouded waterfront park not far from here.
Yet the local Christian Science congregation, like others around the U.S., is not thriving. In a Pew Research Center survey published in February, fewer than one-tenth of one percent of nearly 37,000 respondents identified as Christian Scientists.
Locally the number of worshippers who regularly show up for Wednesday and Sunday services – either in person or via Zoom – rarely rises above 10, according to Simon, a retired high school history teacher and board president of the Christian Science Society of Coconut Grove, one of three such congregations still active in Miami-Dade. “We are microscopic,” he says.
Many Christian Scientists are elderly. “We lost half our members in 2020, the Covid year, from death and moving away,” says Simon, who is 73. “Many were snowbirds. Unfortunately, [shrinking membership] is a trend in all churches.”
Simon does see some younger followers on campus at the University of Miami, where he serves as chaplain to Christian Scientists.
With little need for a church that could seat hundreds of worshippers, in 2021 the five-member board of the Coconut Grove Society, which is now headed by Simon and includes his wife and two sons, decided to sell the property, located at 3840 Main Highway.
The church was first bought by a developer, for $4.2 million. The following year the developer sold the property for $4.5 million to Carrollton School of the Sacred Heart, which refurbished the sanctuary for use as its center for spiritual life.
Simon said the society has no intention of selling the Reading Room site, located in the heart of the Grove’s commercial district since 1959. (Above the door — to distinguish the church from its far younger and somewhat controversial brethren — is a sign that reads: “Christian Science is Not Scientology.”)
“We want to stay in the heart of the Grove,” Simon said. “People from all over the world come in. We will continue our ministry.”
For Simon, that ministry flows most naturally through music. Born in Montreal, he and his twin brother were adopted when they were four and grew up on a farm in Northwest Ohio. Simon took up drumming at the age of 17 and toured with the non-profit group Up with People. He later joined the Marine Corps and became, Simon says, the first person to play the xylophone in the U.S. Marine Drum & Bugle Corps.
He embraced Christian Science after he and his brother spent a summer working as bus boys in a northern Michigan camp run by the denomination. “We parachuted into Christian Science and it stuck,” says Simon. “They had a sense of joy and peacefulness I’d never seen before. That was something I wanted.”
After going nowhere clerking in a Chicago drum shop, Simon moved to Gainesville, then Miami, and after earning a college degree landed a job teaching history at Miami Beach Senior High School. He taught there for 32 years, retiring in 2018.
In 2011 Simon had an epiphany that had nothing to do with Christian Science but everything to do with what he is most openly passionate about: drumming.
In a used book shop, he found a 1,000-page coffee-table book on the world of drummers and drumming, and the drummer backing the 60s-era rock legend Jimi Hendrix was not in it.
“I was stunned,” says Simon of the exclusion of the drumming icon Mitch Mitchell.
He was also shocked to discover there was no U.S. fan club devoted to him. So, Simon formed one and has spent the years since as a fervent apostle of the English-born musician, whose legacy from his years with the Jimi Hendrix Experience and beyond have earned him induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and a No. 8 ranking on Rolling Stone’s list of 100 Greatest Drummers of All Time.
“First of all, he has jazz chops,” Simon says of Mitchell. “He was an innovative rock drummer with a technical facility for improvisation that has no equal.”
Simon is encyclopedic on the life of Mitchell, and has befriended his daughter Aisha, who lives in New Jersey. He also travels to drum shows to display three sets of drums configured to precisely replicate kits that Mitchell used over his career. (Mitchell died in 2008 at the age of 61.)
While the local Christian Science community may not be growing, the fan club is. It now has 6,000 members in more than 30 countries, according to Simon.
The melding of faith and infectious, foot-tapping music is integral to many religions, but not often associated with Christian Science, a denomination founded by Bostonian Mary Baker Eddy in 1879.
Believers rely on prayer for healing, and shun many forms of modern medicine.
“On the other hand, our practice isn’t a dogmatic thing,” according to the Christian Science website. “Church members are free to make their own choices on all life-decisions, in obedience to the law, including whether or not to vaccinate. These aren’t decisions imposed by their church.”
The Coconut Grove branch was established in 1896 after Jessie Smith Moore, who owned several acres of bayfront land, traveled to her hometown of Boston and returned to the Grove touting her recovery from serious illness as a result of prayer and the teachings of Christian Science, according to “George Merrick: Son of the South Wind” by Arva Moore Parks.
Moore donated about an acre of her holdings, which she called the Moorings, for the building of a church here, the first Christian Science congregation in Southeast Florida. Among early adherents, in addition to Isabella Peacock, were Peacock’s daughter Eunice, and Eunice’s husband, George Merrick, the founder of Coral Gables. (Most of Moore’s land, still called the Moorings, is now a gated neighborhood of about 40 multi-million-dollar estates.)
One Christian Scientist who does show up regularly, now remotely, for local services is Carol Warburton, 88. She served as church organist and University of Miami campus chaplain for decades before moving to Texas with her husband several years ago.
“Attendance with every denomination is down. It’s a trend,” she said. “Young people are not going to church. But I can assure you the Grove society will continue. Kevin is wonderful and he’s doing an exceptional job.”
Using some of the proceeds from the sale of the church, the society recently completed a total renovation of the Reading Room and of the building it owns on the UM campus, refurbishing two studio apartments and adding a state-of-the-art performance space.
Simon’s hopes for growing Christian Science membership here are modest. But his outreach through music does attract listeners who are curious about the denomination’s beliefs, and allows him to jam with fellow musicians.
The lineup on this Saturday included vocalist Judy Martin, Steve Lee on keyboards, Christophe Meray on trumpet and trombone, and Robert “Be-Bob” Grabowski on bass – all professional musicians, and friends of Simon, whom he pays to perform.
“The beauty of the Grove is that some nights people are very interested, and other nights they just smile and walk on by,” said Grabowski, who taught jazz history at Florida International University for 35 years. “Like with any art, music is appreciated on different levels. You never know what reaches people.”
On this night, one listener pulled in by the music lingered to learn more about Christian Science, said Simon. “We share information, but we don’t push it,” says Simon. “People come when they are ready.” For more about Christian Science, see Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, by Mary Baker Eddy. For a taste of Mitch Mitchell’s drum wizardry, Simon recommends Jimi Hendrix’s “Fire.”
