For the past 27 years, Keith Wommack has been a Christian Science healer, helping others through prayer. But in October, the church asked him to help with a healing of a different kind.

He now serves as the legislative and media liaison between the church and the state of Texas, working to correct misinformation about his religion, become a source of credible information for news outlets and prevent any targeted or accidental legislation that would impede the beliefs of Christian Scientists throughout the state.

While Wommack’s biography might look like a compilation of non sequiturs – Westlake High School graduate, rock musician, Christian Science healer, world-trotting lecturer, and now media relations specialist – he says his beliefs and ideas have remained much the same.

“I just like to keep my thought open to the divine surprise,” he said.

Shortly after graduating from the local high school, he and his twin brother, Kevin, began touring as the Wommack brothers, playing with the likes of Journey, Elvis Costello and Stevie Ray Vaughan. But even through those days, the fourth-generation Christian Scientist stayed true to his beliefs, eschewing drugs and alcohol, which he said he never felt the need to try.

“Doing the music was beginning to hold me back from the spiritual healing I wanted to do,” he said. “I just exchanged the melody of music for the melody of divine knowledge.”

Having enjoyed the freedom of the musician’s lifestyle, he said it didn’t change much when he became a healer; he was just traveling for a different purpose. His brother, Kevin, stayed in the industry and went on to manage the Grammy Award-winning Los Lonely Boys.

In his most recent position, Wommack says he wants to be proactive with the media, traveling around the state, doing introductory interviews like this one to dispel misconceptions from the beginning instead of waiting to see something in print that is incorrect.

One of the biggest misunderstandings he encounters is people who believe that Christian Science is the same as Scientology. Mary Baker Eddy founded the Church of Christ, Scientist, in 1879, after a personal healing she believed came from reading the Bible, leading her to espouse the idea that all healing could be done spiritually, as anything physical was simply a manifestation of the spiritual.

Scientology came about some 75 years later when science-fiction author L. Ron Hubbord created it on the belief that people are immortal beings who have forgotten their true nature.

“Another one I hear is that ‘they don’t believe in doctors,’ ” he said. “Of course we believe in doctors, we see them, we know that they exist, we just believe in a different kind of medicine.”

Another misperception is that practitioners believe it is God’s will when someone gets sick and that only God’s will can help them.

“Most problems are based on fear, sin, anger or frustration,” he said. “Those aren’t really a part of who we are as God created us.”

He also said that the church does not frown upon practitioners who turn to modern medicine, even though the basic tenets of the faith find it unnecessary.

“It’s an individual choice; if they are in a place where they can’t put their faith in the spiritual they may turn to the health care system that many use as a first choice,” Wommack said. “It’s kind of rare, but it’s done.”

The healing itself, he said, has a scientific base.

“Physical science deals with matter, but we are dealing with consciousness or spirit,” he said. “People wonder how prayer heals the body. If you cry, where did the tear come from? It was emotion producing something physical. In that way, the entire body is a thought manifest.”

Prior to this position with the church, he worked on the Christian Science Board of Lectureship for seven years, traveling throughout the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, giving talks and facilitating workshops as an authorized teacher of Christian Science.

He described one incident that has stuck with him, illustrating how his healing works.

“Here in Austin, a girl went to Sixth Street with her friends and got sloshed, she passed out so they left her in a house,” he said. “When they returned at 3:30 a.m., she was unconscious. They rushed her to the hospital and she was on life support with a blood alcohol content of .5.”

The doctors said that even if she lived, there would be extensive brain damage. Wommack received a call from her mother and grandmother and began driving to the hospital.

“I felt this grand sense of light, which is something I always feel when healing is taking place,” he said. “Her mother and grandmother had been praying too, and by the time I got there they had already pulled her off life support.”

He said the girl was awake and talking with no sign of fluid in her lungs, another worry of the doctors. And on his way out of the hospital, he passed by the firefighters who had returned to see what time the girl had passed.

“That was special to see,” he said.

Through all of the travel, Texas has always been a home base for Wommack, who was born and raised in Austin, moved to Houston in 1992 with his new wife, Joanne, and her two sons, then to Corpus Christi in 1994, where he still lives today.