21st Century Science & Health with Key to the Scriptures: A modern version of Mary Baker Eddy’s Science and Health

Petersen, Cheryl. 21^st Century Science & Health with Key to the Scriptures: A modern version of Mary Baker Eddy’s Science and Health. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2017.

Petersen has made a paraphrase revision of Mary Baker Eddy’s 19^th-century textbook, Science and Health, with the purpose of elucidating divine Science for the 21^st century. In her Preface she avows her great efforts to keep Mary Baker Eddy’s original meaning of divine Science intact, while using more current (and inclusive) language and quoting from modern Bible versions. Petersen also took many of Eddy’s dated examples and replaced them with more contemporary illustrations and terminology from religion and the medical, social and physical sciences, such as a reference to Einstein’s theory of relativity, an excerpt from an interview with Dean Ornish, and Eddy’s chapter “Animal Magnetism Unmasked” retitled “Power of Suggestion; Crowd Thinking.” She also replaced some of the more traditional Christian language with broader-spectrum terms. ‘Prayer’ is often called ‘meditation,’ ‘sin’ is sometimes simply ‘darkness’ or even ‘downward spiral thought processes,’ ‘Christian Science’ is often referred to as ‘spiritual Science,’ and Eddy’s chapter on “Atonement and Eucharist” has been renamed “Reconciliation and Communion.” The back cover describes a more utilitarian approach to Eddy’s Science and Health, saying Petersen offers practical ways to “harness the power of universal truths to achieve… personal, career and spiritual goals.”

ISBN-10: 149073600X
ISBN-13: 9781490736006