“Authorship and Authority in Intellectual Property: The Copyright Activism of Mary Baker Eddy” in Copyrighting God: Ownership of the Sacred in American Religion

Ventimiglia, Andrew. “Authorship and Authority in Intellectual Property: The Copyright Activism of Mary Baker Eddy,” Pages 115–149 in Copyrighting God: Ownership of the Sacred in American Religion. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2019.

This book identifies “intellectual property law as an important site for organizing religious practice” (11). As Ventimiglia notes, the importance of religious ideas and practices make intellectual property law an increasingly important component of contemporary life. Mary Baker Eddy was among the first religious figures to research intellectual property when, in 1882, she and her husband went to Washington, DC to study it. Her activism resulted in the passage of the Copyright Act of 1909. In practice, Eddy’s approach was dynamic, adapting to different needs at different times throughout the history of her Church. The legal trajectory is noteworthy in “securing Eddy’s authority within the church and in constructing a successful new American religion, but also because it speaks to broader issues related to the ethics … of copyright law” (116-117). She saw copyright “as a legal bulwark maintaining both the internal coherence of her work and its ineradicable link to her personality” (123), a concept that presaged her later appointing Science and Health (along with the Bible) as Pastor of the Christian Science Church. Responses to accusations of plagiarism, the legal fallout from those who fail in their healing after reading Science and Health, and competition within and without the church contributed to her concern for just copyright law.

ISBN-10: 1108420516
ISBN-13 (Softcover): 978-1108430371
ISBN-13 (Hardcover): 978-1108420518

See also annotation:

“The Case of Edward J. Arens and the Distortion of the History of New Thought” by Gordon J. Melton