“Corresponding to the Rational World: Scientific Rationales and Language in Christian Science and the Unity School of Christianity”

Rapport, Jeremy. “Corresponding to the Rational World: Scientific Rationales and Language in Christian Science and the Unity School of Christianity.” Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions 14, no. 4 (2011): 11–29.

Rapport argues that both Christian Science and the Unity School of Christianity came into being during an emerging scientific worldview, and implemented their “scientific rationale and language as a strategy to validate themselves in late 19^th-century America” (11). Rapport then observes that because the Unity School of Christianity used ‘the tools of science’ to complement the claims of a very Protestant America, it evoked far less controversy than Christian Science which did the opposite: Mary Baker Eddy, its founder, employed scientific language and methods to defy mainstream science and religion. Rapport particularly zeroes in on how Eddy used science to back up her claim that the material world is unreal. With the Bible as her ‘textbook,’ Eddy claimed two sources of authority for her teachings: her claim of revelation of God’s divine (scientific) laws that operate the universe; and her claim that anyone can logically and consistently demonstrate these laws by using the scientific methods of inductive and deductive reasoning moving back and forth between one’s direct experience of healing (observable facts) and universal truths.

ISSN: 1541-8480
Print ISSN: 1092-6690

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1525/nr.2011.14.4.11