“Mary Baker Eddy and Christian Science” in Feminist Theology

Hall, Irene. “Mary Baker Eddy and Christian Science.” Feminist Theology 16, no. 1 (September 2007): 79-88. 

Hall first examines why Mary Baker Eddy was, and continues to be, overlooked, underrated, and misrepresented, by opponents.  She agrees with biographer Gillian Gill’s two reasons for this neglect: 1) that Eddy did not fit the typical 19^th century pattern of female achievement as a suffragist or abolitionist; and 2) that before the 2002 opening of the Mary Baker Eddy Library, “the great mass of documentation relating to her [had] been legendarily inaccessible” (Hall, 81, quoting Gill, Mary Baker Eddy, xviii). Hall then provides a brief but accurate and accessible introduction to Eddy’s particularly extraordinary life as teacher, healer, author, public speaker, founder, leader, and publisher of an international newspaper. Lastly Hall looks at Eddy’s theology through a feminist lens, citing her practical emphasis on healing and the seven non-gender-specific synonyms Eddy used to define God. Also, with the designation of God as Mother, as well as Father, “there is no divisive hierarchy between male and female” (87) as expressed in the church organization. As evidence of Eddy’s early commitment to gender parity, Hall quotes from Eddy’s 1884 edition of her textbook Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures when she used feminine pronouns to refer to God.

ISSN: 0966-7350

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0966735007082518

See also annotations:

“Mary Baker Eddy and the Nineteenth-Century ‘Public’ Woman: A Feminist Reappraisal” by Jean McDonald

Mary Baker Eddy by Gillian Gill