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

Melton, J. Gordon. “The Case of Edward J. Arens and the Distortion of the History of New Thought.” The Journal of the Society for the Study of Metaphysical Religion 2, no. 1 (Spring 1996): 13–29.

Melton argues that the history of the Eddy-Quimby debates obscured other important historical facts, besides the truth about both Eddy and Quimby. Melton claims that its ripple effect caused the history of the New Thought movement to incorrectly replace Emma Hopkins with Warren Evans as its founder. Phineas P. Quimby was brought into the squabbles within the Christian Science and New Thought movements long after Quimby’s death because of a complicated legal case involving Eddy and one of her students (Edward J. Arens). From Melton’s closer look at this case, he concludes that Evans could not be the founder of New Thought, and Quimby could not be the founder of Christian Science. Additionally, Horatio Dresser, another Quimby student, sought to promote the Quimby cause, but neither he nor anyone else had attempted a broad presentation of Quimby’s thought. “Even on the one issue raised by Dresser, it is difficult to reconcile Quimby’s references to Wisdom’s ‘odor’ and ‘spiritual matter,’ central concepts to his [Quimby’s] metaphysics that are so foreign to anything Eddy proposed” (25). Another look at the legal case and the nature of the debates persuades Melton to defend the role of Hopkins as founder of New Thought and Mary Baker Eddy as founder of Christian Science.

Print ISSN: 1545-7338

See also annotation:

“Authorship and Authority in Intellectual Property: The Copyright Activism of Mary Baker Eddy” by Andrew Ventimiglia

A Story Untold: A History of the Quimby-Eddy Debate by Keith McNeil

Mary Baker Eddy: The Years of Discovery by Robert Peel

Fits, Trances, and Visions: Experiencing Religion and Explaining Experience from Wesley to James by Ann Taves

Certain Trumpets; the Call of Leaders by Garry Wills

“Christian Science and the Puritan Tradition” by Thomas C. Johnsen

Encyclopedic Handbook of Cults in America, by Gordon J. Melton