The Christian Science Way of Life with A Christian Scientist’s Life
John, DeWitt. The Christian Science Way of Life with A Christian Scientist’s Life. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1962.
This 1962 snapshot of the Christian Science way of life offers religious historians insights into the value, and the particular impact, of Christian Science teaching on everyday life in the mid-20th century. The topics are still important in the 21st century, but the way-of-life descriptions indicate a clear cultural shift since then. For instance, biblical scholarship was just emerging from the Higher Criticism and provoking new questions. Also, John claims “this is an age of skepticism. Modern thought is saturated with it. The faith of an earlier era is hardly the spirit of these times” (129). And, “It is not the hydrogen bomb alone that makes the world of the 1960s a scene of turmoil” (162). John organizes the topics by typical questions: What kind of people are Christian Scientists? What kind of religion, what kind of church, what about the Bible, and why ‘Science’? Following these questions, John outlines a brief history of Christian Science and its founder, Mary Baker Eddy, followed by some reflections on Christian Science in “the Space Age” (162). A 39-page autobiography by an eminent public figure and former editor of The Christian Science Monitor, Erwin D. Canham, concludes the book as an illustration of the meaning and impact of a life devoted to Christian Science.
ISBN-10: 0875100686
ISBN-13 (Softcover): 978-0875100685
ISBN-13 (Hardcover): 978-0875101194