The History of The Christian Science Movement

Johnson, William Lyman. The History of The Christian Science Movement, 2 vols. Brookline, MA: The Zion Research Foundation, 1926.

Johnson’s account covers the changing organizational forms within the Christian Science movement from the mid-1880s until Mary Baker Eddy’s major reorganization in 1892, and the building of the Mother Church completed in 1894. Johnson’s evidence includes personal memory and primary documents of his father, William B. Johnson, a confidant of Eddy and one of the church’s first directors. Johnson answers questions that succeeding generations have wondered: why did Eddy disband her original church and the Metaphysical College?; why did Eddy create a church with a self-perpetuating Board of Directors?; why did Mrs. Woodbury and Mr. Nixon pose such threats to the church? Eddy’s changes were impelled by two concerns. First, a number of Eddy’s former students practiced healing in ways that combined other ideas and did not acknowledge Eddy or her writings. Second, some followers wanted no church, satisfied with Christian Science as a healing practice organized more as a philosophical society. Intense competition among spiritual healers coupled with defections and disloyalty led Eddy to create a unique church structure and take extra precautions to preserve and protect her own teachings and writings.

Access these rare volumes on the Plainfield CS website:

The History of The Christian Science Movement, Volume One

The History of The Christian Science Movement, Volume Two

See also annotations:

Building of the Mother Church, The First Church of Christ, Scientist by Joseph Armstrong and Margaret Williamson

Mr. Dickey: Secretary to Mary Baker Eddy with Adam H. Dickey’s “Memoirs of Mary Baker Eddy” by Nancy Niblack Baxter

“Our Cause . . . Does Not Need Advertising, but Protection”: The Christian Science Movement Regroups, 1908 – 1910 by Rolf Swenson