Resources by Swensen, Rolf

Swensen documents how, in the fifteen years after the passing of Mary Baker Eddy (1910-1925), the Christian Science Board of Directors consolidated and centralized their authority both at Church headquarters and over local branch churches. Mirroring a corporate business model, church organization, administration, and standardization were merged with obedience and loyalty. 

Bibliographer Swensen provides a social profile of the membership, internal operations and founding leadership (Augusta Stetson and Laura Lathrop) of the two largest Christian Science churches in the eastern U.S.—First and Second Church, New York City. Accessing the church records and the extensive correspondence between Mary Baker Eddy and New York church members, Swensen sees his study as a window into the rocket-rise of this vibrant new movement as a whole.

Rolf Swensen, a social sciences bibliographer, describes the troubled early stages of the Christian Science movement in Portland under the leadership of two influential women, Blanche Hogue and Amorette Aldrich, and the churches they established. The source of contention appears to have been due to Hogue’s affiliation with and support from Augusta Stetson, a prominent Christian Science practitioner and teacher in New York City.

Swensen describes Hofer’s career as a “lifelong journalist and political maverick” which included his own newspaper and magazine, the Capital Journal and The Lariat, membership in the Oregon legislature and Salem city council, and an unsuccessful candidacy for governor. His unceasing fight was for individualism and decentralized government. In his Appendix, Swensen takes up Hofer’s Christian Science affiliation with its emphasis on the individual’s role in salvation.

​​Swensen, a social sciences bibliographer, researches whether the early appeal of Christian Science reached beyond American culture to attract recently arrived immigrants. Most of the immigrants were Europeans, especially British and German, and were of lower to middle working class. Despite language barriers, they found meaning in the church’s fellowship, restored health, and the promise of raising their station in life.

As Christian Science gained popularity in the 1880s, Reformed Jews who had recently migrated to the U.S. were attracted to it. Although Mary Baker Eddy would fall into the historic Christian pattern of deprecating Judaism as legalistic, she was in agreement with Judaism’s monotheism, and with the tenet that Jesus was not God but the Christ or Messiah available to all.

Swensen examines the initial flock and organization of the Church Mary Baker Eddy founded and then disbanded ten years later. The early 1880s brought new members and stability, spurring Eddy to organize. But this embattled precursor of today’s Mother Church would be irredeemably challenged by a volatile membership, unreliable preaching by invited clergy, and confusion over competing metaphysical groups.

Swensen documents the long-term effect of Alfred Farlow’s early crusade to protect the growing Christian Science Church from outside attacks, and muzzle an unrestrained and over-zealous faithful. He sees this protective stance as casting a long shadow over the content of future church periodicals, and the reason why members have since shown a deep reticence for personal outreach.

From his study of six Christian Science West Coast churches between 1880-1915, Swensen, a social sciences bibliographer, provides a detailed social profile of particular Christian Scientist leaders, the churches they established, and why they flourished after 1900. The Pacific Coast, with its influx of those seeking a better climate, along with its religious diversity, was fertile ground for Christian Science

Examining 32 branch church membership records, plus 800 testimonies of healing, between 1890-1910, Swensen provides a demographic history of the occupations, classes, and motivations of Christian Scientists across the country. Compared to the 1910 census, Swensen found five times more professionals in the branches and almost four times the managers/proprietors, but only one fifth the number of unskilled workers and farmers.

Swensen, Rolf. “‘You are Brave but You are a Woman in the Eyes of Men’: Augusta E. Stetson’s Rise and Fall in the Church of Christ, Scientist.” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion  24, no. 1 (2008): 75–89. Augusta Stetson was the controversial founder and leader of the largest Christian Science church in the world—completed in 1903, a magnificent 1.2-million-dollar sanctuary located in New York City. She was one of many women at the turn.