Resources by Porterfield, Amanda

Medical practices have waxed and waned as part of Christian healing practices from antiquity. Porterfield devotes two pages to Mary Baker Eddy’s contributions as an heir to Wesley. Eddy’s engagement with mesmerism led her to relinquish many aspects of evangelical theology. In her break with the materialist elements of mesmerism, Eddy followed Quimby, but went beyond him with her biblical interpretation.

This book’s study on the history of Christian theology in America includes Mary Baker Eddy’s contributions. Eddy’s theological treatise, Science and Health, distanced itself from literal interpretations of the Bible, interpreting central Christian elements in terms of mental experience. Porterfield finds Eddy’s theology coherent and more fairly understood as a remarkably creative if unschooled form of American Protestant thought. 

Porterfield claims Mary Baker Eddy’s contribution to feminine spirituality in America took place during a significant cultural transition in American history and that Eddy’s religious practices were due in part to her legitimation of those practices as a science. Porterfield also explores Eddy’s views of Mary (mother of Jesus) bearing the Christ idea in the pure form of the female body.