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Mary Baker Eddy’s approach to the weather is the topic of research, including stories of how threatening weather and the laws of nature were made subordinate to God’s divine law. One student of Eddy’s explains how she instructed them not to try to control the weather. Rather, their prayers were to affirm that God, not outside influences, governs the weather.

Voorhees offers new scholarship on a broad array of topics related to Christian Science identity focusing on reception history. With attention to fully resourced details and modern scholarship, Voorhees outlines the reception history of Christian Science in fields of religion, women studies, American history, politics, medicine, and metaphysics. She probes Mary Baker Eddy’s relationships with contemporary scholars, religion leaders, and students.

Peidle finds common ground between Christian Science and Vedanta (represented by Swami Vivekananda), by examining a speech written by Mary Baker Eddy for the 1893 Parliament of World Religions, as well as her other writings, and Vivekananda’s correspondence. Vivekananda first learned about Christian Science at the Parliament. His later ill health prompted an interest in the nature of healing and reality.

O’Brien’s interfaith reflections illustrate how sympathy can help bring heaven to earth—as evidenced in four women: Mary Baker Eddy, Emily Dickinson, Sarada Devi (wife and mission partner to Ramakrishna) and Simone Weil. O’Brien finds a basis for this sympathy in the common conviction found in many religions of “the experience of oneness between the supreme Spirit and everyday empirical reality.”

Mina Loy’s Christian Science faith with its views of the body, along with 19th-century spiritualism informed her poetry. She conceptualized in her poetry a non-binary kind of embodiment—away from body/soul or life/death—to life as beyond the body. Loy saw death and the physical as illusory and thereby able to break with biological determinism and personality.  

Writing in the context of ecumenical concerns, Paulson sees it as vital that science and religion work together to bring about climate justice and she sees the moral and theological perspective of Christian Science as a valuable contribution, with its “understanding of science in the context of salvation.”

The structure of this dissertation is a critical theological conversation between Mary Baker Eddy’s Science and Health and the 2nd-century Christian text, the Secret Revelation of John. It uses methodology from Practical Theology to highlight epistemological contrasts and similarities between the two texts and between their worldviews and orthodox worldviews. A common theological foundation lies beneath healing practices for both texts.

Implementing feminist rhetorical criticism, Tencza examines Mary Baker Eddy’s strategic use of rhetoric to create meaning in her writings, reinforced by the integrity of her character. Tencza sees Eddy working within three frameworks: an ethic of care [mother-like pathos], extreme utilization of ethos [her character integrity], and logos [ability to make meaning]—all of which coalesce into her rhetoric of confidence.

Moses’s 1916 book intended to foster a Jewish spiritual renaissance and to prove that Judaism long held what appears so attractive to the early 20th-century Jewish converts to Christian Science: divine healing, affirmative prayer, and a religion of love and law. He catalogs Jewish scripture illustrating healing and divine love, and contrasts Christian Science tenets with Jewish faith.

In this brief article, Westbrook makes some comparisons between Christian Science and Scientology. In common both draw on a theological link between science and religion, and both refer to their main church body as their ‘Mother Church.’ But mainly Westbrook points out their dramatic differences in theology, organization and mission.

In this brief paper, Rider compares theological interpretations of biblical texts between Christian Science and Christian orthodoxy, arguing for a radical difference. The texts he selected include creation stories in Genesis, the Lord’s Prayer, the miracles of Jesus, and his crucifixion and resurrection.

Kramer’s well-researched critique on Christian Science makes her arguments easier to understand than most critics. She grasps the fundamental teachings and history of the religion well, but she left it for doctrinal reasons. Most of Perfect Peril describes her emotional and intellectual struggles with doctrinal issues. Following a crisis of faith, she concluded that Christian Science is a dangerous mind control. 

This essay by an adherent of Christian Science accompanies the main article on Christian Science. Paulson describes her childhood experience and how her religious practice was her primary source of comfort and healing. She recognizes distinctions between Christian Science and orthodox Christianity and explains why she thinks the typical orthodox view of Christian Science’s similarity with Gnosticism is misleading. 

This essay on Christian Science is one of many descriptive introductions of various religions and their relation to evangelical Christianity. Simmons notes that the ‘Christian’ element in Christian Science involves a radical reinterpretation of Jesus and his role in the New Testament. Mary Baker Eddy stressed the practical nature of her ‘science’ in human challenges, thus highlighting the focus on healing. 

Gallagher examines Mary Baker Eddy’s and Helen Schucman’s (A Course in Miracles) interpretation of scripture and development of their own canons. Gallagher sees Eddy’s Science and Health as a Bible companion which has the power to heal the reader and requires deep study. Similarly, Gallagher sees Schucman’s ACIM as indispensable to understanding the Bible, providing a mystical interpretation of scripture.

Hutchinson defines New Thought as any American metaphysical religion affiliated with Phineas P. Quimby, Mary Baker Eddy and Emma Curtis Hopkins. They expanded from their emphasis on healing to a focus on prosperity theology; and Hutchinson observes that since Eddy rejected materialism, the New Thought emphasis on prosperity—while popular in mainstream Christian America—differentiated it from Christian Science.

Willsky claims Mary Baker Eddy’s Science and Health (among other 19th-century works) was a reaction to the dogmatism of the Plain Bible ethos of American Protestantism. The predominant interpretation of the Bible as ‘plain’ meant its message, as understood by Reformed and evangelical Protestant culture, was authoritatively true. Eddy made the best attempt to modify this notion with divine healing revelations.

Written by representatives from a wide variety of Christian communions, the essays in this book seek Christian unity in mission. Unity is how diverse churches can agree to a common purpose. Mission is how the church’s purpose is transformational in both personal and social dimensions. The Christian Science chapter is: “Christian Science Christians’ Healing Practice: A Contribution to Christian Pilgrimage.”

​​Hines’s study on the relationship between illness, disability, and sin in the healing theologies of three American-born religions, including Christian Science, highlights the 19th-century context from which they came. Reacting against the prevalent Calvinist notion of illness and disability offering salvific powers, Christian Science argues that sickness is not God-made. But sick people can feel blamed for their infirmities.

Voorhees explains that Eddy never intended to become a role model for gender parity, but it emerged naturally as a by-product of her larger purpose and project of revealing the nature of Christian salvation. In contrast to Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Voorhees illustrates how the ‘Woman Question’ for Eddy is emphatic and radical, yet qualified and ultimately subsumed by her soteriology.

Albanese’s undergraduate textbook explains Christian Science in the context of the evolution of religions and the meaning of religion in America. Christian Science was one of the 19th-century new religions that made considerable demands on its members, as new sects often did.  Albanese’s theological explanations of Christian Science are based on her thorough knowledge of the American metaphysical movement.

The commonly mischaracterized and consequently overlooked relationship between Eddy and her former student, Gestefeld, should be re-examined because of its rich theological and biographical potential. Voorhees’s closer look at their correspondence indicates a mutually respectful relationship before they parted ways on grounds of theological differences—Gestefeld’s theosophical eclecticism versus Eddy’s unorthodox Christian particularism, and not because of Eddy’s authoritarian reasons.

Campbell seeks to identify and critique three central issues concerning communities who practice Christian healing without medicine: their theological justification for such healing practices, medical practices as morally and metaphysically wrong from their perspectives, and their understanding of theodicy when healing does not occur. But a glaring problem for researchers of Christian Science is Campbell’s lack of distinction between groups.

Simon unpacks Mary Baker Eddy’s theological construct of the feminine divine and shows how Eddy mobilizes her conception of a benevolent maternal deity to challenge the gender ideology and conventions of her day. She finds in Eddy’s Genesis interpretation her ultimate goal: her feminized divine is an enabling belief that undoes Adam’s dream—the history of error, an assumed material selfhood.

Choi’s and Huff’s chapters explore how two 19th-century Christian women, Lucy Rider Meyer and Mary Baker Eddy respectively, interpreted Pauline and deuteron-Pauline texts to validate women’s empowerment in the Church. Hogan then details striking similarities between Meyer’s and Eddy’s approaches to these texts, and that of many recent feminist and womanist scholars.

Having grown up as a practicing Christian Scientist, Hagerty left the organized religion when she discovered she was more comfortable with medical help. But her experience raised unnerving questions about God, reality, and what she really believed. She concludes that Christian Scientists are more deliberate about pursuing the spiritual law. Its practice places a person in the path of spiritual power.

​​Scientology was often confused with Christian Science in public thought, especially around the first decade of the current century. Although that confusion has dissipated to a degree, comparisons between the two often crop up in scholarly work. This book, an academic compilation of chapters about Scientology written by scholars of New Religious Movements, includes a few of those comparisons.

Weddle compares Jonathan Edwards’s, Ralph Waldo Emerson’s, and Mary Baker Eddy’s views on how each understood the connection of divinity with the human and natural world. In response to Emerson, Eddy asks from her Christian Science perspective: How could divine spirit bring forth from itself a world entirely opposite to itself? Either God is material or the world is spiritual.

Johnson’s book expounds on the ‘science of prayer’—based on her own journey of discovery and framed by her Christian Science faith. Each of the seven chapters explores one of Mary Baker Eddy’s seven synonymous terms for God. Each synonym represents a scientific law effectively defeating any challenge that confronts the reader and bringing healing.

In her review, Bednarowski describes Gottschalk’s study as “a provocative blend of intellectual history, theological analysis, cultural interpretation, and religious conviction” (213). He focuses on the latter, controversial years, in which Mary Baker Eddy was compelled to articulate more definitively for herself and her students the distinctive way that Christian Science should combat various forms of materialism: medical, philosophical, and ecclesiastical. 

Albanese’s study of the meaning and role of metaphysics in American religious development includes magical practices (which she equates to healing), Spiritualism, occultism, theosophy, and extra- and post-Christian concerns such as Christian Science. She distances such metaphysics from Gnosticism and from Ahlstrom’s rubric of harmonialism. But significantly, it has played a key role in the culture of the modern state.

Hall examines why Mary Baker Eddy was, and continues to be, underrated and misrepresented. She also provides an accessible introduction to Eddy’s life, and a look at her theology through a feminist lens. Hall cites Eddy’s practical emphasis on healing, the lack of gender hierarchy in her church, her seven non-gender-specific synonyms for God, and God as Mother. 

Albanese identifies three major forms of religion in America: evangelical, liturgical, and metaphysical, claiming that the key to understanding religion in America is the influence of the metaphysical on the others.She locates Christian Science in a continuum of 19th-century metaphysical expressions from Andrew Jackson Davis and Spiritualism to Phineas P. Quimby and then influencing directly and indirectly a wide range of New Thought offshoots.

Peel, a highly respected scholar and Christian Scientist, represents Christian Science in this dictionary of pastoral care and counseling. Explaining its healing ministry, he addresses the unique theology, metaphysics, and practice of Christian Science. Peel also authored the next dictionary entry on “Christian Science Practitioner,”—practitioner qualifications, status within the church, and role with patients.

The book establishes an important framework for understanding the content selected for the faith groups within the New Religious Movements (NRM) study. The primary documents representing Christian Science include writings from Mary Baker Eddy and some testimonials. The description of Christian Science covers its metaphysical origins; its theological foundation; its practice of healing; and comparisons with mainstream Christian doctrine.

Based on a hypothesis from neuroscience—that the human brain is wired for spirituality—Simmons posits a universal process of spiritual transformation in three stages and claims that Mary Baker Eddy has experienced the third: experiencing mystical unity with God. But she retreated at times to a paradoxical duality when forming her theology and church organization.

deChant argues that Christian Science should be included in a survey of the world’s religions because of its significant contributions to both American religious life and the world’s religions.He attributes the turmoil to Eddy’s direct and emphatic challenge to the status quo of American culture, calling into question the authority of two of America’s most venerable institutions —religion and medicine.

Michell examines the influences, and theological connections and differences, between the teachings of Mary Baker Eddy, Emma Curtis Hopkins, the 19th-century Woman’s movement, and the New Thought and New Age movements. Hopkins, unlike Eddy, would see Truth in all religions, not limited to Christianity, and focused more on a prosperity gospel.

Simmons explores the reasons for the parting of ways between Mary Baker Eddy and one of her followers, Emma Curtis Hopkins. He speculates that the Hopkins-Eddy relationship embodied the second and third stages in the process of spiritual transformation where Hopkins moved through Christian Science and “graduated” to a higher spiritual level.

Nineteenth-century technological advances, credited to a superior Protestant-Enlightenment heritage, empowered women (physically the weaker sex) to rule by intellectual and religious power, even as they held on to the carefully crafted ideology of female spiritual exceptualism which gave them a kind of knowing beyond the knowledge of the material world.

Barrett’s approach to his survey of 21st-century “sects, cults, and alternative religions” is to present ideas according to predominant views of believers. Thus, Barrett presents material from the perspective of adherents of Christian Science, even though he cites the views of its critics as well. Acknowledging the Christian Science self-understanding as Christian, he also notes some major differences with mainstream Christianity.

Within the context of the interaction of cultural, intellectual, and religious influences, Prentiss positions Christian Science as a response to orthodox theologies, the lingering effects of the Civil War, horrific medical practices, and the suffrage movement. Christian Science theology appeared to subscribe to Platonic dualism, but its view of matter as a product of a false consciousness distinguishes it from dualism.

​​Braude looks at how the flourishing of Spiritualism in the mid-19th century intersected with the inception of the women’s rights movement in the same period. She documents that the most serious challenge to Spiritualism and mediumship came from the new religious movement Christian Science. However, although Mary Baker Eddy rejected Spiritualism outright, Braude finds many sympathetic Spiritualists in Eddy’s initial audience.

Michell examines in detail the remarkable similarities where the unorthodox theologies of Julian of Norwich (14th century) and Eddy (19th century) converge. Both women struggled with serious illness and near-death experiences which became the basis for profound revelation and healing.  Eddy understood God as mother, and Julian’s vision of Jesus as mother reflected on the kindness and gentleness of God.

​​Dunlap’s dissertation is a rhetorical analysis focused on Mary Baker Eddy’s 19th-century life and writings. She examines Eddy’s opponents’ reactions to her intrusion into 19th-century science, theology, and medicine. She also explores the resonance between Eddy’s language about spiritual reality and the metaphysical language of contemporary quantum physics—what brings the seen and the unseen into relation with each other.

Wood highlights the role of Horton Foote’s faith tradition in his professional work as a highly acclaimed playwright who won a Pulitzer Prize (The Young Man from Atlanta) and Academy Awards for screenwriter (To Kill a Mockingbird and Tender Mercies). Wood explains both the theology and practice of Christian Science (especially that of Foote’s loving and nurturing mother) that show through in his writing.

Bednarowski explores themes of healing in the theological work of women since Mary Baker Eddy, whose quest for healing served as an entry into the construction of an entire religious worldview. Following Eddy’s accident from a fall, a moment of insight into the nature of reality sparked the emergence of her textbook, theology, healing method, and church.

Taves’s work is a study of religious experience with a focus on the difference between the indwelling Spirit of God and a lively imagination. Although Mary Baker Eddy was a patient and student of Phineas Quimby’s, Taves identifies the crucial distinction between them through Eddy’s differentiation of spirit from matter. Quimby valued both states simultaneously whereas Eddy held them in complete opposition.

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. 

Five years before the opening of the Mary Baker Eddy Library, Conkin noted that current literature on Christian Science was sharply divided in content and tone. His chapter attempted to bridge the gap. But the Christian Science Church presented more problems for historians of Christianity in America than any other denomination because its beliefs were elusive and its records were secret.

Braswell’s primary interest in his overview of Christian Science lies in the relationship between Christian Science and traditional Christianity. Braswell quotes extensively from the primary sources of Eddy’s own writings, highlighting those passages that answer questions from the viewpoint of Christian orthodoxy. The implication of his critique is based on his view that Christian Science is declining because of its deviation from orthodoxy.

Wills examines a range of past leaders—each paired with an “antitype” or “one who exemplified the same characteristics by contrast.” Wills sees Mary Baker Eddy’s story as mirroring 19th-century America—turning from the past’s “punitive Calvinism” to opportunism, “healthy-mindedness” and spirituality “untainted by the materialism of the times.” Wills also examines Eddy’s tutorship under Phineas P. Quimby (her antitype).

Christian Science is one of the established cults (“popular label given alternative religions”) selected for Melton’s 1992 study. He addresses both the controversial subjects and the false stereotypes associated with them. Christian Science is selected because of its substantial size, the presence of continuing controversy, and the fact that evangelical Christian counter-cult ministries oppose it for deviating from orthodox Christianity.

Becker compares the striking similarities as well as the differences between the unorthodox history, writings, theology, and codified methods of healing of the founders of two religious movements: Miki Nakayama of Japan’s Tenrikyo, and Mary Baker Eddy of America’s Christian Science.

Tucker’s chapter on Christian Science is written in the context of a Protestant orthodox apologetic. Her resources include almost equal voices from Christian Science spokespersons and detractors, although her selection of topics is based on issues that matter most to her orthodox Christian perspective.

Representing the Christian Science tradition, Peel participates in the series “Health/Medicine and the Faith Traditions.” He acquaints his readers with Mary Baker Eddy and her theology because the healing practices of Christian Science are incomprehensible without this understanding. He also answers questions regarding the struggle between Christian Science and orthodox medicine, such as the role of practitioners and nurses.

Bednarowski compares Christian Science and Scientology, two religions often confused. Both Christian Science and Scientology radically seek an understanding of God and reality which the physical world obscures. Mary Baker Eddy’s Christian Science emerged from Christ-centered revelation and a deep study of the healing message of the Bible. L. Ron Hubbard’s Scientology and terminology is more psychological, taking the form of self-help.

Gottschalk objects to religious historians designating Christian Science as harmonialism. He argues that the emphasis on the Bible and Christ in Mary Baker Eddy’s writings precludes the focus on ‘using’ methods for the primary purpose of comfort, health and wealth, control and power, that are exercised in the service of gaining and keeping harmony in one’s own life.

In Gottschalk’s interpretation of Mary Baker Eddy’s work, he claims that the question of evil can only be answered at the existential level of the demonstration of the sovereignty of God. He challenges both classical theodicy and process theology and argues that the status of evil as unchallengeable fact must again be brought into question.  

Gottschalk notes that newer scholarship (of the 1980s) had begun to reassess Mary Baker Eddy’s work and character. For example, even though Eddy never abandoned her ingrained belief in God’s sovereignty or the equally strong conviction of God’s goodness, she was to advance in Christian Science a radical interpretation of the gospel through a new concept of God’s relation to humanity.

Contextualizing his own comments within the historic period in which he wrote (mid-1980s), Gottschalk argued that the public perception of Christian Science was based on misleading views from both medical and fundamentalist literature. Serious theological exchanges with mainstream Christians had declined precipitously by that time, resulting in an oversimplification and incorrect categorization (idealism, ‘harmonialism,’ and ‘gnosticism’) of Christian Science theology.

Albanese argues that the 19th-century American interests in both physic and metaphysic showed striking points of connection and overlap.  American metaphysical religion paradoxically also expressed forms of the theology of nature. But Mary Baker Eddy, a former Quimby patient and student, achieved the greatest clarity regarding matter and mind, given the inconsistencies of the theology-of-nature heritage.

Throughout Christian history those movements deemed heretical often included participation by women—including the much-criticized Christian Science founder, Eddy. Trevett wonders why Eddy, with all her germane experiences and theology, went mostly unnoticed by many feminist thinkers. She concludes Eddy’s nontraditional and non-creedal interpretation of scripture, contrary to most mainstream orthodox feminist scholars who critiqued patriarchal attitudes, contributed to the difficulties.

Lindley finds Mary Baker Eddy’s ideas of feminism ambiguous, whether seen within the context of 19th-century American views of womanhood or compared to contemporary feminist theology. For example, regarding gender equality, Eddy elevated the interpretation of women in the Bible and embraced the radical demand for equality of men and women. But she did not identify with the women’s movement.

Johnsen claims that it was not mind cure, or Phineas P. Quimby (evaluated in detail) that influenced Mary Baker Eddy; rather it was the profoundly shifting Puritan tradition which infused the 19th-century “New England mind” and was the religious milieu out of which Christian Science emerged. Johnsen demonstrates how Eddy, with her Congregational background in tow, “carried forward certain essential dimensions of [Jonathan] Edwardsian thought and piety.”

This Roman Catholic perspective on Christian Science respects its longevity and the simple quiet dignity of its churches, publications, and members. Although Mary Baker Eddy’s non-standard definitions of church, Jesus, and the Christ differ from orthodoxy, these Catholic authors consider Eddy’s views on celibacy and marriage favorably, and claims of healing as not fanatical, escapism, or insanity.

Looking at Protestant denominations originating in 19th-/early 20th-century America, Hill examines how each works to bring about a restitution of the original ‘paradigmatic’ Jesus movement which is held to have exclusive authority. Hill cites different types of restitutionalism: institutional, ‘born again,’ Holy Spirit possession, and restoration of the eternal principles practiced by Jesus (Christian Science being an example).

Nearly fifty years ago, Stokes, the spokesperson for The First Church of Christ, Scientist, answered questions about Christian Science that are still heard today. Contemporary Christian Scientists would recognize a shift in language and social engagement since the 1970s, such as “What is your attitude toward Black people, women, vaccination?” But the basic theological underpinning of the Church’s self-understanding remains valid.

In this short chapter, Wardwell, a professor of sociology, reviewed the theology, practice, and structure of Christian Science relying on secondary sources and a review of numerous testimonies from the Christian Science publications. He includes observations on the nature of healing, middle class values, the focus on individual practice (vs. communal problems), and church services. 

Gottschalk was a Christian Scientist whose 1973 book was a more frank presentation than previous accounts of Mary Baker Eddy’s life by an insider. For instance, although he claims that Christian Science is the only true Christian religion, he criticizes Christian Scientists for certain attitudes and behaviors that reveal a shallow understanding of Eddy and the rigor of Christian Science practice.

Chapel details how Mary Baker Eddy successfully employed ‘argumentative synthesis’–the ability to “unite ideas which appear to be in opposition into a coherent whole.” Reflecting a larger debate in the late 19th-century, Eddy reconciled opposing views such as: science and Christianity, the masculine and feminine, and the Calvinist view of sinning humanity–Eddy’s mortal man–and the more liberal view of humanity as essentially good.

Although Ahlstrom’s widely accepted categorization of ‘harmonial religion’ has been critiqued and somewhat abandoned in more recent scholarship, his 1972 analysis of American religious history made a significant impact on religious scholarship. Ahlstrom identifies Christian Science as the most clearly defined and best organized of five harmonial religions.

Moore had been a registered Christian Science healing practitioner for many years, but she strove to place herself on a ‘bridge’—or a kind of peaceful integration with matter and mind, a position inconsistent with Mary Baker Eddy’s teachings. Her personal wrestling culminates in this book, which resulted in her excommunication from The Mother Church and her local branch church.

The “Ecumenical Papers” pamphlet, published in 1969, was prepared for special occasions with representatives of several Protestant churches, including the Christian Science Church. Examples of topics included: ‘The Church’s Redemptive Mission,’ The Resurrection of Jesus,’ ‘Who is God?’ and ‘Sin and Grace.” Theological topics had shifted since Eddy’s day, but basic theological concepts were still valuable for discussion.

Cunningham depicted the complaints written and preached by clergy openly opposed to Mary Baker Eddy. Their offense was based on the juxtaposition of waning interest in old orthodoxies with the growth of Christian Science. Four main criticisms include 1) Eddy’s dubious relation to historic Christianity; 2) her teaching on evil; 3) her scheme of getting money; and 4) her hygienic risks.

Judah’s 1967 monograph on the metaphysical movements of 20th-century America remains a valuable resource for a comparison between movements and a documentation of their impact on organized Protestant Christianity.  Regarding Christian Science, Judah claims most of its basic biblical doctrinal points are similar to the beliefs of historic Protestantism, but their full explanations place them outside traditional Christian theology.

Barth is the only towering theologian who has engaged with Mary Baker Eddy’s theology, but his critique on Christian Science lacks depth. His sole reference to Christian Science is in a long footnote on his theological treatment of sickness. He claims Eddy did not understand Jesus’s death on the cross, whereas she emphasizes the efficacy and sacrifice of his actual crucifixion.

​​Despite the fact that in 1945 Doorly was forced to leave the Christian Science church organization—because his interpretation of the teachings of Christian Science differed from that of the authorities of the church at that time—he continued to teach and practice Christian Science based on his understanding of Mary Baker Eddy’s identification of seven synonymous terms for God.

After leaving the Christian Science Church in the late 1940s, Goldsmith continued his flourishing healing and teaching practice. The Early Years is a compilation of weekly ‘Letters’ to his patients worldwide while still active as a healing practitioner in the Church. The book covers such topics as: God, Reality, Nature of Error, The Law, Prayer, Spiritual Healing, Business, Malpractice, Faith, etc.

Crabtree’s critique on Christian Science reflects both the historical setting and the theological reception of Christian Science. He wrote, in 1932, “Of all modern cults, Christian Science is far and away the most spectacular, the most fashionable, and, numerically, probably the most successful.” But his criticisms include unsound logic and metaphysics, individualistic attitudes, isolating facts from common life, and insufficient explanations.

This little-known history of the growth and reception of Christian Science in a pivotal year, 1885, is told through a fictional literary framework. The value of this account is that most history recorded of that period is derived from Mary Baker Eddy or her closest supporters, but this is a rare account of public perceptions of controversies and efforts to find the truth.

This article (1918) by Karl Holl (not a Christian Scientist) was a response to a critical review of Holl’s theological defense of Christian Science in a court case. Holl’s defense was neither apologetic nor polemic, but challenged scholars who did not follow the logic and religious teachings of Christian Science sufficiently–who found it easier to scoff than to analyze.

Lea, not a Christian Scientist but a “Free Churchman,” mounts his 1915 defense of Christian Science by answering various questions raised by its clerical and medical critics who have been “blinded by professional and religious prejudices.” He builds his case through observing his “Personal Experiences of Christian Science Healing Work” (chapter XII) and including an appendix (F) of healing testimonies.

This flagship for Christian Science by Mary Baker Eddy is used as the denominational textbook and was intended by its author to “bear consolation to the sorrowing and healing to the sick” (xii). The book’s theological premise—that Christ Jesus taught and demonstrated the spiritual facts of being—precedes the metaphysical interpretation of scripture that grounds its healing system.

This extremely important report covers the court trial, the ‘Next Friends’ suit against Mary Baker Eddy, which was dismissed. It includes records of pre-trial publicity, court proceedings, and press interviews, and is an important study for the American history of religion, the struggle between religion and science, medical and psychiatric history, legal precedence, and the powerful, long-lasting impact of yellow journalism. 

The contemporary importance of this brief article written in 1889 by Hannah Larminie lies in its theological explanations of Christian Science. It provides some answers to the oft-repeated question about what the correct understanding of Christian Science doctrine is vis-a-vis the mainstream adoption of the Apostles’ Creed. A brief theological interpretation follows each line of the Creed.