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The derivation of psychotherapy is examined through the contributions of 19th-century American mind-cure movements and personalities such as Swedenborgianism, spiritualism, Phineas Parkhurst Quimby, Warren Felt Evans, New Thought, Christian Science, and the Emmanuel Movement. These movements’ focus on the connection between the healer and sufferer made them precursors of contemporary psychotherapy’s relation-based methods.

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.”

The focus of this article is an explanation of Christian Science within the religious context of its American origin and development. Melton claims that Mesmerism, Spiritualism, Swedenborgianism, and Transcendentalism prepared the way for two important religious movements of the 19th- century: Christian Science and New Thought. The author also gives relative importance to the role of independent Christian Scientists.

Squires sees the opening of the Mary Baker Eddy Library as an opportunity for literary scholars to give closer attention to the history, doctrines, and distinctions of Christian Science. Only then will there be an honest and accurate account for the literature that seeks to represent or critique them. 

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.

This panel of scholars—J. Gordon Melton, Massimo Introvigne, and Shirley Paulson—explored the contemporary scholarly perspective on Christian Science. Melton pointed out that the maturity of the study of Christian Science should go beyond the issue of classification; Introvigne illustrated how scholarship in art deepens the meaning of religious study; and Paulson focused on the Christian origin of Christian Science.

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.

The Society of Jewish Science was a response to the mass conversion of Jews, particularly women, to Christian Science. Its purpose was to revive a growing secular Judaism with elements Lichtenstein feared had been lost: healing, personal prayer, and belief in the Divine Spirit within. Unlike Christian Science, the Society did not reject medicine or deny the reality of matter.

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.

Horowitz assigns Christian Science a prominent place in the development of American affirmative-thinking (his term) philosophical systems. Although he acknowledges Mary Baker Eddy’s interest in Quimby (a 19th-century mesmerist) and her debt to him during a prolonged time of illness, Horowitz believes that Quimby was not the founder of Christian Science. Instead, Eddy herself created a brigade of spiritual freethinkers.

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.

Rapport argues that both Christian Science and the Unity School of Christianity came into being during an emerging scientific worldview, and implemented their “scientific rationale and language as a strategy to validate themselves in late 19th-century America.” But, whereas Unity used science to complement Protestantism, Eddy employed scientific language to defy mainstream science and religion.

Ivey presents historical context for the 19th-century emergence of metaphysical religions and their evolution into the 20th century. He highlights the inter-relationships between the practice of Phineas Quimby, Mary Baker Eddy’s Christian Science, and the ensuing movements. Ivey differentiates the theology of Christian Science from Quimby and New Thought—with the human mind acting as a conduit between spirit and matter.

​​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.

Within this all too brief chapter on the life of Mary Baker Eddy, Braude contextualizes Eddy among Spirit-moved women who believed that God’s call was more important than social conventions. These women contributed to American religious history as they balanced family, church, and leadership roles. But the complexity of Eddy’s life is better covered in Braude’s other works.

Simmons contextualizes Mary Baker Eddy amidst the late 19th-century era of revolutionary change showing how her forebears (Swedenborgianism, Mesmerism, Transcendentalism and Spiritualism) “prepared the psychic way” by making explicit to “the American spiritual imagination the connection among physical, psychological, and spiritual health” (94). He reviews Eddy’s theology, the influence of Quimby, and the evolution of Christian Science as an institution.

Bringhurst, a Mormon historian, compares views on slavery of leaders of the principal American-born church movements. All held anti-slavery positions but with ambiguities. Mary Baker Eddy’s movement began after emancipation, but before the war, her family had supported those who opposed abolition. Eddy did not care for Uncle Tom’s Cabin, but by the end of the Civil War, she supported Lincoln.

Umansky studies the history of Jewish Science—a movement that arose to counter the estimated tens of thousands of Jews (a majority women) attracted to Christian Science in the late 19th and early 20th century. These Jews had been attracted to Christian Science’s promise of health and healing. Umansky also examines the Christian Science theology that resonated with Jewish beliefs.

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.

Griffith investigates the roots of Christian dieting and fitness and their present-day embodiments. One chapter explores 19th-century mind-cure movements, including Phineas P. Quimby, Christian Science and New Thought, with their connection between mind and matter. She sees in Mary Baker Eddy a contradiction between her radical stance on body as delusion and her rich living circumstances.

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.

Stein defends not only the importance of allowing place for minority religions but also their ultimate value to society as a whole. He views them as contributing substantially to the vitality and creativity of the nation’s religious life. Christian Science is one of the ‘alternative religions’ he studies in the context of religious dissent in America.

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.

This well-researched biography of Emma Curtis Hopkins, little-known founder of the 19th-century New Thought movement, includes Hopkins’s early-stage affiliation with Mary Baker Eddy—her tutelage by Eddy and editorship of The Christian Science Journal for 13 months before being suddenly discharged. Harley draws on a range of scholarship to contextualize the complexity of this knotty developmental stage of Christian Science.

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.

​​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.

Schoepflin includes short sections on the Seventh-day Adventists, Mormons and Christian Scientists, seeing them as movements which used science as a “tool for apologetics.” He shows how Mary Baker Eddy combined the tools of science (reason and empiricism—in the evidence of bodily healing) with “the spiritual and immaterial dimensions of Christianity” (311).

Both Mary Baker Eddy’s Christian Science movement and the New Thought Movement flourished in the late 19th-and early 20th-centuries. They agreed that one’s mental fears foster illness and distress. Yet unlike the New Thought Movement—believing in the human mind’s ability to control the world—Eddy thought a reliance on the mortal mind’s power distracted from one’s reliance on God.

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.

Melton argues that the history of the Eddy-Quimby debates obscured other important historical facts, besides the truth about both Eddy and Quimby.  From Melton’s closer look at this case, he concludes that Evans could not be the founder of New Thought, and that Mary Baker Eddy—not Quimby—must be the true founder of Christian Science.

In her chapter, “Alternative Religions in Nineteenth-Century America,” Lindley shows how this period of fermentation and experimentation fostered new Christian sects which challenged social, economic and religious orthodoxy. Christian Science is one of the four she highlights. Mary Baker Eddy, its founder, was a model of women’s revelatory and authoritative leadership who maintained overall control of her church.

…yet her text was also a product of 45 years of constant revision. Science and Health would gain the official office of Pastor alongside the Bible as primary—the Church’s first…

Melton’s uncovering of a largely forgotten history of the relationship between Mary Baker Eddy and Emma Curtis Hopkins provides historians of religion an insightful comparison between two successful women of the 19th century. Although the article’s focus is on Hopkins, her relationship with Eddy illustrates both similarities and dissimilarities in the women and their churches.

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.

Christian Science and New Thought both conveyed a “metaphysical perfectionism” in sync with late 19th-century American can-do spirit and the golden glow of California culture with its promises of prosperity. Key women in Christian Science left the movement to become teachers and prime movers of New Thought in California. Other reasons for the decline in both movements today are discussed. 

…preempting the authority of clerical office. However, Mary Baker Eddy ordained the Bible and her textbook, Science and Health, as Pastor of her Church, guaranteeing doctrinal consistency. Braude sees Christian…

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.

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.

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.

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.

Bednarowski analyzes the roles of women in 19th-century marginal religious movements (including Christian Science) considering these movements’ perception of the divine, interpretation of the Fall, need for a traditional ordained clergy, and women’s roles other than marriage and motherhood. Regarding Christian Science, Bednarowski notes women were present as writers, preachers, teachers, and healers. They also found independence through opportunities for leadership.

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).

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.

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.

Hoekema’s polemic sources for his study of Christian Science in the context of a cult exclude perspectives from the Christian Science Church. He compares Christian Science theology with his own Calvinist doctrines to prove the anti-Christian character of Christian Science. His claim that Mary Baker Eddy owes her ideas to Quimby is refuted in McNeil’s 2020 “A Story Untold.”

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.