Keyword Search Results

This research on Native American affiliation with Christian Science highlights Tsianina Blackstone, a Native American singer, who later became a Christian Science practitioner for four decades. It also includes links to the church periodicals where one can find Native American healing testimonies, how Native Americans were blessed by Christian Science literature, and Christian Science evangelizing work on reservations.

After the healing of her son through reading Science and Health, Marietta Thomas Webb became a devoted student of Christian Science and eventually, one of the first Black Journal-listed Christian Science practitioners. This article shares her journey of finding Christian Science, and the racial discriminiation she faced as a Black Christian Science practitioner.

Prominent business woman of franchised beauty shops, Martha Matilda Harper, publicly accredited Christian Science with healing her and sustaining her through decades in business. Harper set up a system of training for the many women of modest means who became operators of the 500 franchises, which by the 1930s were spread throughout the United States, Canada and Europe.

The Mary Baker Eddy Library discovered letters to Eddy from student Lucinda Reeves detailing accounts of the healing of Black Americans. Reeves first healed a Black American family and later two other patients. These accounts of healing are significant because they show that Black Americans had encounters with Christian Science earlier than previously thought.

After joining the Christian Science church in 1912 and becoming a Journal-listed healing practitioner in 1930, Lulu M. Knight became the first Black American to receive the degree of C.S.B which allowed her to teach her own annual class on Christian Science. Knight was a celebrated Christian Scientist who contributed greatly to Christian Science healing in Chicago.

Issaoui questions the limits of the legal accommodations that allow Christian Science practitioners and/or parents to rely on spiritual means in treating Christian Scientists. By examining specific cases, she concludes the key issue is finding a balance between the religious right to practice Christian Science healing and the State’s responsibility to prevent child endangerment.

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 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. 

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.

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.

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.

Four women— Emma and Abigail Dyer (daughter of Emma) Thompson, Janette Weller, and Annie M. Knott—were selected as representative of the pioneering work of early Christian Scientists due not to their gender, but to the available historical evidence, the range of their contributions to the history of Christian Science, and the relative familiarity of that person among today’s Christian Scientists.

This biography highlights Mary Baker Eddy as a Christian healer and offers the first comprehensive record of her own healing works. It demonstrates how essential her own practice of Christian healing was to her. Part 1 covers Eddy’s life story with examples of her healing works and editorial comments. Part 2 includes additional healing accounts quoted directly from original sources.

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.

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.

Sweet’s firsthand account of the lives and work of Bruce and his son John Klingbeil describes their organization, Spindrift, and their deep involvement with Christian Science. Spindrift’s scientific experiments with prayer for plants, attempted to prove that prayer works, but their struggles with public rejection and excommunication from the Church until their double suicide in 1993 plagued them until the end.

The focus of Klassen’s study is the healing practice of mainstream Christians in the US and Canada during the early 20th century. She argues that it was unabashedly medicalized and modern and was supported by the therapeutic role of written texts. Christian Science enters the discussion as a perceived opponent with its innovative reading of biblical texts.

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 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.

This historically valuable documentary recounts the story of the earliest growth of Christian Science in the Midwestern US of the 1880s. The story includes many significant healings that turned patients into students of Christian Science. Despite severe persecution and ridicule, they also healed others. These pioneers represented all walks of life—farmers, businessmen, housewives, clerks, simple and sophisticated.

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

Schoepflin’s book contains a detailed analysis of the late 19th-century legislative and legal confrontations between Christian Scientists and the medical community, demonstrating the shifting relationship between medical practitioners, Christian Science practitioners, and the public. From medical licensing, the meaning of medical practice, and the rights of Americans to therapeutic choice, the public debate turned to matters of contagious disease, public safety and children’s rights.

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.

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.

Roe recounts the history of Christian Science coming to Australia from 1890 to Mary Baker Eddy’s death in 1910, when there were 21 accredited practitioners and at least a thousand members. She notes that the earliest testifiers found healing and revelation through reading the Christian Science literature and Eddy’s textbook, Science and Health, but that later healing came through practitioners.

​​This book teaches mostly by pictures the sociological and historical view of women in the healing ministry. In her coverage of Mary Baker Eddy, Brooke emphasizes Eddy’s theological basis for healing from the teachings and example of Jesus. But she (Brooke) ignores the persecution Eddy suffered from the prejudices against women as both healers and Christian leaders.

This 1996 collection of testimonies of healing produced by the Christian Science Publishing Society is a sequel to the 1966 A Century of Christian Science Healing. The objective was to provide evidence of healing that would confirm the Church’s claim that anyone who believes in and trusts God completely, can rely on God’s law alone for health, happiness—and healing.

Schoepflin’s study addresses the difficult and contentious relationship between the evolution of medical practice and the healing practices in Christian Science. His analysis is based on the thoughts and work of actual Christian Science practitioners and the experiences of their patients during a period (1890s–1920s) when the movement struggled against the efforts of organized American medicine to curtail its activities.

Fox studies the process of becoming a Christian Science practitioner and establishing healer validation within the church community. She includes sections explaining Christian Science theology and healing metaphysics, and the relationship between practitioner and patient, from her perspective as a social anthropologist. Her 1995 conclusions suffer from inaccessibility of archival material prior to the opening of the Mary Baker Eddy Library.

This collection of brief articles about 14 people who served the Cause of Christian Science during Mary Baker Eddy’s last decades first appeared in a series from The Christian Science Journal between 1987 and 1991. More than imparting interesting historical information, the articles express these individuals’ vital spirit and conviction that moved them to give their all for a Cause.

Tucker had little access to primary or secondary source material to write her account of Mary Collson’s love-hate relationship with Christian Science. But her story reveals some of the complexities of a well-educated and energetic woman seeking to help the world, but who ultimately felt too confined by the domineering and cold-hearted attitudes she encountered in the Christian Science Church.

Gottschalk’s overview of Christian Science sees it as not philosophically derived but based on the works and salvation of Jesus, a new interpretation of the gospel, and the “operation of divine power comprehended as spiritual law.” Gottschalk compares Christian Science and traditional Christian views, as well as distinguishes it from idealism, pantheism, mind cure, and New Thought.

Albertine surveys the media and publicity around the controversial 1898 death of Harold Frederic, London Chief of the New York Times. He then analyzes Robert Barr’s 1901 novel The Victors with its characters depicting a melodramatic and sarcastic version of the Frederic incident. Albertine finds a subtext: the fear of Christian Science “as a new kind of [financial, healing and social] power in the hands of women.” 

Simultaneous with the interest in spiritual healing among mainstream and fundamentalist Christian denominations in the 1970s and 1980s was the concern about the legal basis for such healing practices. Johnsen addresses these concerns by providing a contextual background of the evolution of the ministry of healing in the Christian Science Church from its founding up to the writer’s day.

Welz, Carl J. The Caring Church: Call for a Humane Christianity. Santa Rosa, CA: Meadow Brook Company, 1985. Welz, a former Christian Science teacher and editor of Church periodicals, asks why his Church has not experienced much progress or many healings in the past fifty years. He finds the answer in his own journey from an intellectual abstract approach to Mary Baker Eddy’s writings to a realigned focus on the humanity and good deeds found.

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. 

The Christian Science Church documents “the tide of spiritual healing” over 100 years after the discovery of Christian Science (1866-1966). The healings range from those closer to common experience to those considered miraculous. Other healings are sorted topically–such as Healing and Salvation, Healing in the Churches, Healing of the Nations, Practical Aspects, Christianity and Science, etc. There is a sequel: Healing Spiritually: Renewing your life through the power of God’s law (1996).

Clara Clemens, daughter of Mark Twain, records the help she received “both physically and metaphysically” in her experience of Christian Science. The book details her life journey with numerous quotes from the Bible and Science and Health, and how she applied Christian Science to her challenges.

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.

Despite Mary Baker Eddy’s prohibition against the use of formulas for Christian Science treatment, Kramer establishes a five-step pattern of treatment based on Eddy’s Scientific Statement of Being. He claims that healers needed these fixed rules at that time (1948) because the presentation of Christian Science and its exact science must improve with the advancing age.

Seal’s first-hand account of her missionary work in Germany (1931 to 1940) begins with her introduction to Christian Science. With no funding, knowledge of German, or prior contacts, but only the certainty that God had sent her, she went to Dresden. Though at times persecuted, people found her through the publicity of her healing works and by word of mouth.

The significance of Simonsen’s 1928 publication today is its historical and theological contribution. His personal account provides an insight to the reception of the new American movement.  After ineffective medical help with his rapidly deteriorating health, he tried Christian Science and was healed after one visit with a Christian Science practitioner. He tackles deep personal and theological questions.

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 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 book is Walter’s autobiographical account of the first five years after his dramatic healing through Christian Science treatment and his subsequent successful healing practice based on his reading of Mary Baker Eddy’s Science and Health. Walter left the church soon afterward due to his conviction that this healing method should be treated more like a Science than a religious practice.