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A 20th-century pioneer in the fashion industry, Adele Simpson attributed her significant achievements as an artist and a businesswoman to her practice of Christian Science. It benefitted her by 1) bringing the balance to her life that had been lacking and 2) the idea that all her creative work was governed by God, the one creative Mind, not herself.

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.

Henniker-Heaton’s meaningful life and Christian Science healing of ten years of paralysis are accompanied by selections from his poetry and other writings. The book’s purpose is to “present the spiritual ideas of this prolific writer in chronological order, setting them in the context of his life.”

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.

Paulson’s essay is one of 22 in this ecumenical collection. She draws on the beatitudes of Matthew 5 to illustrate biblical guidance to loving others (even our enemies) and dismantling both victimhood thinking and criminal behavior that contribute to mass incarceration. Paulson’s analysis of each beatitude is based on the teachings of Christian Science and uses quotes from Mary Baker Eddy. 

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 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.

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.

Through interviews with twelve Christian Scientists, and accessing the writings of social theorists such as Michel Foucault, Nelson argues that Christian Scientists systematically “reinterpret and rewrite biomedical discourse to reclaim interpretive rights over their bodies and create spiritual connection to other bodies and to God.” She also examines the conflict in identity when a Christian Science adherent chooses biomedical treatment.

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.

​​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.

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.

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. 

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.

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.

This article examines the medical profession’s reaction to complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) especially during the last half of the 20th century. It includes no direct mention of Christian Science, but the subject is relevant to the understanding of Christian Science when it is categorized with other CAM treatments. CAM sometimes includes the religious healing practice of Christian Science.

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.

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.

Ivey’s chapter on Christian Science architecture is positioned within the context of the book’s overall goal to explore “the interplay of religion, commercial culture, and urbanization in North American cities since the 1880s.” Ivey focuses on spiritual principles expressed in the Christian Science movement’s architectural expression.

Feehan argues that Burke, a famed literary theorist and philosopher, developed his philosophy by ‘secularizing’ principles he appropriated from Eddy during his childhood in a Christian Science household. For instance, in developing her system of healing, Eddy made prominent use of the principle of ‘reversal.’ Burke’s methodology of reversal depends on material existence being nothing other than a flawed reversible orientation.

The monumental bank-style church buildings associated with Christian Science are the subject of Ivey’s architectural study. Ivey notes a self-conscious attitude about this church building movement seeking to be perceived as prominent, legitimate and profitable to the worshiper. His treatment of Eddy and Christian Science teachings is balanced, but he questions whether the church buildings appropriately represented Eddy’s church and teachings.

Gill, a feminist historian and biographer, offers a fresh view of Mary Baker Eddy’s achievements in the light of obstacles faced by women in her time. Without access to Church archives Gill relied on Peel’s archival research. Gill’s unique contribution challenges the traditional biographers’ view of Eddy as a hysterical invalid who abandoned her son and stole her ideas.

The Christian Science Church is one of the communities of faith depicted in the 1st edition of this book, which offers visitors a point of entry into unfamiliar faith community settings. Each tradition provides information about its history and beliefs, the basic service, guest behavior, dogma and ideology, and celebrations of life cycle events, such as birth, marriage, and funerals. 

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.

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.

Hiltner, a leading mid-20th century pastoral theologian, analyzed the shifting relationship between religion and science within the realm of health care and healing. Christian Science was the most successful movement with Christian backgrounds making large claims for the place of religion in healing. Hiltner could not conceive the future of religion without contemporary medical cooperation, though, even in Christian Science.

If Bellwald had had access to archival resources on Christian Science, he might have made a more accurate comparison between Christian Science and Roman Catholicism of the early twentieth century. His organizational approach to his study is well conceived, but he combines the resources of blatant polemics, Milmine and Peabody, with his own Catholic perspectives to denounce Christian Science.

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.

In the early 20th century, when the daily press began to assail Christian Science with its campaign of misrepresentation and slander, Flower, not a Christian Scientist, felt it his duty to present some facts on the other side. The two most persistent arguments that he heard and countered were: a) it is contrary to the Bible and b) organic diseases could not be cured by a religious belief.

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. 

Wilbur began writing about Mary Baker Eddy in Human Life Magazine in December 1906, countering articles published about Christian Science and Eddy in the New York World newspaper. In response to Georgine Milmine’s series in McClure’s Magazine a few months later, Wilbur wrote her own series. This work has been criticized for its overly sympathetic tone and recurrent lack of documentation.

Mary Baker Eddy wrote of her first edition of Science and Health (when she was Mary Baker Glover) that it was her most important work and contained the complete statement of Christian Science,—the term she employed to express the divine, or spiritual, Science of Mind-healing. Her final version reflects a shift from a narrative to an explicitly religious discovery.