Annotations Related to Bylaws

The Mary Baker Eddy Library examines Eddy’s correspondence and documents related to the 1881 chartering, development and fruition of the Massachusetts Metaphysical College. The College, an institution meant to teach Eddy’s metaphysical healing method, accepted both sexes regardless of age or gender. Eddy intended her students to practice what they learned back in their own communities.

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.

Swensen documents how, in the fifteen years after the passing of Mary Baker Eddy (1910-1925), the Christian Science Board of Directors consolidated and centralized their authority both at Church headquarters and over local branch churches. Mirroring a corporate business model, church organization, administration, and standardization were merged with obedience and loyalty. 

…and its ineradicable link to her personality” (123), a concept that presaged her later appointing Science and Health (along with the Bible) as Pastor of the Christian Science Church. Responses…

Swensen examines the initial flock and organization of the Church Mary Baker Eddy founded and then disbanded ten years later. The early 1880s brought new members and stability, spurring Eddy to organize. But this embattled precursor of today’s Mother Church would be irredeemably challenged by a volatile membership, unreliable preaching by invited clergy, and confusion over competing metaphysical groups.

The section in this book devoted specifically to Christian Science is relatively brief, but the descriptions of the teachings and church structure accurately portray the issues most commonly affirmed by adherents. Topics of criticism also reflect the most common concerns from religious, medical, and social perspectives.

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. 

This report attempts to explain why Christian Science has failed to grow as its founder predicted. It claims that a faulty Church organization has been improperly governing since the death of Mary Baker Eddy, primarily because of the assumption of complete authority by the self-perpetuating Board of Directors, their interpretation of the Church Manual, and the presumed need for a church organization at all.

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.

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.

Cunningham provides a thorough introduction to the life of Mary Baker Eddy, theological distinctions of Christian Science, the Church founding, evolution of the Church Manual, more recent developments such as recent legal and financial struggles, the opening of the Mary Baker Eddy Library, and whether Eddy and her followers were feminists.

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.

Johnson contextualizes theologians Ruether and Eddy within feminist history showing how each “changed the boundaries of the Church’s theological thinking on the rights of women,” freeing them up to be seen and heard. Johnson finds feminist principles at work in Eddy’s writings on marriage laws, use of language, theology (especially her Father-Mother God), and church structure empowering women in roles as local leaders and healers.

Swanson’s paper applies a social science lens to the social and power structure of the Christian Science Church, seeing the existing organizational structure as not succeeding in 1) generating member trust and solidarity; 2) communicating its beliefs; 3) negotiating power through its rules; and 4) legitimizing a Church belief system so antithetical to the traditional worldview. His conclusions uncover Church weaknesses but miss out on the blessings of membership.

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.

Simmons’s chapter on Christian Science in the context of America’s 20th-century religious culture begins with an acknowledgment of Mary Baker Eddy’s “insight into a primary religious impulse of her time”–a time of social upheaval and challenge to the biblically oriented self-understanding of America’s destiny.

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.

Cunningham’s specialty lies with 19th-century American religious history focusing on women, institutions, money and power—perfect preparation for her PhD dissertation research on the fraught relationship of two charismatic women who rose from poverty to power and wealth: Augusta Stetson, a founding member and leader of the first Christian Science church in New York City, and Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of the Christian Science movement.

Gartrell-Mills summarizes her 1991 D.Phil thesis in this article focusing on the historical role of Christian Science in Britain. Although into the early 1990s Christian Science retained “an unobtrusive, yet persistent presence in many British towns and cities,” she found that the organization was “a present day example of a movement largely ossified through the provisions and statutes laid down before 1910 by Mary Baker Eddy.”

Mary Baker Eddy would transform her prophetic charisma into a set of bylaws (Manual of The Mother Church) which was meant to ensure institutional perpetuity, and act as a legal covenant for its members. Simmons highlights one British Church member, Annie Bill, who saw her own role as restoring charismatic leadership to the movement and creating an independent ‘Parent Church.’

Mary Baker Eddy’s textbook and church founding are understood by her followers as a recovery of the original Christian events. Christian Science was the rebirth of moribund Christianity, a decisive return to the original authority. Weddle interprets the tribulations of the Christian Science church founding, codified in the Church Manual, as a recapitulation of early Christianity’s struggles with dissent and authority.

Wright speaks against the Christian Science Board of Directors who tried to preserve the copyright control of Science and Health after the copyright expiration. By failing to terminate the five-member Christian Science Board of Directors (as she interprets the estoppel clauses from the Church Manual), the Board has stifled the freedom of Christian Scientists to be instructed by Science.

In the book’s part one, Brown argues that after Eddy’s death, the “Boston hierarchy [failed] to comply with the Church Manual’s divinely inspired estoppel clauses.” Part two  is a response to the “need to evaluate … the position of Mary Baker Eddy and her great lifework in both Biblical prophecy and world history.” This part also includes histories of the “emerging remnants” excommunicated from the Church.

Smith and Wilson, the authors of the ‘Paul Revere’ publications, circulated their materials in the second quarter of the 20th century. Contrary to harsh opposition from those not of the faith who sought to destroy the Church, Paul Revere’s strong critique sought to save the Church from its own undoing. Smith and Wilson were dropped from Church membership in 1950.

Volume three of Peel’s trilogy covers the final chapters of Mary Baker Eddy’s life—1892-1910—a time when Eddy struggles to balance her movement’s need for organization and preservation with its life-giving inspiration and revelation. As productive as these final decades were, Eddy’s life would continue to be plagued by personal attacks and legal suits that ultimately collapsed.