Annotations Related to Excommunication

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. 

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. 

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.

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.

Historian Benowitz’s encyclopedia profile of Augusta Stetson is a chronology of her life from devout Methodist upbringing, to public orator, to Eddy’s request for her to establish Christian Science in New York City, to her increasingly problematic leadership and eventual excommunication from Eddy’s Church.

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.

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.

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 book is a study guide on the author’s understanding of Christian Science, organized by sections based on the synonyms of God identified by Mary Baker Eddy, and her interpretation of the city foursquare in Revelation and illuminated by Eddy. Brooks, compiler of these essays, served as secretary to John W. Doorly after his excommunication from the Church.

Eustace continued writing and teaching after his excommunication from The Mother Church in 1922 following the ‘Great Litigation’–the legal dispute between the Christian Science Publishing Society and Board of Directors. This multi-volume book includes his perspective as a former trustee on the ‘Great Litigation,’ as well as 510 pages of his class teaching and other essays.

​​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.

This book is an interpretation of Mary Baker Eddy’s illustrated poem, Christ and Christmas, a symbolic expression of the evolution of Eddy’s Church, and especially Orgain’s argument against the legal finding of the ‘Great Litigation’ of 1921. Each verse of Christ and Christmas is developed into a full chapter of exegesis on the biblical account of Jacob and his wives.

Orgain is known to have authored this ‘anonymous’ book, a comparison of editions of Mary Baker Eddy’s Science and Health. Orgain’s goal was to show that each step for the Christian Science movement was the fulfillment of Jesus’s prophecy of the church he promised to build. Orgain thought Jesus’s church must necessarily await demonstration in the lives of Christian Scientists.

Prior to the publication of this book, Dittemore served in official capacities of the Christian Science Church. He was voted out of office in 1919, and he describes the motives behind his bitter campaign against the Church based on his (later proved to be false) belief in Mary Baker Eddy’s plagiarism. His accusations originated in an internal Church squabble.

This 1930 biography on Mary Baker Eddy appears in this contemporary bibliography because of its role in Christian Science history. Without access to church archives and drawing on others who discredited her, Dakin’s biography reads like a conspiracy theory against Eddy. An important comparison can be made between Dakin’s and Lyman Powell’s biographies of the same year. 

​​Stetson’s scrap-book type collection is a rich resource for primary documents related to the intense relationship of devotion and ultimate excommunication between Stetson and her teacher, Mary Baker Eddy. The first chapter is a review of Stetson’s ordeal with the Church. Pictures of the two women illustrate the contrast between Stetson’s preference for ‘the crown’ and Eddy’s preference for ‘the cross.’

Stetson’s 405-page book is compiled by the New York City Christian Science Institute, with Stetson as its Principal, and serves as her defense against her excommunication from The Mother Church and her New York Church. The book includes the seven accusations from the Christian Science Board of Directors and the New York Church Committee’s efforts to vindicate Stetson. 

Kratzer’s article, “Dominion Within,” won praise from Mary Baker Eddy, but he was later excommunicated from the Christian Science Church. His articles (both before and after severance from the church) were similar to contemporary blog posts, consisting of his thoughts on the practical application of Christian Science toward the issues of his day.

…for leadership in Eddy’s movement. It includes the program of her ordination and installation as “Pastor of the Church of Christ, Scientist” in New York City and the sermons she…

Peabody, legal counsel for Josephine Woodbury in a 1901 lawsuit against Mary Baker Eddy, lost the case, but continued accusing Eddy of immorality and abuse in this 1910 book. Peabody also supplied testimony against Eddy for McClure’s magazine, which led to another trial, the ‘Next Friends’ suit (that Eddy also won). Eddy had been counseled against publishing her 1901 response.