Annotations Related to Harmonialism

Siewers, of the Russian Orthodox faith and briefly, a National Correspondent for The Christian Science Monitor, observes there are no longer any prominent, mostly Republican, Christian Scientists in the U.S. Congress or White House, or visible in the arts and entertainment industry. He argues that the disappearance and decline of Christian Science is a precautionary tale for more traditional Christian communities.

Janik traces the historical path of mesmerism from Franz Mesmer’s late 18th-century theories on animal magnetism, leading to de Puysegur’s discovery of hypnosis, to Charles Poyan’s 1830 lecture tour introducing mesmerism and hypnotism to New England, to Phineas Quimby’s mind cure practice, to Mary Baker Eddy’s Christian Science movement, to New Thought and eventually today’s clinical psychology.

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.

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.

Albanese identifies three major forms of religion in America: evangelical, liturgical, and metaphysical, claiming that the key to understanding religion in America is the influence of the metaphysical on the others.She locates Christian Science in a continuum of 19th-century metaphysical expressions from Andrew Jackson Davis and Spiritualism to Phineas P. Quimby and then influencing directly and indirectly a wide range of New Thought offshoots.

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.

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.

This graduate level textbook on America’s religions intertwines a wide multitude of religious belief systems with the multi-faceted movements of American thought. Williams explains Christian Science in the context of 19th- and 20th-century American culture, which includes harmonialism, individualism, female empowerment, and cult–a term evangelists equate with theological deviancy but is otherwise characterized by charismatic leadership and isolation from the rest of the world.

This sourcebook was compiled by the Christian Science Publishing Society as a response to many unanswered questions in public thought regarding Christian Science beliefs and practices in the late 1980s. It includes primary and secondary sources, as well as scholarly analytical work and personal statements of faith.

Gottschalk objects to religious historians designating Christian Science as harmonialism. He argues that the emphasis on the Bible and Christ in Mary Baker Eddy’s writings precludes the focus on ‘using’ methods for the primary purpose of comfort, health and wealth, control and power, that are exercised in the service of gaining and keeping harmony in one’s own life.

Contextualizing his own comments within the historic period in which he wrote (mid-1980s), Gottschalk argued that the public perception of Christian Science was based on misleading views from both medical and fundamentalist literature. Serious theological exchanges with mainstream Christians had declined precipitously by that time, resulting in an oversimplification and incorrect categorization (idealism, ‘harmonialism,’ and ‘gnosticism’) of Christian Science theology.

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.