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.
View AnnotationAnnotations Related to Mind Cure
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A Story Untold: A History of the Quimby-Eddy Debate (2020)
McNeil’s extensive research of all the original papers of Phineas P. Quimby in conjunction with the vast holdings of The Mary Baker Eddy Library has brought resolution to the complex questions about the alleged influence mental healer Quimby had on Eddy’s later founding of Christian Science. McNeil also covers other important 19th-century figures as well as other relevant subjects, such as Mark Twain and Christian Science and early animal magnetism in 1830s and 1840s America.
View Annotation“Western Esoteric Family IV: Christian Science-Metaphysical” in Melton’s Encyclopedia of American Religions, Canada (2017)
The metaphysical nature of the religious belief and practice of Christian Science triggered theological, ecclesial, legal, medical, scientific, and moral controversies. Mary Baker Eddy also dealt with stress and trauma throughout her life. The metaphysical aspect of Christian Science does not detract from its practicality in human experience, as the metaphysically induced healing is evidence of the full salvation to come.
View Annotation“Western Esoteric Family IV: Christian Science-Metaphysical” in Melton’s Encyclopedia of American Religions (2017)
The focus of this article is an explanation of Christian Science within the religious context of its American origin and development. Melton claims that Mesmerism, Spiritualism, Swedenborgianism, and Transcendentalism prepared the way for two important religious movements of the 19th- century: Christian Science and New Thought. The author also gives relative importance to the role of independent Christian Scientists.
View Annotation“I Want to Believe: A Short Psychobiography of Mary Baker Eddy” (2016)
Dean, a graduate student in American Religious History, examines the life of Mary Baker Eddy through a psychological lens—”her desires, her fears, the way in which she came to this [Christian Science] doctrine, and her state of mind throughout her life” (61). His aim is to humanize Eddy beyond the stereotypical views of her as either saint or fraud.
View Annotation“Think Positive” (2014)
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.
View Annotation“Metaphysical Healing and Health in the United States” (2014)
Hendrickson discusses the American history of metaphysical healing practices from Native Americans to the present and identifies characteristics of diverse types of healing. Mary Baker Eddy and Christian Science are discussed within the context of Quimbyism and New Thought, with the distinction made between the Christian basis of Eddy and the more materialistic, secular basis of the latter.
View Annotation“Writing Revelation: Mary Baker Eddy and Her Early Editions of Science and Health, 1875-1891” (2013)
…her textbook as co-pastor in 1894. Finally, she profiles those who studied Eddy’s textbook and practiced “the principle or science behind the healing in the Christian Scriptures” (14). Access…
View Annotation“Harmonialism and Metaphysical Religion” in Volume 2 of Encyclopedia of Religion in America (2010)
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.
View AnnotationThe Cure Within: A History of Mind-Body Medicine (2008)
Harrington seeks non-medical causes for illness and cures. Beginning in antiquity, she concludes her research with modern scientific research in brain science. Harrison positions Christian Science in the context of the American ‘mind-cure’ movement of the 19th and 20th centuries with two competing groups: scientists and doctors, and those who blur the powers of God and the human mind.
View Annotation“Introduction: Awash in a Sea of Metaphysics” (2007)
Albanese’s study of the meaning and role of metaphysics in American religious development includes magical practices (which she equates to healing), Spiritualism, occultism, theosophy, and extra- and post-Christian concerns such as Christian Science. She distances such metaphysics from Gnosticism and from Ahlstrom’s rubric of harmonialism. But significantly, it has played a key role in the culture of the modern state.
View AnnotationFaith in the Great Physician: Suffering and Divine Healing in American Culture, 1860–1900 (2007)
The Divine Healing Movement of the late 19th century attempted to reform evangelicalism by including healing. Curtis makes relevant comparisons with Christian Science, one of its better-known contemporaries, to highlight the rich history of Divine Healing. Their healing examples are quite similar. The relationship between faith healing evangelicals and Christian Science worsened, though, as they both matured and gained more followers.
View AnnotationRolling Away the Stone: Mary Baker Eddy’s Challenge to Materialism (2006)
Gottschalk, an intellectual historian, left his post at the Christian Science Committee on Publication in 1990, uncomfortable with the leadership of the Church. Still considered a leading Christian Science scholar despite his criticism, he conducted extensive archival research for this book. Gottshcalk focuses on the last two decades of Eddy’s life and her effort to protect and perpetuate her religious teaching.
View AnnotationBorn Again Bodies: Flesh and Spirit in American Christianity (2004)
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.
View AnnotationFaith Cure: Divine Healing in the Holiness and Pentecostal Movements (2003)
Hardesty’s book is about the Holiness and Pentecostal movements, but because of the similarities between these movements and Christian Science, she identifies a few significant points of comparison. Although both “saw themselves as based in the Bible, following the practice of Jesus, and accomplishing the miraculous” (4), they vehemently opposed each other and sought to distinguish themselves from each other.
View Annotation“New Thinking, New Thought, New Age: The Theology and Influence of Emma Curtis Hopkins (1849-1925)” (2002)
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.
View Annotation“The Eddy-Hopkins Paradigm: A ‘Metaphysical Look’ at Their Historic Relationship” (2002)
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.
View AnnotationEmma Curtis Hopkins: Forgotten Founder of New Thought (2002)
This well-researched biography of Emma Curtis Hopkins, little-known founder of the 19th-century New Thought movement, includes Hopkins’s early-stage affiliation with Mary Baker Eddy—her tutelage by Eddy and editorship of The Christian Science Journal for 13 months before being suddenly discharged. Harley draws on a range of scholarship to contextualize the complexity of this knotty developmental stage of Christian Science.
View Annotation“Sickness, Death, and Illusion in Christian Science” (2001)
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.
View AnnotationEach Mind a Kingdom: American Women, Sexual Purity, and the New Thought Movement, 1875–1920 (1999)
Both Mary Baker Eddy’s Christian Science movement and the New Thought Movement flourished in the late 19th-and early 20th-centuries. They agreed that one’s mental fears foster illness and distress. Yet unlike the New Thought Movement—believing in the human mind’s ability to control the world—Eddy thought a reliance on the mortal mind’s power distracted from one’s reliance on God.
View AnnotationFits, Trances, and Visions: Experiencing Religion and Explaining Experience from Wesley to James (1999)
Taves’s work is a study of religious experience with a focus on the difference between the indwelling Spirit of God and a lively imagination. Although Mary Baker Eddy was a patient and student of Phineas Quimby’s, Taves identifies the crucial distinction between them through Eddy’s differentiation of spirit from matter. Quimby valued both states simultaneously whereas Eddy held them in complete opposition.
View Annotation“The Christian Science Tradition” (1998)
…the Bible, to the status of Pastor, codification of policy in the Church Manual, and establishment of the Christian Science Publishing Society. “…Eddy best displayed her genius through a subtle…
View Annotation“Mary Baker Eddy (1821-1910)” in Makers of Christian Theology in America (1997)
This book’s study on the history of Christian theology in America includes Mary Baker Eddy’s contributions. Eddy’s theological treatise, Science and Health, distanced itself from literal interpretations of the Bible, interpreting central Christian elements in terms of mental experience. Porterfield finds Eddy’s theology coherent and more fairly understood as a remarkably creative if unschooled form of American Protestant thought.
View Annotation“Christian Science and New Thought in California: Seeking Health, Happiness and Prosperity in Paradise” (1993)
Christian Science and New Thought both conveyed a “metaphysical perfectionism” in sync with late 19th-century American can-do spirit and the golden glow of California culture with its promises of prosperity. Key women in Christian Science left the movement to become teachers and prime movers of New Thought in California. Other reasons for the decline in both movements today are discussed.
View Annotation“Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures: ‘…to gyve science & helthe to his puple…’,” (1988)
The editor, Ernest Frerichs, brings together scholars writing about all things biblical in America. In the last chapter, Peel documents the key role of the Bible in Mary Baker Eddy’s life story and the Christian Science tradition, evident especially in Eddy’s textbook Science and Health. Peel documents Eddy’s 35 years of multiple revisions, resulting from Eddy’s own maturing experience.
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