Annotations Related to New Thought

Stiles examines Christian Science novels written in the early 1900s in light of Mary Baker Eddy’s views on what she calls nauseous fiction. Specifically, Stiles studies Eddy’s correspondence with, and tentative support of, Christian Scientist authors of some of the more wholesome fictions for youth, comparing these with the more secular novelists writing for youth who often mixed Christian Science and New Thought beliefs.

Amy B. Voorhees’s A New Christian Identity offers a concise, culturally informed study of Mary Baker Eddy, Science and Health, and the rise of Christian Science. While noting some minor errors, reviewer Judy Huenneke sees the book as a valuable resource for readers of American religious history and women’s religious leadership, and she praises its sympathetic, well-researched approach, and insightful context.

The derivation of psychotherapy is examined through the contributions of 19th-century American mind-cure movements and personalities such as Swedenborgianism, spiritualism, Phineas Parkhurst Quimby, Warren Felt Evans, New Thought, Christian Science, and the Emmanuel Movement. These movements’ focus on the connection between the healer and sufferer made them precursors of contemporary psychotherapy’s relation-based methods.

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.

Stiles examines late nineteenth-century literary references to the “inner child,” defined as “a person’s original or true self,” in the writings of New Thought authors. She highlights the maternal imagery of Mary Baker Eddy’s church and identifies Frances Hodgson Burnett’s book Little Lord Fauntleroy as a prominent example of literature portraying the child as a model of health and optimism.

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.

Stiles’ review of L. Ashley Squires’ Healing the Nation highlights its contribution to American literary studies by addressing its neglect of Christian Science. Squires provides crucial historical context explaining authors’ varied responses to the faith and offers fresh interpretations of overlooked texts. Blending literary analysis with history, journalism, and biography, the book makes a compelling case for renewed scholarly attention.

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. 

Stiles demonstrates the difficulty of understanding the literary work of Burnett’s early twentieth-century book, The Secret Garden, because the concepts of healing are so different now. Mitchell’s rest cure was popular, but its regimen was demoralizing. Rejecting rest cure, Burnett embraced Christian Science and its offshoot, New Thought, for herself, and her novels highlight educated women eschewing conventional medicine in favor of faith healing movements.

This panel of scholars—J. Gordon Melton, Massimo Introvigne, and Shirley Paulson—explored the contemporary scholarly perspective on Christian Science. Melton pointed out that the maturity of the study of Christian Science should go beyond the issue of classification; Introvigne illustrated how scholarship in art deepens the meaning of religious study; and Paulson focused on the Christian origin of Christian Science.

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.

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.

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.

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.

…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…

Bessette analyzes the historical milieu that resulted in the late Victorian era’s “birth of the therapeutic.” Besides Mary Baker Eddy, Bessette taps into the various social, religious and psychosomatic thinkers of this period along with the New Thought and Emmanuel movements, and how they shaped a more unified “whole man” view of mind and body.

​​Squires takes up the 1915 novel, “The Genius,” by Theodore Dreiser and compares the many semi-autobiographical parallels between the novel’s main character, Eugene, and Dreiser. Dreiser’s personal philandering and materialism are reflected in his portrayal of Eugene. After scandalous affairs with tragic consequences, both grapple with their own crisis of morality by conversing with Mary Baker Eddy’s teachings in Christian Science.

Albanese’s undergraduate textbook explains Christian Science in the context of the evolution of religions and the meaning of religion in America. Christian Science was one of the 19th-century new religions that made considerable demands on its members, as new sects often did.  Albanese’s theological explanations of Christian Science are based on her thorough knowledge of the American metaphysical movement.

The commonly mischaracterized and consequently overlooked relationship between Eddy and her former student, Gestefeld, should be re-examined because of its rich theological and biographical potential. Voorhees’s closer look at their correspondence indicates a mutually respectful relationship before they parted ways on grounds of theological differences—Gestefeld’s theosophical eclecticism versus Eddy’s unorthodox Christian particularism, and not because of Eddy’s authoritarian reasons.

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.

Ivey chronicles the late 19th century expansion of both New Thought and Mary Baker Eddy’s Christian Science church in the Midwest: the graduates of Eddy’s Massachusetts Metaphysical College who established institutes in six Midwest cities, the most important early organizers of Christian Science services, the establishment of The Principia as an independent school, and New Thought’s Emma Curtis Hopkins many organizers.

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.

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.

Based on a hypothesis from neuroscience—that the human brain is wired for spirituality—Simmons posits a universal process of spiritual transformation in three stages and claims that Mary Baker Eddy has experienced the third: experiencing mystical unity with God. But she retreated at times to a paradoxical duality when forming her theology and church organization.