This article investigates the relationship between religious architecture and real estate development in the United States. Using Christian Science churches from the 1920s and the 2020s as case studies, it argues that when churches engage in real estate development, they often use an aesthetic and business strategy termed “material disestablishment” to downplay their religious qualities and engage more effectively with potential business partners and tenants.
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“Skyscraper Churches and Material Disestablishment at the Fifth Churches of Christ Scientist” (2023)
“A Remarkable Story of Persistence” (2021)
This article features the records and testimony of Christian Scientists held in the Japanese Stanley Internment Camp of captured Hong Kong civilians during World War II. It covers their primary concern of getting enough food, and their resourcefulness in holding their own services in spite of the lack of access to hymnals and current issues of the Christian Science Quarterly.
View Annotation“Architecture of the Church of the Christian Science [sic]” (2015)
This article stems from Lessiter’s talk “Architecture and Design of Six, Purpose-Built, Early, Christian Science Churches in London.” Lessiter asks what images were being presented to the public and what these images say about the people worshipping inside. She examines the churches’ churchly character as well as practical aspects such as the foyer, acoustics, foundation stones, Bible quotes on walls, and the lack of depictions of Eddy’s life.
View Annotation“American Christian Science Architecture and its Influence” (2011)
This is a survey of notable Christian Science church architectural styles in America and Europe, and the architects who designed them. Although most of the churches built between 1897 and 1925 emulated a classical style, conveying a rational spirituality, other churches broke from this mold to reflect the more democratic and local traditions of the individual congregations.
View Annotation“Houses of Healing: Sacred Space, Spiritual Practice, and the Transformation of Female Suffering in the Faith Cure Movement, 1870–90.” (2006)
Curtis examines the ‘divine healing’ or ‘faith cure’ movement of the late 19th century which offered a liberalized theology that fundamentally uncoupled the long-standing and deeply gendered link between bodily suffering and spiritual holiness. Faith homes provided worship services, spiritual practices and alternative biblical models that facilitated healing. Examples were water-cure sanitoriums and Christian Science dispensaries, (later converted to Reading Rooms).
View Annotation“Material Expression and Maternalism in Mary Baker Eddy’s Boston Churches: How Architecture and Gender Compromised Mind” (2005)
Kilde, specializing on the intersection of religion and architecture, describes the original 1895 Christian Science Mother Church edifice, built under Mary Baker Eddy’s close supervision, as very feminine with its stained-glass windows depicting many female biblical figures. Kilde contrasts this with the masculine cavernous Renaissance-style classicism of the Mother Church Extension built in 1906 with its ambience of public majesty.
View AnnotationViolet Hay (2005)
Hodgson highlights Hay’s significant contributions to the Christian Science movement during the early 20th century, recognizing their basis on the spiritual animus that motivated her. An authorized practitioner and teacher, Hay founded churches in London and Cape Town (S.A.) and was a poet and musician. Long-time Christian Scientists know her best as the author of many of their most beloved hymns.
View AnnotationA Most Agreeable Man: Lyman Foster Brackett: Performer, Composer and Hymnal Editor for The Church of Christ, Scientist (2003)
Hodgson’s half-biography, half-musical documentation of the life and work of Lyman Brackett highlights his important role in the development of hymnody for the Christian Science Church. Brackett ultimately became the overall designer, music editor, and original composer of 99 hymns in the first Christian Science hymnal.
View Annotation“Christian Science Architecture in the American City: The Triumph of the Classical Style” (2002)
Ivey’s chapter on Christian Science architecture is positioned within the context of the book’s overall goal to explore “the interplay of religion, commercial culture, and urbanization in North American cities since the 1880s.” Ivey focuses on spiritual principles expressed in the Christian Science movement’s architectural expression.
View AnnotationPrayers in Stone: Christian Science Architecture in the United States, 1894–1930 (1999)
The monumental bank-style church buildings associated with Christian Science are the subject of Ivey’s architectural study. Ivey notes a self-conscious attitude about this church building movement seeking to be perceived as prominent, legitimate and profitable to the worshiper. His treatment of Eddy and Christian Science teachings is balanced, but he questions whether the church buildings appropriately represented Eddy’s church and teachings.
View Annotation“Mind, Medicine, and the Christian Science Controversy in Canada, 1888–1910” (1998)
Jasen claims that when Christian Science was introduced in Canada, it provoked controversy of wide significance on subjects like the mind/body connection, faith and healing, and the hegemony of the medical profession. Because it effected marvelous cures, it couldn’t be dismissed. But it challenged the authority of physicians and clerics, making them consider issues that seldom intruded upon their separate spheres.
View Annotation“Christian Science (Church of Christ, Scientist)” in How to Be a Perfect Stranger (1996)
…humanity in the image of God and that sin, disease, and death do not originate in God. The Church pastor is the Bible and Mary Baker Eddy’s textbook, Science and…
View Annotation“Building a New Religion” (1994)
Ivey documents the growing secularization and diminishing Protestant authority and influence of late 19th-century cities. In the midst of this cultural and architectural transition, the new, rapidly growing Christian Science denomination was establishing itself in Chicago and integrating its “theological sensibilities” and metaphysical theology into the “rational” authority reflected in the city’s more secular Greek classical architecture of government buildings.
View Annotation“Religious Healing in 19th century ‘New Religions’: The Cases of Tenrikyo and Christian Science” (1990)
Becker compares the striking similarities as well as the differences between the unorthodox history, writings, theology, and codified methods of healing of the founders of two religious movements: Miki Nakayama of Japan’s Tenrikyo, and Mary Baker Eddy of America’s Christian Science.
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.
View AnnotationBuilding of The Mother Church, The First Church of Christ, Scientist (1980)
Armstrong combines two stories, the building of the Original Mother Church (1894), and the much larger Extension of The Mother Church adjacent to the original (1906). Also included are numerous photos and color plates of the windows in the Original and a brief update on the addition of the portico, administration building, and large reflecting pool constructed in 1975.
View Annotation“What is a Christian Scientist?” in Religions in America (1975)
Nearly fifty years ago, Stokes, the spokesperson for The First Church of Christ, Scientist, answered questions about Christian Science that are still heard today. Contemporary Christian Scientists would recognize a shift in language and social engagement since the 1970s, such as “What is your attitude toward Black people, women, vaccination?” But the basic theological underpinning of the Church’s self-understanding remains valid.
View AnnotationChristian Science Church Edifices (1946)
This self-published book by an AIA architect includes 67 Christian Science branch churches in the United States and Canada, and the Chapel at Principia College (a college for Christian Scientists). Alphabetical indexes include the church locations, 11 architectural styles and 44 architects (including 16 churches by the author).
View AnnotationHistorical Sketches: From the Life of Mary Baker Eddy and the History of Christian Science (1932)
Smith, a prominent Christian Scientist who held many senior positions in the church, brought together this collection of articles originally published in The Christian Science Journal as a series titled “Historical and Biographical Papers.” The articles are divided into three parts: biography, organization and history; including Mary Baker Eddy’s childhood and beginnings of her career as author, healer, teacher, and organizer.
View Annotation“Mary Baker Eddy” in My Life and Memories (1925)
Clarke shares his experience as a journalist for the New York Herald sent in 1901 to interview Mary Baker Eddy on a wide range of subjects: authority of leadership, necessity of bylaws, church format, the nature of Christ and the soul, state laws governing contagious diseases, vaccinations, and the embrace of the sciences that “seek the finer essences” versus the “false science–healing by drugs.”
View AnnotationScience and Health with Key to the Scriptures (1910)
This flagship for Christian Science by Mary Baker Eddy is used as the denominational textbook and was intended by its author to “bear consolation to the sorrowing and healing to the sick” (xii). The book’s theological premise—that Christ Jesus taught and demonstrated the spiritual facts of being—precedes the metaphysical interpretation of scripture that grounds its healing system.
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