Resources Discussing the Massachusetts Metaphysical College

The Mary Baker Eddy Library examines Eddy’s correspondence and documents related to the 1881 chartering, development and fruition of the Massachusetts Metaphysical College. The College, an institution meant to teach Eddy’s metaphysical healing method, accepted both sexes regardless of age or gender. Eddy intended her students to practice what they learned back in their own communities.

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.

The objective of Armer’s study of Mary Baker Eddy’s establishment of her Massachusetts Metaphysical College is to highlight the achievements of women pioneers in higher education and entrepreneurial successes. Characteristics of Eddy’s business success included taking risk, managerial skills, knowledge of the product and the market, financial resources to produce capital, and enough success to produce profits.

…and its ineradicable link to her personality” (123), a concept that presaged her later appointing Science and Health (along with the Bible) as Pastor of the Christian Science Church. Responses…

Swensen examines the initial flock and organization of the Church Mary Baker Eddy founded and then disbanded ten years later. The early 1880s brought new members and stability, spurring Eddy to organize. But this embattled precursor of today’s Mother Church would be irredeemably challenged by a volatile membership, unreliable preaching by invited clergy, and confusion over competing metaphysical groups.

This essay on Christian Science is one of many descriptive introductions of various religions and their relation to evangelical Christianity. Simmons notes that the ‘Christian’ element in Christian Science involves a radical reinterpretation of Jesus and his role in the New Testament. Mary Baker Eddy stressed the practical nature of her ‘science’ in human challenges, thus highlighting the focus on healing. 

Four women— Emma and Abigail Dyer (daughter of Emma) Thompson, Janette Weller, and Annie M. Knott—were selected as representative of the pioneering work of early Christian Scientists due not to their gender, but to the available historical evidence, the range of their contributions to the history of Christian Science, and the relative familiarity of that person among today’s Christian Scientists.

Armer demonstrates how Mary Baker Eddy’s contribution to the field of Adult Education merits a title, the Mother of Adult Education. Eddy’s contributions were made to a field not even distinguishable at her death. Her educational legacy consists of her mandate of total disregard of sex distinctions in students and teachers, lifelong learning, vocational application, service learning, and independent self-directed study.

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.

Primarily useful for high school researchers, this brief chapter on Mary Baker Eddy summarizes her life and teaching. It fits the context of the book which is a celebration of the accomplishments of famous people during their senior years. Despite the intense criticisms against Eddy, her church grew and prospered. She was honored posthumously in 1995 and in 1998.

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.

This book is Mary Baker Eddy’s response to the vicious accusations by Frederick Peabody, a lawyer who represented a client in litigation against Eddy. Eddy’s advisors recommended she not publish her book because of the possibility of further public agitation. But it was published by the Christian Science Publishing Society for the first time in 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.

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.

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.

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. 

Houpt’s book contains valuable primary sources for the history of Christian Science in the decades before and after Mary Baker Eddy’s death in 1910. It covers the life and career of Bliss Knapp, who devoted his life to serving Eddy and her cause. He is best known as the leading proponent of Eddy’s prophetic role as the woman in the Apocalypse.

Volume two of Peel’s trilogy covers Mary Baker Eddy’s expanding years of 1877 to 1891, her crucial period of trial and error as she fights for the survival of her nascent movement. She organizes her church, clarifies her revolutionary interpretation of the Bible, and teaches pupils who will carry the message of Christian Science beyond New England to a wider world.

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.

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. 

Johnson’s eye-witness account explains Mary Baker Eddy’s decisions during the period in which she established her church. Succeeding generations have wondered why Eddy created a church with a self-perpetuating Board of Directors and how some of her followers, such as Nixon, Woodbury, and Foster-Eddy posed such threats to the church. He discusses Eddy’s responses to internal power struggles within the movement.

This little-known history of the growth and reception of Christian Science in a pivotal year, 1885, is told through a fictional literary framework. The value of this account is that most history recorded of that period is derived from Mary Baker Eddy or her closest supporters, but this is a rare account of public perceptions of controversies and efforts to find the truth.

This extremely important report covers the court trial, the ‘Next Friends’ suit against Mary Baker Eddy, which was dismissed. It includes records of pre-trial publicity, court proceedings, and press interviews, and is an important study for the American history of religion, the struggle between religion and science, medical and psychiatric history, legal precedence, and the powerful, long-lasting impact of yellow journalism.