Resources Discussing Charles Darwin

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.

This article includes an examination of feminism and the quest for gender equality in 19th century America, particularly in rejection of interpretations of the second biblical creation story that justified male dominance and female subservience. One sub-section devoted to Mary Baker Eddy describes her unique interpretation of the spirituality of divine creation, which undergirds Christian Science and the church she founded.

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.

​​Eight decades after Eddy’s passing, Nenneman addresses the question of the relevance of Christian Science in modern times. He acknowledges that for many mainline Protestant churches the language of religion has changed, and that Christian issues have also shifted from pressing doctrinal concerns toward social justice and personal moral issues. He concludes with the continued need for supporting Christian healing.

Gottschalk identifies Christian Science as “a religious movement emphasizing Christian healing as proof of the supremacy of spiritual over physical power.” He documents Christian Science emerging during a period of social and religious crisis, exemplified by the struggle over science (Darwinism) and faith (biblical critical scholarship). Although abandoning her Calvinist upbringing, Eddy clung to a strongly theistic, biblical solution to ‘the problem of being.’

McDonald notes that most feminist and psychological explanations attribute the success of Christian Science not to its theological worth, but for its personal utility. These explanations ironically resemble the traditional reductionism assigned to public women by 19th-century men—ironic because a decade of feminist scholarship on Eddy has helped to reinforce patriarchy. McDonald examines these social, intellectual, and religious stereotypes.

Gottschalk was a Christian Scientist whose 1973 book was a more frank presentation than previous accounts of Mary Baker Eddy’s life by an insider. For instance, although he claims that Christian Science is the only true Christian religion, he criticizes Christian Scientists for certain attitudes and behaviors that reveal a shallow understanding of Eddy and the rigor of Christian Science practice.