Resources Discussing Adam Dickey

Countess Dorothy von Moltke was a devoted Christian Scientist and strong advocate for the German translation of Mary Baker Eddy’s textbook Science and Health. Throughout her life, she worked to make Christian Science more accessible to German-speaking followers by providing English lessons and by serving on the translation committee that ultimately completed the first foreign language translation of Science and Health.

Swensen documents how, in the fifteen years after the passing of Mary Baker Eddy (1910-1925), the Christian Science Board of Directors consolidated and centralized their authority both at Church headquarters and over local branch churches. Mirroring a corporate business model, church organization, administration, and standardization were merged with obedience and loyalty. 

Kramer’s well-researched critique on Christian Science makes her arguments easier to understand than most critics. She grasps the fundamental teachings and history of the religion well, but she left it for doctrinal reasons. Most of Perfect Peril describes her emotional and intellectual struggles with doctrinal issues. Following a crisis of faith, she concluded that Christian Science is a dangerous mind control. 

This second edition of “Mr. Dickey: Secretary” includes the same biographical information on Mary Baker Eddy as the first edition. But the second half of the book replaces Dickey’s ‘Memoirs’ with his ‘Chestnut Hill Album’—Dickey’s journals found after Baxter’s first edition. This collection highlights the agonizing challenges Eddy faced and the way she chose to deal with them.

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.

Mary Baker Eddy wanted Dickey to write her biography, having rejected other biographical attempts as either too shallow or hostile. This book first consists of Baxter’s analysis of Dickey and his role as Eddy’s helper in her last years, and his own leadership role after her death in 1910. The latter half consists of Dickey’s memoirs which Eddy requested.

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.

Pioneers in Christian Science offers researchers of the developing years of early Christian Science a valuable resource. Published in 1972 as an unpaginated loose-leaf binder, it enabled the publisher to provide replacement sheets as needed. Each page includes a portrait and brief biographical sketch of one of the selected 125 early workers associated with Mary Baker Eddy between 1866 and 1910.

Studdert-Kennedy presents the minority (and ultimately losing) view of the legal battle that erupted 10 years after Eddy’s passing known as the ‘Great Litigation’ that nearly brought Eddy’s church and publishing arm to a halt. This three-year trial would determine whether authority rested with the Christian Science Board of Directors who governed the Church or the Trustees of the Publishing Society.

​​This historically important book, available through the Mary Baker Eddy Library, records the court transcripts in their entirety of what later came to be known as the ‘Great Litigation.’ The case was argued between the Trustees of the 1898 Deed of Trust of the Christian Science Publishing Society and the Christian Science Board of Directors.