Resources Discussing Emma Curtis Hopkins

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.

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.

Scalise explores the widespread public debate surrounding metaphysical healing in the late nineteenth-century, especially through the study of rhetorical theories and practices of Mary Baker Eddy and Emma Curtis Hopkins. They were both part of the conciliatory project of liberal Christianity during the period, challenging the assumption that the rhetorical practices exhibited in the liberal and Christian traditions are inherently contradictory.

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 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.

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.

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.

Simmons explores the reasons for the parting of ways between Mary Baker Eddy and one of her followers, Emma Curtis Hopkins. He speculates that the Hopkins-Eddy relationship embodied the second and third stages in the process of spiritual transformation where Hopkins moved through Christian Science and “graduated” to a higher spiritual level.

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.

Seeing no social change favoring women’s rights, suffragist Elizabeth Cady Stanton switched her energies to addressing the underlying issue of women’s subordination rooted in the Bible. Like Mary Baker Eddy’s opus, Science and Health, Stanton’s Women’s Bible was intended as a vehicle for emancipation. Kern includes Eddy among the many women bearing (indirect) influence on Stanton’s story.

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.

Melton argues that the history of the Eddy-Quimby debates obscured other important historical facts, besides the truth about both Eddy and Quimby.  From Melton’s closer look at this case, he concludes that Evans could not be the founder of New Thought, and that Mary Baker Eddy—not Quimby—must be the true founder of Christian Science.

Melton’s uncovering of a largely forgotten history of the relationship between Mary Baker Eddy and Emma Curtis Hopkins provides historians of religion an insightful comparison between two successful women of the 19th century. Although the article’s focus is on Hopkins, her relationship with Eddy illustrates both similarities and dissimilarities in the women and their churches.

Christian Science and New Thought both conveyed a “metaphysical perfectionism” in sync with late 19th-century American can-do spirit and the golden glow of California culture with its promises of prosperity. Key women in Christian Science left the movement to become teachers and prime movers of New Thought in California. Other reasons for the decline in both movements today are discussed. 

Because Emma Curtis Hopkins identified herself as an independent Christian Scientist, her successful establishment of her own religious following provides a valuable comparison with Eddy’s Christian Science.  Although Hopkins’s theological teaching was quite similar to Mary Baker Eddy’s, Hopkins emphasized some aspects of it—such as her larger implications of God’s identity as Mother—while still operating within ecclesiastical Christianity.

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.