Resources Published between 2011 and 2020

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. 

After the healing of her son through reading Science and Health, Marietta Thomas Webb became a devoted student of Christian Science and eventually, one of the first Black Journal-listed Christian Science practitioners. This article shares her journey of finding Christian Science, and the racial discriminiation she faced as a Black Christian Science practitioner.

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.

Peidle finds common ground between Christian Science and Vedanta (represented by Swami Vivekananda), by examining a speech written by Mary Baker Eddy for the 1893 Parliament of World Religions, as well as her other writings, and Vivekananda’s correspondence. Vivekananda first learned about Christian Science at the Parliament. His later ill health prompted an interest in the nature of healing and reality.

Eddy’s first published reference to the subject of vaccination was in an 1880 sermon. In 1900, Eddy was consulted by some Christian Science parents, including her son, who wanted to keep their children from school due to their opposition to vaccination laws. But Eddy recommended compliance with the law and affirmed that one could also submit to the providence of God. 

Eder finds in Mary Baker Eddy’s writings about masculinity that Christian Science could not be practiced only as an ethereal form of religion (caricatured as a woman) but reflect “a discernible and repeated thrust to extend the reach of Christian Science thought and practice beyond the sheltered sphere of nineteenth-century feminine religiosity into the proving grounds of the public realm.”

Prominent business woman of franchised beauty shops, Martha Matilda Harper, publicly accredited Christian Science with healing her and sustaining her through decades in business. Harper set up a system of training for the many women of modest means who became operators of the 500 franchises, which by the 1930s were spread throughout the United States, Canada and Europe.

Within the context of how new Christian denominations relate healing systems with the Bible, Paulson cites different traditions that lie on the spectrum between continuationists who believe healing is still possible, such as the Christian Scientists, and the cessationists who see healing as ended with the apostles, and work with medicine for a cure. Christian Science spiritual healing mirrors Christ’s authority.

This report examines the history of Black Americans’ interactions with the Chrisian Science church beginning with the 1919 formation of the Committee on General Welfare, and then focusing on the racial unrest of the 1960s. This coverage included the demands made by Black community activists during the church’s 1969 Annual Meeting and the Board of Directors’ written response.

McNeil’s extensive research of all the original papers of Phineas P. Quimby in conjunction with the vast holdings of The Mary Baker Eddy Library has brought resolution to the complex questions about the alleged influence mental healer Quimby had on Eddy’s later founding of Christian Science. McNeil also covers other important 19th-century figures as well as other relevant subjects, such as Mark Twain and Christian Science and early animal magnetism in 1830s and 1840s America.

When Third Church of Christ, Scientist, Seattle received a congratulatory letter from the Washington Secretary of State for its centennial in 2016, Safronoff began searching old church records and found a thought process along with the recorded unfolding of events. Members wanted their history to show the development of the church and its relationship to the world.

When Furbush attended Principia College in 2014, the admissions application still read: “I will refrain from … homosexual activity…” But on November 18, 2014, Principia changed its century-long discrimination policy against queer people. From 2016-2018, Furbush returned to openly teach (science) at Principia School as the Christian Science institution’s first out faculty member. He says it was an overwhelmingly positive experience.    

Mary Baker Eddy was among the first religious figures to research intellectual property–her activism resulted in the passage of the Copyright Act of 1909. She saw copyright “as a legal bulwark maintaining both the internal coherence of her work and its ineradicable link to her personality,” presaging her later appointing Science and Health (along with the Bible) as Pastor of the Christian Science Church. 

O’Brien’s interfaith reflections illustrate how sympathy can help bring heaven to earth—as evidenced in four women: Mary Baker Eddy, Emily Dickinson, Sarada Devi (wife and mission partner to Ramakrishna) and Simone Weil. O’Brien finds a basis for this sympathy in the common conviction found in many religions of “the experience of oneness between the supreme Spirit and everyday empirical reality.”

Matsukata’s article, “History of the Church Universal as Unfolded in Tokyo, Japan” is the 20th-century history of Christian Science in Japan, which began with visits by Christian Science lecturers sent from Boston. Traditions were challenging and hostile to the growth of Western and Christian sects at the time. Translations of articles were deemed ineffective because Japanese culture was so alien.

The Mary Baker Eddy Library discovered letters to Eddy from student Lucinda Reeves detailing accounts of the healing of Black Americans. Reeves first healed a Black American family and later two other patients. These accounts of healing are significant because they show that Black Americans had encounters with Christian Science earlier than previously thought.

This chapter, written by the Church, provides information that will help health care providers understand the spiritual needs of Christian Scientists in a practical, clinical setting. Besides a background history of Mary Baker Eddy, the formation of the Church, and its foundational teachings, the chapter explains reliance on prayer for healing as an individual choice, and the adherence to law when it comes to infectious diseases.

Reesman details many parallels between Mark Twain’s troubled later life and his one-dimensional literary portrayals of both Joan of Arc and Mary Baker Eddy. Both were visionaries. Joan’s voice in her trial record is consistent, but Eddy was delusional. Eddy uses her mentor, Quimby’s, words for her own profit. Both of Twain’s literary portrayals put his own personality on full display.

Siewers, of the Russian Orthodox faith and briefly, a National Correspondent for The Christian Science Monitor, observes there are no longer any prominent, mostly Republican, Christian Scientists in the U.S. Congress or White House, or visible in the arts and entertainment industry. He argues that the disappearance and decline of Christian Science is a precautionary tale for more traditional Christian communities.

This comprehensive 80-page chronology begins with the birth of Mary Baker Eddy in 1821 and ends with her funeral in 1910. In between, it includes the individuals, events, and publications connected to the multifaceted life of Eddy. The scholar can also tap into the Chronology’s extensive footnoting for source material.

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.

Zamparutti claims that Mary Baker Eddy employs Plato’s dialectical method (defining terms by reference to their opposite) to transform the Platonic idea of ‘substance’ into a spiritual principle, God. From Platonist assumptions, Eddy re-conceives substance as the one immaterial Spirit. Burke, as an agnostic, developed his philosophy of language by converting some of Eddy’s ideas learned in childhood, to secular usage.

Eddy spent her last three years living in a grand residence outside of Boston. This well-referenced book details her life and the lives of her loyal household— a family of workers who came to support Eddy and the Cause of Christian Science. Frederick references staff diaries and written reminiscences to highlight qualities brought to their tasks, blessings received, and lessons learned.

Paulson’s essay is one of 22 in this ecumenical collection. She draws on the beatitudes of Matthew 5 to illustrate biblical guidance to loving others (even our enemies) and dismantling both victimhood thinking and criminal behavior that contribute to mass incarceration. Paulson’s analysis of each beatitude is based on the teachings of Christian Science and uses quotes from Mary Baker Eddy. 

After joining the Christian Science church in 1912 and becoming a Journal-listed healing practitioner in 1930, Lulu M. Knight became the first Black American to receive the degree of C.S.B which allowed her to teach her own annual class on Christian Science. Knight was a celebrated Christian Scientist who contributed greatly to Christian Science healing in Chicago.