Resources Discussing Branch Churches

This article investigates the relationship between religious architecture and real estate development in the United States. Using Christian Science churches from the 1920s and the 2020s as case studies, it argues that when churches engage in real estate development, they often use an aesthetic and business strategy termed “material disestablishment” to downplay their religious qualities and engage more effectively with potential business partners and tenants.

The practice of Communion in The Mother Church would come to differ from that in the Christian Science branch churches. Due to the excessive popularity of Communion services in The Mother Church, in 1908 Mary Baker Eddy ceased the practice out of concern that it was becoming too social an event. However, Communion services continued in the branch churches.

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.

Hussey examines how Christian Science guided and sustained Nancy Astor as the first woman to sit in the British House of Commons in 1919. Her political career of 26 years focused on temperance and support of women and children. Astor found healing by reading Mary Baker Eddy’s textbook, and with her husband, founded Ninth Church of Christ, Scientist, London.

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.

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.

The Oconto, Wisconsin Christian Science Church was built in 1886, the first Christian Science church in the world. Lewis, a media representative for Christian Science, commemorates its continuing services over the past 130 years, as well as its place in the National Register of Historic Places. She documents the church’s beginnings and gives a brief biography of Mary Baker Eddy.

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. 

Examining 32 branch church membership records, plus 800 testimonies of healing, between 1890-1910, Swensen provides a demographic history of the occupations, classes, and motivations of Christian Scientists across the country. Compared to the 1910 census, Swensen found five times more professionals in the branches and almost four times the managers/proprietors, but only one fifth the number of unskilled workers and farmers.

This is a survey of notable Christian Science church architectural styles in America and Europe, and the architects who designed them. Although most of the churches built between 1897 and 1925 emulated a classical style, conveying a rational spirituality, other churches broke from this mold to reflect the more democratic and local traditions of the individual congregations.

Bibliographer Swensen provides a social profile of the membership, internal operations and founding leadership (Augusta Stetson and Laura Lathrop) of the two largest Christian Science churches in the eastern U.S.—First and Second Church, New York City. Accessing the church records and the extensive correspondence between Mary Baker Eddy and New York church members, Swensen sees his study as a window into the rocket-rise of this vibrant new movement as a whole.

Swensen, Rolf. “‘You are Brave but You are a Woman in the Eyes of Men’: Augusta E. Stetson’s Rise and Fall in the Church of Christ, Scientist.” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion  24, no. 1 (2008): 75–89. Augusta Stetson was the controversial founder and leader of the largest Christian Science church in the world—completed in 1903, a magnificent 1.2-million-dollar sanctuary located in New York City. She was one of many women at the turn.

Hutchinson, a Christian Scientist, assembles the history of Christian Science in Australia, marking the 100th year since its arrival around 1891. Hutchinson’s extensive research is taken from Church archives, newspapers, information from The Christian Science Journal, the Library of Australia, State Library of Victoria, the internet, and questionnaires sent to the churches.

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.

Sweet’s firsthand account of the lives and work of Bruce and his son John Klingbeil describes their organization, Spindrift, and their deep involvement with Christian Science. Spindrift’s scientific experiments with prayer for plants, attempted to prove that prayer works, but their struggles with public rejection and excommunication from the Church until their double suicide in 1993 plagued them until the end.

Rolf Swensen, a social sciences bibliographer, describes the troubled early stages of the Christian Science movement in Portland under the leadership of two influential women, Blanche Hogue and Amorette Aldrich, and the churches they established. The source of contention appears to have been due to Hogue’s affiliation with and support from Augusta Stetson, a prominent Christian Science practitioner and teacher in New York City.

From his study of six Christian Science West Coast churches between 1880-1915, Swensen, a social sciences bibliographer, provides a detailed social profile of particular Christian Scientist leaders, the churches they established, and why they flourished after 1900. The Pacific Coast, with its influx of those seeking a better climate, along with its religious diversity, was fertile ground for Christian Science

Ivey’s chapter on Christian Science architecture is positioned within the context of the book’s overall goal to explore “the interplay of religion, commercial culture, and urbanization in North American cities since the 1880s.” Ivey focuses on spiritual principles expressed in the Christian Science movement’s architectural expression.

Ivey outlines the rising popularity of the classical style for the rapidly growing Christian Science church in the late 19th-century Midwest by highlighting Solon Spencer Beman, a well-known Chicago architect. Beman advocated classical architecture because it “put an authoritative public face” on the new movement and also linked spiritual ideals to the built environment.

The monumental bank-style church buildings associated with Christian Science are the subject of Ivey’s architectural study. Ivey notes a self-conscious attitude about this church building movement seeking to be perceived as prominent, legitimate and profitable to the worshiper. His treatment of Eddy and Christian Science teachings is balanced, but he questions whether the church buildings appropriately represented Eddy’s church and teachings.

Ivey documents the growing secularization and diminishing Protestant authority and influence of late 19th-century cities. In the midst of this cultural and architectural transition, the new, rapidly growing Christian Science denomination was establishing itself in Chicago and integrating its “theological sensibilities” and metaphysical theology into the “rational” authority reflected in the city’s more secular Greek classical architecture of government buildings.

This book collects the writings and addresses of de Lange, a Christian Science practitioner and teacher active in the movement from 1911 to 1955 when he was removed from office. The collection is mainly inspirational, but also includes his “State of the Christian Science Movement” where he excoriates the Christian Science Board of Directors as too powerful, hierarchical and interfering in local branch church self-government.

Williams presents a history of the evolution of the Christian Science hymnal from its 1892 first edition through to its 1932 sixth edition which contained 143 new hymns. He highlights key contributors to each edition and examines the changes made in tune and lyrics, often to bring them in conformity with Christian Science concepts.

This is a 1977 talk focused on Nazi reactions to Christian Science influence in Germany. Even though many Christian Scientists originally swarmed to join the Nazi Party, changing Nazi rules put the faith in jeopardy. By 1936 and through 1941, the church’s activities and periodicals were banned and church members were prohibited from joining the Nazi Party.