Resources Discussing Christian Science Education

The Mary Baker Eddy Library examines Eddy’s correspondence and documents related to the 1881 chartering, development and fruition of the Massachusetts Metaphysical College. The College, an institution meant to teach Eddy’s metaphysical healing method, accepted both sexes regardless of age or gender. Eddy intended her students to practice what they learned back in their own communities.

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.

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.

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.

Implementing feminist rhetorical criticism, Tencza examines Mary Baker Eddy’s strategic use of rhetoric to create meaning in her writings, reinforced by the integrity of her character. Tencza sees Eddy working within three frameworks: an ethic of care [mother-like pathos], extreme utilization of ethos [her character integrity], and logos [ability to make meaning]—all of which coalesce into her rhetoric of confidence.

Stob is interested in the rhetoric used by early Christian Science lecturers, who were active during the American Progressive Era, to convince the public that Christian Science was worth investigating. These lectures effectively used novel language that expands the parameters of revelatory discourse. Eddy and her lecturers moved divine revelation from an other-worldly mystery into a framework for individual agency.

Armer demonstrates how Mary Baker Eddy’s contribution to the field of Adult Education merits a title, the Mother of Adult Education. Eddy’s contributions were made to a field not even distinguishable at her death. Her educational legacy consists of her mandate of total disregard of sex distinctions in students and teachers, lifelong learning, vocational application, service learning, and independent self-directed study.

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.

Wilson’s memoirs recount her 1950s childhood with Christian Science and the tragedy of her mother’s illness and death due to cancer. Wilson never expected Christian Science or medicine to solve her mother’s problems, but the deeper philosophical questions generated by her experience with Christian Science stayed with her. Rather than ‘rose-colored’ windows, she admits she is more readily drawn to ‘blue windows.’

This collection of brief articles about 14 people who served the Cause of Christian Science during Mary Baker Eddy’s last decades first appeared in a series from The Christian Science Journal between 1987 and 1991. More than imparting interesting historical information, the articles express these individuals’ vital spirit and conviction that moved them to give their all for a Cause.

Gottschalk’s overview of Christian Science sees it as not philosophically derived but based on the works and salvation of Jesus, a new interpretation of the gospel, and the “operation of divine power comprehended as spiritual law.” Gottschalk compares Christian Science and traditional Christian views, as well as distinguishes it from idealism, pantheism, mind cure, and New Thought.

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.’

This is a collection of writings by Mary Kimball Morgan, founder of The Principia, a school for Christian Scientists (Pre-K through college). Recognizing the important responsibilities and possibilities of youth education, Morgan wrote these practical, spiritually-based insights from a well of deep wisdom, based on fundamental principles and adherence to morality and ethics. Their wisdom is of educational and character-development value.

Eustace continued writing and teaching after his excommunication from The Mother Church in 1922 following the ‘Great Litigation’–the legal dispute between the Christian Science Publishing Society and Board of Directors. This multi-volume book includes his perspective as a former trustee on the ‘Great Litigation,’ as well as 510 pages of his class teaching and other essays.

Claiming Mary Baker Eddy would have disapproved of anything in the way of a monopoly on spiritual enlightenment, Corey fully published his authorized two-week class teaching, precisely as he did it while under the public certification of the Christian Science Board of Directors. But the act of its public disclosure in writing also constituted his resignation from membership in The Mother Church and his local branch church. 

Organized around Principia’s symbolic sheaf of wheat, As the Sowing is a history of The Principia, a school for young Christian Scientists, from its beginnings (Seedtime) as an idea of Mary Kimball Morgan in the late 1890s through the Golden Anniversary years of 1947-48 (Years of Reaping). The ‘good seed’ underlying the foundation and unfoldment of the school is to serve the cause of Christian Science.

Doorly, a long-time Christian Science practitioner, teacher and lecturer, resigned from the Church in 1929, but continued with an extensive series of talks and books.This published Statement proclaimed his loyalty to Eddy, and explained his two concerns: the increasing tendency to substitute belief and religious sentiment for exact spiritual understanding and demonstration; and a lax sense as to the ‘essentially democratic’ government of The Mother Church.

Smith, a prominent Christian Scientist who held many senior positions in the church, brought together this collection of articles originally published in The Christian Science Journal as a series titled “Historical and Biographical Papers.” The articles are divided into three parts: biography, organization and history; including Mary Baker Eddy’s childhood and beginnings of her career as author, healer, teacher, and organizer.

Published posthumously by Kimball’s daughter, this book constitutes a collection of Kimball’s lectures, articles, addresses and letters to Christian Scientists. The popularity of his lectures and writings is attested by Mary Baker Eddy. His writings reflect his profound gratitude for Eddy’s discovery of Christian Science and his estimation that the ancient Christians would have rejoiced if they could have known it.

This flagship for Christian Science by Mary Baker Eddy is used as the denominational textbook and was intended by its author to “bear consolation to the sorrowing and healing to the sick” (xii). The book’s theological premise—that Christ Jesus taught and demonstrated the spiritual facts of being—precedes the metaphysical interpretation of scripture that grounds its healing system.