Resources Discussing The Christian Science Monitor

Anti-apartheid activist and future president of South Africa, Nelson Mandela, visited The Christian Science Monitor as part of his 1990 world fundraising tour. On his visit, he told reporters of the Monitor’s impact on him while he was in prison. “It [the Monitor] continues to give me hope and confidence for the world’s future.”

Mary Baker Eddy’s approach to the weather is the topic of research, including stories of how threatening weather and the laws of nature were made subordinate to God’s divine law. One student of Eddy’s explains how she instructed them not to try to control the weather. Rather, their prayers were to affirm that God, not outside influences, governs the weather.

…the massacre, the Mary Baker Eddy Library both published this article and produced a podcast, “Tulsa Rising,” which includes interviews with Tulsa’s mayor, its Black citizens, and Robert Turner, pastor…

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. 

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.”

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.

Squires sees the opening of the Mary Baker Eddy Library as an opportunity for literary scholars to give closer attention to the history, doctrines, and distinctions of Christian Science. Only then will there be an honest and accurate account for the literature that seeks to represent or critique them. 

Damaging newspaper accounts incentivized Mary Baker Eddy to found The Christian Science Monitor with the intent to be a more professional alternative sticking closely to facts and highlighting optimism rather than fear. Although this approach helped dampen the polemic around the church, critics found it lacking in illuminating systemic societal abuses of power.

Collins, a Christian Scientist who acknowledges his hope for the future success of The Christian Science Monitor, presents an account of the Monitor’s history including its weaknesses and unique strengths. Collins brings his readers through the twists and turns of the paper’s relationship with the world’s needs and the spiritual demands of the Monitor’s mission, including its successes and two near collapses.

In 2009, The Christian Science Monitor had just become the first newspaper to support a multiplatform format: csmonitor.com, a 24/7 website. Fuller’s research and writing on the Monitor contributes substantive support for scholars of 21st-century journalism and the study of the formation of Christian Science in the closing years of Mary Baker Eddy’s life when she established the Monitor.

Ivey’s history of Christian Science covers a broad range of topics including a brief history of Eddy’s personal preparation for the founding of the Church, the healing theology of Christian Science, the establishment of the Church, broader contexts of the appeal of Christian Science, the role of language for its expression, the maturing years in the early 20th century, and the challenges of adapting to a changing world in the late 20th century.

​​To aid scholars interested in researching primary source materials on the life of Mary Baker Eddy, the Mary Baker Eddy Library provides a summary of its vast holdings, including approximately 20,000 letters, articles, sermons, and other manuscript materials written by Eddy, nearly 8,000 letters written by her secretaries on her behalf, letters by approximately 7,000 different correspondents, and over 800 reminiscences.

Swensen documents the long-term effect of Alfred Farlow’s early crusade to protect the growing Christian Science Church from outside attacks, and muzzle an unrestrained and over-zealous faithful. He sees this protective stance as casting a long shadow over the content of future church periodicals, and the reason why members have since shown a deep reticence for personal outreach.

This large anthology of primary and secondary sources is of great value to scholars because it was published in conjunction with the 2002 opening of the Church archives in the new Mary Baker Eddy Library. Some sections provide material not readily available in other published works, such as early family letters and images and transcriptions of pages from Eddy’s Bibles.

With free access to the private papers of Richard Strout, The Christian Science Monitor reporter who covered the McCarthy subcommittee hearings of 1950-54, the author Lawrence Strout, a distant relative of Richard Strout, seeks to get inside the Monitor’s internal debates and decision-making at a time of blacklists, ‘red-baiting’ and the equating of liberalism with socialism and communism.

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.

In her compelling insider’s account, extensively end-noted, Bridge analyzes the bitter struggle that ensued when an entrepreneurial leadership tried to diversify and reposition the respected international newspaper The Christian Science Monitor into radio, the internet, multi-media publishing, and—the highest-ticket item of all—the Monitor Channel, a CNN-style, 24-hour news and public affairs channel.

Nenneman’s biography of Mary Baker Eddy highlights his two major themes: her tenacious unyielding sense of purpose, and her role as a pioneer. Nenneman is interested in Eddy’s evolution and progression through her triumphs and trials, loneliness, disappointments, and personal weaknesses. One important theme is Eddy’s habit of seeking guidance from God for her actions, a tribute to her Calvinist heritage.

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.

Swensen describes Hofer’s career as a “lifelong journalist and political maverick” which included his own newspaper and magazine, the Capital Journal and The Lariat, membership in the Oregon legislature and Salem city council, and an unsuccessful candidacy for governor. His unceasing fight was for individualism and decentralized government. In his Appendix, Swensen takes up Hofer’s Christian Science affiliation with its emphasis on the individual’s role in salvation.

Beasley’s biography begins with Mary Baker Eddy’s early years, her 1866 breakthrough on the nature of Jesus’s healing, and the publication of her teachings in her textbook Science and Health. The bulk of the book focuses on Eddy’s establishment of her Church and its organizational structure—her means of protecting her teachings and developing movement.

Canham, editor of The Christian Science Monitor during the height of its public successes, gives an insider’s story of the newspaper up to the time of the book (1958). He recounts its ideals and struggles–its founding, growing pains, achievement of maturity, and his vision for its future.

Powell’s 1930 work intentionally challenges Dakin’s Biography of a Virginal Mind. It also contrasts with Powell’s own 1907 work, Christian Science: The Faith and Its Founder, which presented a far more negative view of Christian Science and Mary Baker Eddy. Powell, an Episcopal clergyman and an academic writer, made good use of his considerable access to the Church’s archival collections.