Resources Discussing Church Practices

Swensen presents a comprehensive timeline and biography of Augusta Stetson including her adoption of the Christian Science faith, being taught by Mary Baker Eddy, becoming a Christian Science practitioner and teacher, her healing practices, and her founding of, and influential leadership of First Church of Christ, Scientist, New York City. Stetson’s significance to women’s studies is also appraised.

Cooling examines the role, meaning and contemporary relevance of spiritual healing as found in the New Testament gospels, the writings of the Ante-Nicene Fathers, and the practices of Christian Scientists and Pentecostals today. She explores the elements that constitute Christian healing, and the different means of healing such as the laying on of hands, the anointing of oil and prayer.

In this book of personal essays, people representing a variety of faiths respond to questions about the Covid pandemic and its impact on their spiritual practice. Susan Searle writes from a Christian Scientist viewpoint, and explains that she accepted vaccination in order to continue her public ministry. 

Shirley Paulson responds to questions about the Covid pandemic and its impact on the practice of her faith, Christian Science. She discusses how the pandemic experience highlighted the need for greater maturity in spiritual healing practices, such as more concern for public issues and greater spiritual clarity, strength, and authority.

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.

Due to the long-standing debate over Mary Baker Eddy’s use of morphine, the Mary Baker Eddy Library sought to resolve it in order to restore focus on Eddy’s larger record. Calvin Frye’s diaries had recorded several instances of Eddy’s use of morphine, but some claimed his diaries had been altered. A forensic analysis in 2021 concluded the diaries are reliable.

This article features the records and testimony of Christian Scientists held in the Japanese Stanley Internment Camp of captured Hong Kong civilians during World War II. It covers their primary concern of getting enough food, and their resourcefulness in holding their own services in spite of the lack of access to hymnals and current issues of the Christian Science Quarterly.

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.

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. 

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.

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.

Homan portrays the people, their personal recollections, stories and spiritual healings that make up the history of each Christian Science church and society in Alaska, past and present. The histories also include the introduction of CS into the communities, church construction, and church growth and challenges. An appendix lists the CS churches, societies, practitioners, teachers and nurses going back to the early twentieth century.

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.

In this brief article, Westbrook makes some comparisons between Christian Science and Scientology. In common both draw on a theological link between science and religion, and both refer to their main church body as their ‘Mother Church.’ But mainly Westbrook points out their dramatic differences in theology, organization and mission.

This article stems from Lessiter’s talk “Architecture and Design of Six, Purpose-Built, Early, Christian Science Churches in London.” Lessiter asks what images were being presented to the public and what these images say about the people worshipping inside. She examines the churches’ churchly character as well as practical aspects such as the foyer, acoustics, foundation stones, Bible quotes on walls, and the lack of depictions of Eddy’s life.

Kramer’s well-researched critique on Christian Science makes her arguments easier to understand than most critics. She grasps the fundamental teachings and history of the religion well, but she left it for doctrinal reasons. Most of Perfect Peril describes her emotional and intellectual struggles with doctrinal issues. Following a crisis of faith, she concluded that Christian Science is a dangerous mind control. 

The section in this book devoted specifically to Christian Science is relatively brief, but the descriptions of the teachings and church structure accurately portray the issues most commonly affirmed by adherents. Topics of criticism also reflect the most common concerns from religious, medical, and social perspectives.

This essay by an adherent of Christian Science accompanies the main article on Christian Science. Paulson describes her childhood experience and how her religious practice was her primary source of comfort and healing. She recognizes distinctions between Christian Science and orthodox Christianity and explains why she thinks the typical orthodox view of Christian Science’s similarity with Gnosticism is misleading. 

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. 

Swensen analyzes the tension in the Christian Science Church between a desire for community engagement and an exclusive focus on healing works alone. He maintains that the interpretation of Church Bylaws tended to discourage connecting with community, even to the point of distrusting outsiders, making broad appeals self-defeating. Those oriented toward their communities have always been turned down in favor of continued insistence on healing works alone.

Fraser, a harsh critic of Christian Science, focuses on the history of its health practices in relation to the development of Western medicine. Eddy “left a movement that American society found simultaneously appealing (in its emphasis on Emersonian self-reliance) and troubling (for its wholesale rejection of medicine).”

Manca concludes from his research in one region in Canada that although many critics of Christian Science see it as a cult creating a psychological environment that tolerates only obedience, he has found that the healthcare choices made by Christian Scientists are more diverse than previous studies suggested. Those he interviewed made a wide range of choices.

​​Hines’s study on the relationship between illness, disability, and sin in the healing theologies of three American-born religions, including Christian Science, highlights the 19th-century context from which they came. Reacting against the prevalent Calvinist notion of illness and disability offering salvific powers, Christian Science argues that sickness is not God-made. But sick people can feel blamed for their infirmities.

Ruetenik’s unusual suggestion to establish a ‘Church of Christ, Pragmatist,’ envisions an institution based on a pragmatic practice of Christian Science that does not need to be protected or a doctrine that needs to be defended but as a practice that can be modified. It could function as a midway point between optimism (healing always occurs) and pessimism (healing never occurs).