Resources Discussing Medicine

In 1953, Anglican church leaders created a commission of clergy and doctors seeking a clearer understanding of divine healing, its role in their ministry, and their relationship with medical practitioners. The final report grounded it in the medical sciences and found little common ground between spiritual healing and the Anglican Church’s embedding of its healing ministry in the ritual and creed of the Church.

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.

Voorhees offers new scholarship on a broad array of topics related to Christian Science identity focusing on reception history. With attention to fully resourced details and modern scholarship, Voorhees outlines the reception history of Christian Science in fields of religion, women studies, American history, politics, medicine, and metaphysics. She probes Mary Baker Eddy’s relationships with contemporary scholars, religion leaders, and students.

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. 

Steckler and Bartkowski seek to contribute to the scholarly understanding of how religious culture can be transformed through the lived experience of devout adherents. Using theories of subcultural identity and cultural repertoires to understand how Christian Scientists engage social challenges, they conclude that healing treatment options are more flexible and nuanced than often publicized, and other high-tension religions can benefit from a comparison.

The metaphysical nature of the religious belief and practice of Christian Science triggered theological, ecclesial, legal, medical, scientific, and moral controversies. Mary Baker Eddy also dealt with stress and trauma throughout her life. The metaphysical aspect of Christian Science does not detract from its practicality in human experience, as the metaphysically induced healing is evidence of the full salvation to come.

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.

Schoepflin’s review acknowledges the relevance of Rogers’s study of America’s religious exemption from vaccination in light of the then-current 2015 measles outbreak in the United States—even though Rogers primarily uses case studies of Christian Science practice from 30–35 years prior to his study to argue his case that children are harmed by exemption laws. 

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.

The Society of Jewish Science was a response to the mass conversion of Jews, particularly women, to Christian Science. Its purpose was to revive a growing secular Judaism with elements Lichtenstein feared had been lost: healing, personal prayer, and belief in the Divine Spirit within. Unlike Christian Science, the Society did not reject medicine or deny the reality of matter.

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).”

Although written for young readers, “A World More Bright” contains details for those interested in the personal side of Mary Baker Eddy’s life story. For those more familiar with other biographies on Eddy, this book offers new facts that may be useful for filling in gaps of historical interest. Typical biographical controversies are mentioned but not critiqued by the authors.

The two paragraphs devoted to an explanation of Christian Science healing practices present a view solely from the perspective of medicine. The article argues that Christian Science practitioners cannot perform a number of ordinary medical procedures such as a diagnosis of illness. Butler expresses concern that those who are not healed might become depressed or conclude they are unworthy.

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.

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.

Campbell seeks to identify and critique three central issues concerning communities who practice Christian healing without medicine: their theological justification for such healing practices, medical practices as morally and metaphysically wrong from their perspectives, and their understanding of theodicy when healing does not occur. But a glaring problem for researchers of Christian Science is Campbell’s lack of distinction between groups.

Four women— Emma and Abigail Dyer (daughter of Emma) Thompson, Janette Weller, and Annie M. Knott—were selected as representative of the pioneering work of early Christian Scientists due not to their gender, but to the available historical evidence, the range of their contributions to the history of Christian Science, and the relative familiarity of that person among today’s Christian Scientists.

The question of child-care in the context of serious health conditions always highlights the tension between medical and prayer-based treatments, and this tension usually turns on the First Amendment protection of religious rights. This article, written from the point of view that medicine is always superior to prayer, refers to prayer treatment as religion-based medical neglect.

​​Badaracco, a professor of communication, is interested in how 19th-century American religion advertised hopefulness, compared with how medicine preyed more on fear. In the chapter devoted to Christian Science, Badaracco emphasizes Mary Baker Eddy’s use of publishing and branding to spread her ideas. She underlines Eddy’s religious conservativism rooted in the Bible and the importance of Eddy’s female religious leadership.

The focus of Klassen’s study is the healing practice of mainstream Christians in the US and Canada during the early 20th century. She argues that it was unabashedly medicalized and modern and was supported by the therapeutic role of written texts. Christian Science enters the discussion as a perceived opponent with its innovative reading of biblical texts.

This article examines the medical profession’s reaction to complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) especially during the last half of the 20th century. It includes no direct mention of Christian Science, but the subject is relevant to the understanding of Christian Science when it is categorized with other CAM treatments. CAM sometimes includes the religious healing practice of Christian Science.

In the dispute between state and religion over medical treatment for minors Herrera pleas for reform. Parents whose children need urgent care have few legal guidelines. In an era when physicists and chemists are openly discussing the metaphysical presuppositions of their science, an attempt to deny medicine’s own rituals and even superstitions sounds regressive and inhibits reform.

Corbett examines the ways that Eddy exercised effective leadership in increasingly male-dominated fields from which women were excluded: education, health care, and religion. She is particularly interested in the way Eddy incorporated obstetrics into her system of healing. Corbett also responds to claims that Eddy expressed an ambiguous feminism by championing women’s authority yet promoting male authority within her Church.

deChant argues that Christian Science should be included in a survey of the world’s religions because of its significant contributions to both American religious life and the world’s religions.He attributes the turmoil to Eddy’s direct and emphatic challenge to the status quo of American culture, calling into question the authority of two of America’s most venerable institutions —religion and medicine.

Schoepflin’s book contains a detailed analysis of the late 19th-century legislative and legal confrontations between Christian Scientists and the medical community, demonstrating the shifting relationship between medical practitioners, Christian Science practitioners, and the public. From medical licensing, the meaning of medical practice, and the rights of Americans to therapeutic choice, the public debate turned to matters of contagious disease, public safety and children’s rights.