Christian Science

Christian Science. Mary Baker Eddy (1821–1910) “discovered” Christian Science in 1866, when she spontaneously recovered from a severe injury after embracing the beliefs that reality is completely spiritual and that evil—especially sickness and death—is only an illusion. Eddy's understanding of the mind‐body relationship and her healing techniques owed much to the principles of homeopathy and the practice of Phineas Parkhurst Quimby (1802–1866), a New England mentalist (mind reader) and magnetic healer. However, the power of Eddy's personality, her authoritative textbook Science and Health (1875; to which she added Key to the Scriptures in 1883), and her effective organization of the Church of Christ, Scientist, turned Christian Science into a successful worldwide movement.

Joined by a handful of followers, Eddy founded the first Church of Christ, Scientist, in Lynn, Massachusetts, in 1879. Strife hounded the movement's early years as such influential former students as Emma Curtis Hopkins, Luther M. Marston, and Ursula N. Gestefeld challenged Eddy's originality and prophetic authority, withdrew from the movement, and dispensed their own brand of Christian Science. To protect Christian Scientists from heterodoxy, Eddy established in 1883 the monthly Journal of Christian Science (renamed the Christian Science Journal in 1885) and encouraged the formation of a National Christian Scientist Association in 1886.

In the 1890s, Eddy centralized her new religion, establishing Boston's Mother Church (1892), an official board of directors, and the Christian Science Publishing Society (1898). Through these organizational structures and a newfound evangelistic zeal, membership grew rapidly—from 8,724 in 1890 to about 55,000 (72 percent of whom were women) by 1906—and the movement spread to Europe and Asia. The Christian Science Monitor, a national newspaper sponsored by the church, was founded in 1908. The 1936 federal census reported 268,915 Christian Scientist adherents. By the mid‐1990s churches numbered about three thousand worldwide, although the vast majority of members were in the United States and membership had been declining steadily for decades.

Christian Science attracted converts primarily because it promised to heal their bodies and souls. Although dramatic physical cures attracted the most public attention, healing often simply involved a process of growth and enlightenment that slowly transformed a person into the spiritual image of God's ideal. All Christian Scientists practiced healing by “demonstrating” over (that is, curing) “false claims” (sickness, sin, and death), but some devoted themselves professionally to full‐time service as practitioners. To expand the healing mission of practitioners, Eddy chartered the Massachusetts Metaphysical College in 1881, formalized the curriculum, and established institutes of healing and instruction across the United States. Through lectures and class instruction, such key nineteenth‐and early twentieth‐century leaders as Augusta Stetson, Edward Kimball, Carol Norton, and Bicknell Young influenced Christian Science practice and the interpretation of Eddy's writings.

Turn‐of‐the‐century legal and legislative struggles among clergy, physicians, and Christian Scientists over the practice of religious healing reflected a larger contest for religious and medical authority in the United States. With an uneasy truce in this conflict, Christian Scientists came to represent for many Americans the most urbane and sedate examples of the often marginalized yet perennial practice of religious healing.
See also Medicine: Alternative Medicine; Religion.

Bibliography

Stephen Gottschalk , The Emergence of Christian Science in American Religious Life, 1973.
Rennie B. Schoepflin , Lives on Trial: Christian Science Healers in Progressive America, 2001.

Rennie B. Schoepflin