Church of Christ, Scientist

Organization founded in 1879 by Mary Morse (Baker) Eddy (1821-1910) as the embodiment of the healing movement popularly known as Christian Science. As a young woman Eddy suffered from chronic health problems. Through the 1850s and 1860s she sought out various remedies and eventually found her way to Phineas Parkhurst Quimby, a mental healer in Maine. She experienced great relief for a time and was grateful for Quimby's efforts. It was not until 1866, however, that she found a new spiritual insight while recovering from an injury received in a fall. She experienced a complete recovery of health, discovering that God is all and that illness and death are unreal. She also came to believe that in the acceptance of the complete reality of God health appears.

Eddy's recovery was followed by a period of further Bible study, working with others in light of her new vision and reexamining Quimby's teachings. The result of this study was a primal booklet, The Science of Man (1870), and then a textbook, Science and Health (1875). She organized the Christian Science Association in 1876 as an organization for her students. Over the next years the healing movement grew and expanded. Several new editions of the textbook were published as Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. In 1892 the movement went through a complete reorganization and the mother church structure, through which the church is currently organized, was established. The church bylaws were published in 1895 as the Church Manual. Leadership of the church was placed in the hands of the mother church (the First Church of Christ, Scientist), located in Boston, Massachusetts, and its pastor, Mary Baker Eddy, who had been ordained in 1881.

Included in both the textbook and the Church Manual are the tenets of the church. They affirm the Bible as the inspired guide to life; one God; God's Son; the Holy Ghost; and man as a being in God's image. Forgiveness of sin results from new spiritual understanding that casts out evil as having no Godordained reality. The atonement of Jesus, "the wayshower," is evidence of God's love. Salvation comes through the truth, life, and love, as he demonstrated. Healing, following the principles laid down by Eddy in Science and Health, remains the most significant aspect of the doctrine of the Church of Christ, Scientist. Such healing is distinct from both psychic healing and magnetism (or mesmerism ), both of which were condemned by Eddy.

Since Eddy's death, leadership of the church has been in the hands of a five-member board of directors that administers the affairs of the church according to the rules laid down in the Church Manual. Each church is autonomous but its leaders must be members in good standing with the mother church. Church headquarters are at the Christian Science Center, Boston. The Christian Science Publishing Society issues a number of books and periodicals, most notably the Christian Science Journal and a daily newspaper, The Christian Science Monitor. The Herald of Christian Science appears in a dozen languages.

The Christian Science movement has not only built a large organization but has also inspired a variety of religious healing movements in other groups. Throughout the early years of the movement a number of students withdrew from association with Eddy and the church. Some continued as independent Christian Science practitioners, and others gathered around Emma Curtis Hopkins and developed what would come to be known as the New Thought movement. Boston Episcopal minister Elwood Worcester founded the Emmanuel Movement, the organization that introduced spiritual healing into the Episcopal Church and continues today as the Order of St. Luke the Physician.

The Church of Christ, Scientist was born in controversy and has continued as a controversial organization. Members are known for their refusal to seek the services of physicians, preferring their own Christian Science practitioners. Throughout the twentieth century, church leaders have labored long and somewhat successfully to gain a legal status for their church and to have their practitioners recognized by government authorities and even insurance companies. Their success has been challenged periodically when a person who might have been helped by modern medical techniques or medicine dies. In the 1980s a score of court cases were heard, with very mixed results, concerning Christian Science parents whose children died without receiving any medical treatment.

The Church of Christ, Scientist can be contacted at its headquarters: 175 Huntington Ave., Boston, MA 02115-3187. Web-site: http://www.tfccs.com/.

Sources:

Christian Science: A Sourcebook of Contemporary Materials. Boston: Christian Science Publishing Society, 1990.

The Church of Christ, Scientist. http://www.tfccs.com/. March 8, 2000.

Eddy, Mary Baker. Church Manual of the First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, Mass. Boston: Trustees Under the Will of Mary Baker Eddy, 1908.

——. Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. Boston: Trustees Under the Will of Mary Baker Eddy, 1906.

Gottshalk, Stephen. The Emergence of Christian Science in American Religious Life. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973.

Peel, Robert. Mary Baker Eddy. 3 vols. New York: Holt Rinehart & Winston, 1971.

Swihart, Altman K. Since Mrs. Eddy. New York: Henry Holt, 1931.