Christian Science

Christian Science is a set of beliefs and practices belonging to the metaphysical family of new religious movements. It was developed in 19th-century New England by Mary Baker Eddy, who argued in her 1875 book Science and Health that sickness is an illusion that can be corrected by prayer alone. The book became Christian Science's central text, along with the Bible, and by 2001 had sold over nine million copies.She has delivered to them a religion which has revolutionized their lives, banished the glooms that shadowed them, and filled them and flooded them with sunshine and gladness and peace; a religion which has no hell; a religion whose heaven is not put off to another time, with a break and a gulf between, but begins here and now, and melts into eternity as fancies of the waking day melt into the dreams of sleep.She wore an imported black satin dress heavily beaded with tiny black jet beads, black satin slippers, beaded, and had on her rarely beautiful diamonds. ... She stood before us, seemingly slight, graceful of carriage, and exquisitely beautiful even to critical eyes. Then, still standing, she faced her class as one who knew herself to be a teacher by divine right. She turned to the student at the end of the first row of seats and took direct mental cognizance of this one, plainly knocked at the door of this individual consciousness. ... This continued until each member of the class had received the same mental cognizance. No audible word voiced the purely mental contact.Mrs. Mary Patterson, of Swampscott, fell upon the ice near the corner of Market and Oxford streets, on Thursday evening, and was severely injured. She was taken up in an insensible condition and carried into the residence of S. M. Bubier, Esq., near by, where she was kindly cared for during the night. Dr. Cushing, who was called, found her injuries to be internal, and of a severe nature, inducing spasms and internal suffering. She was removed to her home in Swampscott yesterday afternoon, though in a very critical condition.Mrs. Glover, the well-known Scientist, will receive applications for one week from ladies and gentlemen who wish to learn how to heal the sick without medicine, and with a success unequaled by any known method of the present day, at Dr. Kennedy's office, No. 71 South Common Street, Lynn, Mass.Roy M. Anker, 1999: ' ... Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of Christian Science (denominationally known as the Church of Christ, Scientist), the most prominent, successful, controversial, and distinctive of all the groups whose inspiration scholars trace to the healing and intellectual influence of Quimby.'Rodney Stark, 1998: 'But, of course, Christian Science was not just another Protestant sect. Like Joseph Smith, Mary Baker Eddy added too much new religious culture for her movement to qualify fully as a member of the Christian family—as all the leading clerics of the time repeatedly and vociferously pointed out. However, unlike Madame Blavatsky's Theosophical Society, and like the Mormons, Christian Science retained an immense amount of Christian culture. These continuities allowed converts from a Christian background to preserve a great deal of cultural capital.'Eddy, January 1901: 'I should blush to write of Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures as I have, were it of human origin, and I, apart from God, its author. But, as I was only a scribe echoing the harmonies of heaven in divine metaphysics, I cannot be super-modest in my estimate of the Christian Science textbook.'Ernest Sutherland Bates and John V. Dittemore, 1932: Eddy was not able to attend Sanbornton (Tilton) Academy when the family moved there in 1836, but was required instead to start at the district school on the lower floor of the same building. She started at the beginning with the youngest girls, but withdrew after a month because of poor health. Thereafter she received private tuition from the Reverend Enoch Corser. She entered Sanbornton Academy in 1842.Stewart W. Holmes wrote in 1944 that this passage was probably the source of Eddy's 'scientific statement of being' in the 'Recapitulation' chapter of Science and Health (p. 468): 'There is no life, truth, intelligence, nor substance in matter. All is infinite Mind and its infinite manifestation, for God is All-in-all. Spirit is immortal Truth; matter is mortal error. Spirit is the real and eternal; matter is the unreal and temporal. Spirit is God, and man is His image and likeness. Therefore man is not material; he is spiritual.''There was, to my knowledge, no other physician in attendance upon Mrs. Patterson during this illness from the day of the accident, February 1, 1866, to my final visit on February 13th, and when I left her on the 13th day of February, she seemed to have recovered from the disturbance caused by the accident and to be, practically, in her normal condition. I did not at any time declare, or believe, that there was no hope for Mrs. Patterson's recovery, or that she was in a critical condition, and did not at any time say, or believe, that she had but three or any other limited number of days to live. Mrs. Patterson did not suggest, or say, or pretend, or in any way whatever intimate, that on the third, or any other day, of her said illness, she had miraculously recovered or been healed, or that, discovering or perceiving the truth of the power employed by Christ to heal the sick, she had, by it, been restored to health.'Eddy, March 7, 1883: 'We had laid the foundations of mental healing before we ever saw Dr. Quimby; were an homeopathist without a diploma. We made our first experiments in mental healing about 1853, when we were convinced that mind had a science, which, if understood, would heal all disease.'According to Bates and Dittemore 1932, an essay, 'Taking Offense,' was printed as one of Eddy's when it had first been published anonymously by an obscure newspaper.Eddy, 1889: 'Mr. Quimby's son has stated ... that he has in his possession all his father's written utterances; and I have offered to pay for their publication, but he declines to publish them; for their publication would silence the insinuation that Mr. Quimby originated the system of healing which I claim to be mine.'In 1972 128 students at a Christian Science school in Greenwich, Connecticut, contracted polio and four were left partially paralyzed. In 1982 a nine-year-old girl died of diphtheria after attending a Christian Science camp in Colorado. In 1985 128 people were infected with measles, and three died, at Principia College, a Christian Science school in Elsah, Illinois. In 1994 190 people in six states were infected with measles traced to a child from a Christian Science family in Elsah.Eddy, Manual of the Mother Church, p. 17.Mary M. Trammell (chair, Christian Science board of directors), 'Letter; What the Christian Science Church Teaches', The New York Times, March 26, 2010.Roy M. Anker, 'Revivalism, Religious Experience and the Birth of Mental Healing,' Self-help and Popular Religion in Early American Culture: An Interpretive Guide, Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Company, 1999(a), (pp. 11–100), pp. 8, 176ff.For early uses of New Thought, William Henry Holcombe, Condensed Thoughts about Christian Science (pamphlet), Chicago: Purdy Publishing Company, 1887; Horatio W. Dresser, 'The Metaphysical Movement' (from a statement issued by the Metaphysical Club, Boston, 1901), The Spirit of the New Thought, New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1917, p. 215.Also see 'Religion: New Thought', Time magazine, 7 November 1938; 'Phineas Parkhurst Quimby', Encyclopædia Britannica, September 9, 2013.Simmons 1995, p. 62; James C. Whorton, Nature Cures: The History of Alternative Medicine in America, New York: Oxford University Press, 2004, pp. 128–129.Claudia Stokes, The Altar at Home: Sentimental Literature and Nineteenth-Century American Religion, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014, p. 181.Willa Cather, Georgine Milmine, The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy and the History of Christian Science, New York: Doubleday, Page & Co., 1909, pp. 21–22.M. Victor Westberg, 'Christian Science: An Exchange', The New York Review of Books, November 14, 1996.For 'Science of Health,' Quimby in Horatio Dresser (ed.), The Quimby Manuscripts, New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1921, pp. 249, 340, 405; for his recovery, p. 28 (also here).Also see Charles Poyen, Progress of Animal Magnetism in New England, Boston: Weeks, Jordan & Co, 1837.Alan Gauld, A History of Hypnotism, Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press, 1992, p. 193; Hazen 2000, pp. 118–119.Eddy, Science and Health, 1875, first edition.'Mark Twain indorses exposure of Mrs. Eddy', The New York Times, November 5, 1906.For a letter from Wiggin to a friend about Eddy and Christian Science, dated December 14, 1889, Cather and Milmine 1909, pp. 337–339 (p. 336 for the date).Also see Eddy, 'Authorship of Science and Health,' The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, pp. 317–319.'Christian Science Text's Copyright Is Ruled Illegal by Appeals Court', The New York Times, September 23, 1987.Also see E. B. S., Jr., 'Book review: Christian Science by William A. Purrington', The American Law Register, 48(6), June 1900, pp. 380–381; and William Purrington, 'Manslaughter, Christian Science and the Law,' American Lawyer, 7, 1899, pp. 5–9.Simmons 1995, p. 62; Whorton 2004, pp. 128–129.That she wrote it as M.A.M. or m.a.m., see Robert Peel, Mary Baker Eddy: The Years of Authority, New York: Henry Holt & Company, 1977, p. 393, n. 50; for 'malicious mesmerism', malicious animal magnetism', 'animal magnetism', 'mental influence' and 'mesmerism', see Mary Baker Eddy, 'A Crime of Malicious Mesmerism', The Christian Science Journal, 7(1), March 1889, pp. 29–30. For 'malicious malpractice', see Gill 1998, p. 602, n. 38.Also see Wilson 1961, p. 126, n. 7, citing Gilbert C. Carpenter, Watches, Prayers, Arguments Given to Students by Mary Baker Eddy.Bates and Dittemore 1932, p. 274; for the college closing in October 1889, Peel 1971, p. 252.Dresser's reply, February 23, 1883; Eddy's reply, March 7, 1883, in Dresser 1919, p. 58.There was also an article, George A. Quimby, 'Phineas Parkhurst Quimby', The New England Magazine, 6(33), March 1888, pp. 267–276.For more on the manuscripts, S. P. Bancroft, Mrs. Eddy as I Knew Her in 1870 (1923); for the history of the Science and Man manuscript, Peel 1966, pp. 231–236, and Fraser 1999, p. 468, n. 99. Several versions of Science and Man can be found in 'Essays and other footprints left by Mary Baker Eddy', Rare Book Company, Freehold, New Jersey, p. 178ff.'Christian Science Killed Her', The New York Times, May 18, 1888; 'Mrs. Corner on Trial', May 22, 1888; 'The Christian Scientist Held', May 26, 1888; 'The Christian Scientist Not Indicted', June 10, 1888.Twain, 'Christian Science', North American Review, December 1902; Twain, Christian Science, Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1907. He had earlier written about mental healing in 'Mental Telepathy,' Harper's, December 1891.Eddy, 'Reply to McClure's Magazine,' The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, pp. 308–316.David Stouck, 'Introduction,' in Cather and Milmine, The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy and the History of Christian Science, University of Nebraska Press, 1993, p. xvff.'Look for Mrs. Eddy to rise from tomb', The New York Times, December 29, 1910.Beth Rapp Young, 'Defending Child Medical Neglect: Christian Science Persuasive Rhetoric', Rhetoric Review, 20(3/4), 2001 (pp. 268–292), p. 270. Also see Fraser (Atlantic) 1995.Also see T. Novotny, et al., 'Measles outbreaks in religious groups exempt from immunization laws', Public Health Reports, 103(1), Jan–Feb 1988, pp. 49–54, PMID 3124197; Fraser 2003, p. 268.'Government ends religious 'No Jab No Pay' of benefits exemption', courtesy of Scott Morrison MP, April 15, 2015.Rita Swan, ''Matthew, you cannot be sick'' Archived 2012-11-12 at the Wayback Machine, The Dublin Review, 2009–2010; 'When Faith Fails Children', The Humanist, November/December 2000.Tamara Jones, 'Prayers, Parental Duty: Child Deaths Put Faith on Trial', Los Angeles Times, June 17, 1989.'Christian Scientists Found Liable in Death', The New York Times, August 19, 1993.'Sunday church services and Wednesday testimony meetings', and 'Online Wednesday meetings' Archived 2014-01-30 at Archive.today, First Church of Christ, Scientist.For Colleen Dewhurst: Susan Ware (editor), Notable American Women: A Biographical Dictionary Completing the Twentieth Century, Volume 5, Cambridge, Mass: Belknap Press, 2004, pp. 174–175. Christian Science is a set of beliefs and practices belonging to the metaphysical family of new religious movements. It was developed in 19th-century New England by Mary Baker Eddy, who argued in her 1875 book Science and Health that sickness is an illusion that can be corrected by prayer alone. The book became Christian Science's central text, along with the Bible, and by 2001 had sold over nine million copies. Eddy and 26 followers were granted a charter in 1879 to found the Church of Christ, Scientist, and in 1894 the Mother Church, The First Church of Christ, Scientist, was built in Boston, Massachusetts. Christian Science became the fastest growing religion in the United States, with nearly 270,000 members by 1936, a figure that had declined by 1990 to just over 100,000. The church is known for its newspaper, the Christian Science Monitor, which won seven Pulitzer Prizes between 1950 and 2002, and for its public Reading Rooms around the world. Eddy described Christian Science as a return to 'primitive Christianity and its lost element of healing'. There are key differences between Christian Science theology and that of other branches of Christianity. In particular, adherents subscribe to a radical form of philosophical idealism, believing that reality is purely spiritual and the material world an illusion. This includes the view that disease is a mental error rather than physical disorder, and that the sick should be treated not by medicine, but by a form of prayer that seeks to correct the beliefs responsible for the illusion of ill health. The church does not require that Christian Scientists avoid all medical care—adherents use dentists, optometrists, obstetricians, physicians for broken bones, and vaccination when required by law—but maintains that Christian-Science prayer is most effective when not combined with medicine. Between the 1880s and 1990s, the avoidance of medical treatment led to the deaths of several adherents and their children. Parents and others were prosecuted for, and in a few cases convicted of, manslaughter or neglect. Several periods of Protestant Christian revival nurtured a proliferation of new religious movements in the United States. In the latter half of the 19th century these included what came to be known as the metaphysical family: groups such as Christian Science, Divine Science, the Unity School of Christianity and (later) the United Church of Religious Science. From the 1890s the liberal section of the movement became known as New Thought, in part to distinguish it from the more authoritarian Christian Science. The term metaphysical referred to the movement's philosophical idealism, a belief in the primacy of the mental world. Adherents believed that material phenomena were the result of mental states, a view expressed as 'life is consciousness' and 'God is mind.' The supreme cause was referred to as Divine Mind, Truth, God, Love, Life, Spirit, Principle or Father–Mother, reflecting elements of Plato, Hinduism, Berkeley, Hegel, Swedenborg and transcendentalism. The metaphysical groups became known as the mind-cure movement because of their strong focus on healing. Medical practice was in its infancy, and patients regularly fared better without it. This provided fertile soil for the mind-cure groups, who argued that sickness was an absence of 'right thinking' or failure to connect to Divine Mind. The movement traced its roots in the United States to Phineas Parkhurst Quimby (1802–1866), a New England clockmaker turned mental healer, whose motto was 'the truth is the cure.' Mary Baker Eddy had been a patient of his, leading to debate about how much of Christian Science was based on his ideas. New Thought and Christian Science differed in that Eddy saw her views as a unique and final revelation. Eddy's idea of malicious animal magnetism marked another distinction (that people can be harmed by the bad thoughts of others), introducing an element of fear that was absent from the New Thought literature. Most significantly, she dismissed the material world as an illusion, rather than as merely subordinate to Mind, leading her to reject the use of medicine, or materia medica, and making Christian Science the most controversial of the metaphysical groups. Reality for Eddy was purely spiritual.