Along with the Mormon Church, Adventism, and Pen-tecostalism, Christian Science is one of a few large, successful American religious groups and was the creation of one person, Mary Baker Eddy. Christian Science is the term used by Eddy, but the germ of her ideas originated with Phineas Quimby. Following years of ill health and emotional precariousness, she was treated by Quimby, who promoted a mystical Christianity that could effect physical healing. He used the phrases “science of health” and “Christian science” to describe his theories. Eddy found herself healed and became a disciple of his ideas, but his sudden death in January 1866 and a personal accident turned her from disciple into apostle.
Eddy dated the religion of Christian Science from her fall on ice in February 1866, which injured her back. She had a revelation “on the third day” after reading Matthew 9:2 (associating a young man’s palsy with his sins), and she arose, like him, from her bed. The next decade was spent in poverty as she elaborated on what she had learned from Quimby, developed her own ideas, and began to envision a Christian Science Church. Its first worship service was held in June 1875, and that fall she published the first edition of Science and Health, her principle work. The Church of Christ (Scientist) was chartered in 1879. Eddy, however, was a difficult person, and the new church was plagued with crises, splits, and lawsuits. The faithful few who remained loyal made her, at the age of 60, their pastor.
Eddy was a gifted teacher, and through the Massachusetts Metaphysical College, which she chartered in 1881, she attracted several hundred students eager to learn her insights, namely that matter—including sickness and death—is an illusion, and to be trained as “practitioners” to deal with the illusion of illness. These students became de facto missionaries who could and would organize Christian Science societies. In 1882 there were only 50 members of the original congregation, but by 1890 there were 110 churches and societies, 250 practitioners, and the Journal of Christian Science. Concerned by defections, Eddy reorganized the church, terminated the Metaphysical College in 1889, and dissolved the Christian Science Association in 1892, centralizing denominational affairs in the new “Mother Church” in Boston (dedicated in 1895). All other Christian Science churches were branches of it. Twelve “charter” and 20 “first” members controlled membership, and the church was run by a board of directors appointed by Eddy. An agency of the board also assumed the functions the college had performed.
Christian Science continued to grow rapidly and by 1910 exceeded 100,000 members. Ironically as the church grew, Eddy became more secluded and frail, lending her an air of mystery and encouraging a reverence that held her followers’ loyalty across the country. She died in 1910, but Eddy noted that the world of the sense is mere “belief. . . . Matter and death are mortal illusions.”
Although Eddy was a commanding personality, circumstances in New England and the United States contributed to the success of Christian Science. One was its appeal to and empowerment of women, who had begun to demand new roles in the 19th century. Another was its understanding of prosperity as a sign of spiritual health, which appealed to the new middle class. A third was its focus on health which, while metaphysical, had a rational and empirical emphasis and contrasted with emotional faith healing. And finally, thanks to Eddy, Christian Science was well organized.
Further reading: Stephen Gottschalk, The Emergence of Christian Science in American Religious Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973); Robert Peel, Mary Baker Eddy, 3 vols. (Boston: Christian Science Publishing Society, 1966-77).
—W. Frederick Wooden
World History
