Mary Morse Baker, better known as Mary Baker Eddy (July 16, 1821 - December 3, 1910) founded the Church of Christ, Scientist in 1879.
She was born in Bow, New Hampshire and raised a Congregationalist, though she rebelled against teachings like predestination. She suffered chronic illness and developed a strong interest in the biblical accounts of early Christian healing. In 1843 she married George Washington Glover. He died about a year later, shortly before the birth of their only child, George Washington Glover, Jr. In 1853 she married Dr. Daniel Patterson. In the 1860s she began to explore faith-healing and associated with Phineas Quimby. His influence on her is disputed; she thought highly of him personally but ultimately disavowed his technique as more mesmerism-based than Christian. She divorced Patterson, her second husband in 1873 for adultery that he readily admitted. In 1877 she married Asa Gilbert Eddy. Her third husband died in 1882.
After a severe injury in 1866, Eddy turned to the Bible, recovered unexpectedly, and devoted the next three years to biblical study and the development of Christian Science. Convinced that illness was at base a mental illusion that could be healed through a clearer perception of God, she began teaching her theory of healing to others privately. She felt that she had discovered a positive rule to healing in a new understanding of God as too good to ordain sickness, as a divine Principle and infinite Spirit above the limitations of a material sense of reality she termed error.
Eddy set forth her understanding of this discovery in a book Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, which she called the textbook of Christian Science, and which she published in its first edition of one thousand copies in 1875, writing therein, "In the year 1866, I discovered the Christ Science or divine laws of Life, Truth, and Love, and named my discovery Christian Science" (page 107).
Eddy would devote the remaining years of her life to the establishment of her church, authoring its governing bylaws, "The Manual of the Mother Church," and revising "Science and Health." While Eddy was a highly controversial religious leader, author, and lecturer, thousands of people flocked to her teachings and claimed to find healing.
Eddy would build her Church on the strength of this healing work by both herself as well as over four thousands students that she taught at her Massachusetts Metaphysical College in Boston, Massachusetts between the years 1883 and 1889. They spread across the country practicing healing by her teachings. Through the auspices of her church, she would authorize these students to list themselves as Christian Science Practitioners in her church's official monthly organ, the Christian Science Journal.
In 1908, at the age of 87, she founded The Christian Science Monitor, a daily newspaper devoted to balance. She also founded the Christian Science Journal, a monthly magazine focused chiefly on the church audience; the Christian Science Sentinel, a weekly religious periodical written for a more general public audience, and the Herald of Christian Science, a religious magazine with editions in non-English languages, for children, and in English-Braille. She died December 10, 1910.
Biographies
- The definitive, church-authorized, biography of Eddy is Robert Peel's trilogy Mary Baker Eddy: The Years of Discovery, Mary Baker Eddy: The Years of Trial, and Mary Baker Eddy: The Years of Authority. (1966-1971)
- A more recent single volume is a 1999 work by Gillian Gill (ISBN 0738202274), which includes review of the numerous other biographies over the years.
- Mary Baker Eddy, Speaking for Herself (ISBN 0879522755)
- Willa Cather and Georgine Milmine The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy and the History of Christian Science (1993) began as a famous Muckraking magazine series 1907-08 and highly critical book in 1909. Scholars who are not Christian Scientists rely on it, but church members disfavor it.
- The famous novelist Stefan Zweig wrote a biography Mary Baker Eddy
Works
- Science And Health, With Key To The Scriptures - 1875, revised through 1910
- Miscellaneous Writings
- Retrospection and Introspection
- Unity of Good
- Pulpit and Press
- Rudimental Divine Science
- No and Yes
- Christian Science versus Pantheism
- Message to The Mother Church, 1900
- Message to The Mother Church, 1901
- Message to The Mother Church, 1902
- Christian Healing
- The People's Idea of God
- The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany
- The Manual of The Mother Church
See also
