“The ‘Spirit of the Times’ is Both Critical and Scientific:” Reassessing the Outsider Narrative of Christian Science Healing

In 1879, Mary Baker Eddy established the Church of Christ, Scientist, also known as Christian Science, to promote her teaching that mankind is spiritual and consequently that sin, sickness, and death are unreal. As a result of years of doctrinal and legal battles against mainstream ministers and institutional medicine, a narrative that Christian Science served as an outsider group to American religion dominates the historiography of this Boston-based new religious movement. While acknowledging this narrative of difference, found in the works of Stephen Gottschalk and R. Laurence Moore, this paper decenters the institutional Church of Christ, Scientist to reevaluate how this new religious movement built upon widely accepted trends in practical religion and religious healing. Examining Eddy’s incoming correspondence and publications on Christian Science reveals how mainstream Protestants ultimately sympathized with Eddy’s healing mission and how they navigated Eddy’s more radical metaphysics to find commonalities with this new movement.