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

When Mary Baker Eddy founded her Church of Christ, Scientist, in 1879 she drew upon Unitarian liturgy and her Congregational upbringing. By her death in 1910, her church had developed its own identity and became one of the fastest growing movements in the United States. This monumental ascent did not come without challenges as Eddy’s controversial metaphysics attracted many critics, because she argued that mankind was purely spiritual and that matter, sin, sickness, and death were errors. The illusory nature of illness especially brought detractors as Eddy’s church did not believe in the efficacy of material medicine, instead relying on their own healing methods. Prominent ministers and public figures like Mark Twain wrote about the seemingly irrational and supposedly dangerous elements in Christian Science healing. As a result, Eddy’s healing practice was at the center of decades of legal, doctrinal, and social battles described in Rennie Schoepflin’s _Christian Science on Trail_ (2003). 

As the center of such controversy, Christian Science historiography suitably reflects the elements of difference that sparked conflict. Historians of American religion have classed Christian Science as an outside cult, as Frank Littell had, or as part of a dissenting tradition as formulated in Ahlstrom’s “harmonial religion.” Even Catherine Albanese’s “metaphysical religion” categorization clearly demarcated it from evangelical and denominational traditions. At the same time intellectual historians like Stephen Gottschalk, who was himself a Christian Science, approached Christian Science as a unique intellectual formation in American religion. Recent Amy Voorhees in _A New Christian Identity_ (2021) has carried on Gottschalk’s argument in her description of how Eddy developed a new religious identity. In these works, liberal Protestants are typically classed as the few sympathizers to Christian Science. This tradition of emphasizing religious uniqueness and dissent was best characterized in R. Laurence Moore’s _Religious Outsiders and the Making of Americans_ (1986), where Christian Science represented a self-conscious and self-constructed outsider tradition. 

While these works are invaluable for understanding the controversy around Christian Science as a new religion, they do little to answer how Eddy’s church was able to attract so many members from orthodox Protestant churches as a radical outsider tradition. This paper seeks to reframe the subject of Christian Science healing within broader trends of American religion, which permeated the pulpits of orthodox Protestant denominations, using demographics from Eddy’s Massachusetts Metaphysical College, incoming correspondence, and Protestant publications on Christian Science. This work reveals the broad appeal of Christian Science to orthodox Protestants as part of a network of late nineteenth century “practical religion” and adaptation of new theories of health to locate the role of religion in healing. Lastly, this paper will conclude with a reflection on the source of Christian Science controversy as critics rarely contested Christian Science healing outright.

Unlike prior claims that liberal Protestants, like Unitarians, were the most amenable to Eddy’s theories, religious affiliations listed in applications to Eddy’s Massachusetts Metaphysical College paint a different picture. From a sample of 222 applications from November 1886 to June 1889, 105 listed prior religious affiliations and only 2.86% of those were Unitarians where an additional 4.76% were Universalists. Instead, the largest denominations represented in this sample were Episcopalians (20.95%), Presbyterians (22.86%), and Methodists (19.05%). Compared with reports in the Christian Science Journal, Christian Science had a broad appeal to more than just liberal Protestants.

A major appeal to individuals in orthodox Protestant denominations was Christian Science’s ability to act as a “practical” religion to heal the aches and pains of everyday American life. This emphasis on practical religion was amongst Americans affiliated with divine healing, Higher Life, and Social Gospel movements, and some Christian Science testimonies record how the author wanted to apply this practicality towards the problem of health. Routinely, Christian Science testimonies listed their desire for practical applications of their prior conceptions of religion as a driving force towards Christian Science. The experience of healing and practical spirituality formed a bridge for many orthodox Protestants to join this new religious movement.

Both sympathetic and critical ministers of Eddy took notice of both the practical dimensions of Eddy’s new movement and emerging theories from Europe about the relation between the mind and body. In letters to Eddy, sympathetic ministers appreciated Eddy’s emphasis on health and practical application of the Bible’s healing message but often differed over the subject of a personal God. While many ministers did not become Christian Scientists, those like the Presbyterian Frank Riale continued to advocate for religious forms of healing within their own denominations from the pulpit.

In critical publications, American Protestants denounced Eddy’s theology but reluctantly affirmed that Christian Science could effectively heal. To counter radical healing movements, mainstream ministers investigated the “Mind Cure,” suggestive therapeutics, and divine healing to find religious alternatives for the health of their congregations beyond material drugs. New religious healing claims were not unique to Christian Science during Eddy’s lifetime, and the affirmation that Christian Science had healing potential demonstrates that healing was not the primary source of otherness compared to mainstream American religions. Within their challenge to Eddy and affirmation of religious healing, these ministers singled out the importance of the material body which Eddy had denied.

While Eddy’s metaphysics marked a clear break from other religious movements, the source of Christian Science’s “newness” was not Eddy’s beliefs about healing but instead it was her denial of materiality and a personal God. Even more pressingly for American institutions, the large number of converts to Christian Science from orthodox Protestant denominations was a clearer indicator of danger than any healing practice. This represented a “social problem” that divided communities, churches, and families when greater rifts between these churches emerged in the 1890s. Critics and even later non-Christian Scientist historians operated in a “social problem paradigm” that located Christian Science as an outsider religious movement, which contributed to othering Christian Science healing. While the Church of Christ, Scientist, became a unique new religious movement, its pressure on American Protestant churches inspired similar healing efforts in mainstream denominations which had long lasting effects for American religion.