Christian Science is a set of beliefs and practices that the metaphysical family of a new religious movement has. It was developed in New England in the 19th century by Mary Baker Eddy, who argued in his book 1875 Science and Health that illness is an illusion that can be corrected by prayer alone. This book became the central text of Christian Science, along with the Bible, and in 2001 has sold over nine million copies.
Eddy and 26 followers were awarded the charter in 1879 to discover the Church of Christ, Scientist, and in 1894 the Mother Church, 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 in 1936, a decline in 1990 to more than 100,000. The Church is known for its newspaper, The Christian Science Monitor, which won seven Pulitzer Prizes between 1950 and 2002, and for public Reading Rooms around the world.
Eddy describes Christian Science as the return of "primitive Christianity and its lost elements of healing". There are key differences between Christian Science theology and other Christianity. In particular, followers follow a radical form of philosophical idealism, believing that the purely spiritual reality and the material world are illusions. This includes the view that illness is a mental error rather than a physical disorder, and that sick people should be treated not with drugs, but with a form of prayer that seeks to correct the beliefs responsible for the ill health illusion.
The Church does not require that Christian scientists avoid all medical treatment - adherents use dentists, ophthalmologists, obstetricians, doctors for broken bones, and vaccinations when required by law - but still maintain that Christian Science prayer is most effective when not combined with other medicines. medicine.. Between the 1880s and 1990s, the avoidance of medical treatment led to the death of some adherents and their children. Parents and others are prosecuted, and in some cases punished, murder or neglect.
Video Christian Science
Overview
Metaphysical family
Several periods of Protestant Christian revival fostered the proliferation of new religious movements in the United States. In the second half of the nineteenth century this included what became known as the metaphysical family: groups such as Christian Science, Divine Science, School of Christian Unity, and (later) the Church of Unity of Religion. From the 1890s the liberal section of the movement became known as the New Mind, partly to distinguish it from the more authoritarian Christian Sciences.
The term metaphysical refers to the philosophical idealism of this movement, the belief in the virtue of the mental world. Adherents believe that material phenomena are the result of mental states, views expressed as "life is consciousness" and "God is the mind." The highest cause is called the Divine Mind, Truth, God, Love, Life, Spirit, Principle or Father-Mother, reflecting the elements of Plato, Hinduism, Berkeley, Hegel, Swedenborg and transcendentalism.
Metaphysical groups are known as mind healing movements because of their strong focus on healing. Medical practice is still in its early stages, and patients regularly fare better without it. It provides fertile ground for the mind healing group, who argue that disease is the absence of "right thinking" or failure to connect to the Divine Mind. The movement traces its roots in the United States to Phineas Parkhurst Quimby (1802-1866), the New England watchmaker being a mental healer, whose motto is "truth is the cure". Mary Baker Eddy has become her patient, causing debate about how much Christian Science is based on her idea.
New Thought and Christian Science are different in that Eddy sees his view as a unique and final revelation. Eddy's idea of ​​the magnetism of dangerous animals marks another difference (that people can be harmed by the bad thoughts of others), introducing an element of fear that is not in the New Mind literature. Most significantly, he regards the material world as an illusion, not just a subordinate of Mind, which leads him to reject the use of drugs, or materia medica, and make Christian Science the most controversial of metaphysics. group. Eddy's reality is purely spiritual.
Christian Science Theology
Christian Science leaders place their religion in mainstream Christian teaching, according to J. Gordon Melton, and reject any identification with the New Thought movement. Eddy is heavily influenced by his Congregational education. According to the teachings of the church, followers receive "inspired Word from the Bible as [they] a sufficient guide to eternal life... confessing and worshiping one supreme and infinite God... [and] confessing His Son, one Christ; God or the Divine Comforter and man in the image and likeness of God. "When he founded the Church of Christ, Scientist, in April 1879, Eddy wrote that he wanted to" restore primitive Christianity and lost elements of slaughter ". Then he suggested that Christian Science is the second type of adventure and that Science and Health is an inspired text. In 1895, in the Manual of Mother Church , he ordained the Bible and Science and Health as the "Priest of the Mother Church."
Christian Science Theology differs in some ways from traditional Christianity. Eddy's Science and Health reinterpreted key Christian concepts, including the Trinity, the deity of Jesus, redemption and resurrection; beginning with the 1883 edition, he added with the Key to Scripture to the title and included a glossary that redefined the Christian vocabulary. The essence of Eddy's theology is the view that the spiritual world is the only reality and wholly good, and that the material world, with its evil, disease and death, is an illusion. Eddy sees humanity as a "perfect, eternal, infinite, and reflective" thought of humanity, "according to Bryan Wilson; what he calls "mortal man" is only a human distorted view of himself. Despite his view of the absence of evil, an important element of Christian Science theology is that evil thinking, in the form of dangerous animal magnetism, can cause harm, even if the dangers are only real.
Eddy views God not as a person but as "All-in-all". Although he often portrays God in personality - he uses the term "God-Mother God" (as did Ann Lee, founder of Shakerism), and in the third edition of Science and Health he calls God " "- God is largely represented in Christian Science with a synonym of" Mind, Spirit, Soul, Principle, Life, Truth, Love ". The Holy Spirit is Christian Science, and heaven and hell are state of mind. There is no prayer in Christian Science prayer. This process involves a Scientist involved in a silent argument for self-affirmation of the unreal, something that Christian Science practitioners will do, including in absentia , to solve poor or other health problems. Wilson writes that the healing of Christian Science is "not curative... on its own premises, but it prevents poor health, accidents and misfortune, for it leads to a state of consciousness in which these things do not exist.What heals is the Realization that nothing really heals. "This is a closed system of thought, seen as perfect if done right; healing affirms the power of Truth, but its absence stems from failure, especially bad thoughts, individuals.
Eddy is accepted as the true narrative of creation in Genesis until chapter 2, verse 6 - that God created man in His image and likeness - but he rejects the rest "as a false and material tale", according to Wilson. His theology is not nontrinitarian: he views the Trinity as suggestive of polytheism. He sees Jesus as a Christian scientist, "Fountain" between man and God, and he distinguishes between the human Jesus and the concept of Christ, the latter a synonym for Truth and Jesus as the first person to fully realize it. The crucifixion is not a divine sacrifice for the sins of men, the forgiveness of sins (forgiveness of sins through the sufferings of Jesus) "not the bribery of God by offering," writes Wilson, but an "at-one-ment" with God. His view of life after death is unclear and, according to Wilson, "there is no doctrine of the soul" in Christian Science: "[A] death, the individual continues his status of authorization until he has completed his own salvation by proving the truth of Christian Science." that dead and alive can communicate.
For more conservative Protestant clergy, Eddy's divinely inspired view of Divine Knowledge and Health poses a challenge to biblical authority. "Eddyism" is seen as a cult; one of the first uses of the modern word sense is in A. H. Barrington's Anti-Christian Cults (1898), a book on Spiritualism, Theosophy and Christian Science. In some cases, Christian Scientists were expelled from Christian congregations, but the ministers were also worried that their parishioners chose to leave. In May 1885, London's Boston Times Correspondent wrote of "Boston mental cravers": "Many of the most respected members of the Church join the branch of Christian scientists from metaphysical organizations, and thus so far impossible to checking for defection. "In 1907 Mark Twain described the appeal of a new religion:
Maps Christian Science
Birth of religion
Mary Baker Eddy
Born Mary Morse Baker on a farm in Bow, New Hampshire, Eddy is the youngest of six siblings in a Protestant congregationalist family. His father, Mark Baker, was a very religious man, though, according to one note, "Christianity for him is a war against sin, not a religion of human brotherhood." In general with most women at the time Eddy was given a little formal education, but said he had read widely at home. Since childhood he lived with poor health, complained of chronic gastrointestinal disorders and inflammation of the spine, and according to the biographer suffered a fainting spell. Harold Bloom's literary critic described him as "a kind of nineteenth-century neuroscience anthology."
Eddy's first husband died just before the 23rd birthday, six months after they were married and three months before their son was born, leaving him without a penny; as a result of his poor health, he lost the custody of the boy when he was four years old, despite the different sources as to whether he could prevent this. Her second husband left her after 13 years of marriage; Eddy says that he has promised to be the official guardian of his children, but it is unclear whether he did it, and Eddy lost contact with his son until he was in his thirties. (In accordance with the legal doctrine of closure, women in the United States can not be guardians of their own children.)
Her third husband, Asa Gilbert Eddy, died five years after they were married; he believed he had been killed by a dangerous animal magnet. Six years later, when he was 67 years old and seemed to need loyalty and affection, he formally adopted a 41-year-old homeopathy as his second son.
Eddy is a charismatic and capable of inspiring great loyalty, though Gillian Gill writes that she too can become irrational and unfriendly. According to Bryan Wilson, he cited the charismatic female leader, and was seen as head of the Christian Science church even after his death; he wrote in 1961 that his name - Christian Scientists called him Ny. Eddy or "Our beloved leader" - is still included in all the articles published in the Christian Science journal.
It was partly because of his unusual personality that Christian Science developed, despite the many disputes that he began among his followers. "He's like a patch of color in the gray community," McClure's wrote, "He never ruled out his great air, never entered the room or left it like someone else." Mark Twain, a famous critic, described it in 1907 as "vain, dishonest and jealous," but "[i] n some way... the most attractive woman who ever lived, and the most extraordinary. "
Phineas Parkhurst Quimby
Eddy tried every cure for his poor health, including a three-month stay at the Vail Hidropathic Institute in Hill, New Hampshire. He told the Boston Post in 1883 that, for seven years before 1862 (mostly his second marriage), he had been effectively confined to his bed or his room.
In 1861 Eddy heard of a healing method developed by Phineas Parkhurst Quimby, a former watchmaker in Portland, Maine. Dr. P. P. Quimby, a practitioner of "Health Science", Quimby became interested in healing after a sudden recovery from a condition he believed to be consumption (tuberculosis). After attending a lecture in Maine in 1837 by Charles Poyen, a French mesmerist, Quimby began practicing his own mesmerism. Mesmerism was named after Franz Mesmer (1734-1815), a German physician who argues for the presence of fluid in which the body can influence one another, the force he calls animal magnetism. Quimby and his assistant, Lucius Burkmar, toured in Maine and New Brunswick gave a demonstration; Burkmar, in a trance state, will offer a reading of thoughts and suggestions for healing.
Quimby abandoned mesmerism sometime around 1847 when he realized that it was a suggestion that affected a clear drug. He comes to the view that illness is a mental state. When Jesus healed the paralyzed arm, he knew, Quimby wrote, "that the arm is not the cause but the effect, and he directs himself to the intelligence, and implements his wisdom for purpose". Thus, Jesus relies on Christ, a synonym for Truth, Science and God, a power trusted by Quimby that is accessible to all human beings. Quimby refers to this idea, in February 1863, as "Christian science", a phrase used only once in writing. He writes:
In 1856, Quimby had 500 patients per year. He will sit next to them and explain that the illness is something their mind can control; sometimes he will wet his hands and rub their heads, but it is the talk that helps them, he says, not manipulation. Quimby began writing his thoughts around 1859 - his work was published posthumously as The Quimby Manuscripts in 1921 - and generous in allowing his patients to copy one of his essays, "Questions and Answers." This became a problem, starting in 1883 and onwards, when Eddy was accused of having based Christian Science on his work.
Eddy as Quimby's patient
When Eddy first met Quimby in Portland in October 1862, he had to be helped up the stairs to his consulting room. He spoke very much to him the following month in a letter to the Portland Evening Courier: "This truth which he opposes mistakes provides intelligence to matter and places pain where never puts himself... changes in system flow to action their normal... "In the second letter he offers to quote from Quimby's theory of Christ (not Jesus)." Between that time and May 1864, Eddy returned to Quimby several times, stayed for weeks in Portland and visited him every day. He writes to him regularly, and arranges sonnets for him, "Mid light of science sits deeply."
Eddy first used mental healing in a patient in March 1864, when one of Quimby's patients in Portland, Mary Ann Jarvis, suffered a relapse when she returned home to Warren, Maine. Eddy stayed with him for two months, giving Jarvis a mental cure to alleviate respiratory problems, and wrote to Quimby six times because there was no care for himself. He calls the last "angel visit"; in one of his letters to Quimby, he says that he has seen it in his room. In April, he gave a public lecture at Warren, comparing mental healing with Spiritualism, entitled: "Spiritual healing disease of P. P. Quimby, as opposed to Deism or Rochester Rapping Spiritualism."
Fall in Lynn
Quimby died on January 16, 1866, three months after Eddy's father. Eddy wrote a poem on January 22, "Death Line Dr. P. P. Quimby, Healed with the Truth Christ Christ Teaches, Contrary to All Isms," published in the local newspaper. Two weeks later, on February 1, she slipped on ice in Lynn, Massachusetts, injuring her head and neck:
Christian scientists call this "fall in Lynn," and see it as the birth of their religion. A few decades later Eddy wrote that, on the third day after the fall, he had been helped by reading certain passages. In some editions of Science and Health he identifies it as Mark 3, but then says that it is Matthew 9: 2-8, a passage about Jesus healing a crippled man in Capernaum: "As I read, The healing healing is beginning to feel, and the result is that I got up, dressed myself, and after that was in better health than I ever enjoyed before. "The doctor who took care of him at the time, Alvin M. Cushing, swore in a written statement in 1907 that the injury was not serious, and that Eddy had responded to morphine and homeopathic remedies; she did not say anything to him about miraculous healing.
Falling in Lynn in 1866 was one of several Eddy experiences associated with the development of mental healing. In the first edition of Science and Health (1875), he wrote that he had "made our first discovery that science is mentally applicable will heal the sick" in 1864, when he saw Quimby, and in 1883 told the Boston Post that he had "laid the foundation for mental healing" in 1853, when he practiced homeopathy. Elsewhere in the first edition of Science and Health he attributed the discovery to his difficulties with chronic indigestion from childhood. In another edition, he attributes the same difficulties to others. Eddy first linked the fall of Lynn to Christian Science in 1871, in a letter to a prospective student:
Whether Eddy considers himself healed at that moment is unclear. Two weeks after the fall he requested treatment from Quimby's patient, another Julius Dresser. In June of that year, Mayor Lynn told the town that Eddy had sent them a letter "where he stated that due to unsafe conditions [the streets]... he slipped and fell, causing serious injuries, from which he had little prospect for recovered, and asked for money back for injuries received. "In February 1867 Eddy and her husband, Daniel Patterson, a dentist, filed a lawsuit against the city to recover the damage.
Teaching Sally Wentworth
In March 1866, a month after the fall, Eddy and her husband (then married for 13 years) moved into an unfurnished room at Lynn. At some point her husband is away and Eddy is evicted, unable to pay a $ 1.50 weekly rent. She seems to have come back for a bit - they moved to boarding house in July, and in August she paid the bill. Cushing from autumn - but the marriage is over. He sent him $ 200 a year for a while, and they divorced in 1873.
His first student was Hiram Crafts, a shoe worker in his house where he lived, who advertised his own patient in May 1867, offering medicine for "Consumption, Catarrh, Scrofula, Dispepsia, and Rheumatism." Eddy asks Crafts to organize the exercises with him, but his plan has no results. In addition to teaching, Eddy began writing; towards the end of 1866 he began to work on the allegorical interpretation of Genesis, referred to as the first volume of a book (never published), the Bible in its Spiritual Meanings .
In the summer of 1868, while staying at Sarah Bagley's spiritual site in Amesbury, Eddy advertised for students in a Spiritualist magazine, Banner of Light, as Mary B. Glover (her husband's first surname). The ad promises a "science principle" that will heal with "medicine, electricity, physiology or hygiene necessary for unparalleled success in the most difficult cases". Sally Wentworth, another Spiritualist, offered Eddy's $ 300 worth of bed and board at Stoughton if Eddy would treat her daughter's pulmonary condition and teach her healing methods to Wentworth. Eddy lived there for two years, from 1868 to 1870, teaching Wentworth with unpublished Quimby essays, "Questions and Answers." He acknowledged that the manuscript was Quimby, and often spoke of how he promised to teach his method of healing, which at that time he called Moral Sciences.
Moral Science in Lynn
Eddy was asked to leave Wentworths' in early 1870. They fell for several problems, including his request that they pay $ 600 to publish the Genesis manuscript, which turned out to be over 100,000 words.
He returned to Amesbury to live with Sally Bagley, where he continued contact with Richard Kennedy. Kennedy had been a fellow supervisor two years earlier when he worked in a box factory, and had become one of his earliest pupils. He now asked him to join him in opening the practice of Moral Sciences at Lynn; he will meet the patient and he will teach. He agreed to pay $ 1,000 for tuition two years earlier. Kennedy rented a room in Lynn in June 1870, and placed a sign on the page, "Dr. Kennedy"; he is 21 and Eddy 49. The practice became popular. McClure's writes that people will say: "Go to Dr. Kennedy He can not hurt you, even if he does not help you."
Lynn is the center of the shoe industry and most of Eddy's students are factory workers or craftsmen. He charged $ 100, raised a few weeks later to $ 300, for a three-week course of 12 lessons (reduced in 1888 to seven). Eddy based his lessons on the revised version of Quimby's "Question and Answer" script, now called "The Science of Man, where the sick are healed, Embracing Questions and Answers in Moral Science," and on three shorter texts, "The Soul's Questions about Man, "" Spiritualism "and" Individuality, "which he has written for his classes. "Question and Answer" begins: "What is God?" The answer: "Principle, wisdom, love, and truth." Two books on mental healing emerged around that time that might have influenced Eddy's thinking: The Mental Cure (1869) and Mental Medicine (1872), either by Warren Felt Evans, who other. former patient of Quimby.
Eddy allowed his students to make copies of the manuscript, but they were forbidden, under $ 3,000, to show it to anyone. Students agree to pay Eddy 10 percent per year from earnings earned from his job, and $ 1,000 if they fail to practice or teach it. He initially taught them to rub the heads of patients, to "lay [their] hands where beliefs are to rub them forever"; Kennedy will manipulate the heads of every student and solar plexus before class in preparation. The rubbing head is abandoned when the women complain about having to tidy their hair, and rubbing the stomach also does not appeal to them. Finally Eddy told them to ignore that part of the manuscript, and since then Christian Science healing does not involve touching patients.
In 1879 Eddy sued two students (unsuccessfully) for royalty from their practice. They testify that he has claimed that he no longer needs to eat and has seen the dead are raised. Eddy tells the judge that he means he has "seen the dead in a resurrected understanding."
Christ B. Glover's Christian Scientists Home
Kennedy decided at the end of 1871 to end his business partnership with Eddy. He accused him in front of others who cheated on cards; it was one of the few scenes he caused between them and he walked out to her. There was a temporary reconciliation, but he was unhappy with the head waiver, and after a dispute between Eddy and a student about a refund was played in the local media, he decided to go his own way.
After Kennedy and Eddy settled their financial affairs in May 1872, he was left with $ 6,000. Peel wrote that at this point he has written 60 pages Science and Health . He rented a room at Lynn on 9 Broad Street, when 8 Broad Street came to the market. In March 1875, he bought it for $ 5,650, taking the students to pay the mortgage. It's in the attic room of this house that he completed Science and Health .
Shortly after his move, Eddy became close to another student, Daniel Spofford. He was 33 years old and married when he joined his class; he then leaves his wife in the hope that he will marry Eddy, but his feelings are unrequited. Spofford and seven other students agreed to form associations that would pay Eddy a certain number of weeks if he preached to them every Sunday. They call themselves the Association of Christian Scientists.
Eddy puts a mark on 8 Broad Street, Mary B. Glover's Christian Scientists' Home. According to McClure's , there is a permanent change of tenants and domestic staff, whom Eddy is accused of stealing from home; he blamed Richard Kennedy for using mesmerism to turn people against him. According to Peel, there are gossip about attractive women, men coming and going, and whether she is involved in magic. He was wounded, he wrote, but explained it: "Of course I believe in free love, I love everyone."
Science and Health
Publications
Eddy copyrighted his book, then called The Science of Life, in July 1874. Three of his students, George Barry, Elizabeth Newhall and Daniel Spofford, paid Boston printers, WF Brown and Company, $ 2,200 to produce the edition first. The printer began functioning in September 1874, but it stopped every time the down payment came out, so progress was slow. Mary Baker Glover's book - Science and Health , with eight chapters and 456 pages - finally appeared on October 30, 1875, published on behalf of the Christian Science Publishing Company.
This book was received positively by Amos Bronson Alcott, who in 1876 wrote to Eddy that he had "reaffirmed [in] the modern phrase of Christian revelation," and that he was glad it had been written by a woman. Correction on the printer is bad. Martin Gardner calls the first edition a "chaotic patch of repeated topics, with bad paragraphs", with spelling, punctuation and grammatical errors.
Eddy replaced the printer for the second edition, which was also not corrected properly, and for the third edition in 1881 switched again, this time to John Wilson & amp; Children, Press University, Cambridge, MA. John Wilson and his successor, William Dana Orcutt, continued to print the book until after Eddy's death. For the 6th edition in 1883, Eddy added with Key to the Scriptures (then titled with Key to the Scriptures ), a 20-page glossary containing the definition of the biblical term. The book sold 15,000 copies between 1875 and 1885.
In August 1885, at John Wilson's suggestion, he hired one of his readers, Reverend James Henry Wiggin, as editor and literary adviser. The issue of how much Wiggin contributes to controversial Science and Health . A former Unitarian minister, he was the editor of the book from the 16th edition of 1886 until the 50th edition of 1891-22 appeared between 1886 and 1888 alone - and according to his literary executive, spoke after Wiggin died, saying he had rewritten. Robert Peel writes that Wiggin has "perfected" Eddy's style, but it does not affect his thinking. In a letter to Wiggin in July 1886, Eddy wrote: "Never change I mean, just take it out. ."
Eddy continued to revise the book until his death in 1910. In 1902 he added a chapter, "Fruit," recounting the healing testimony of the Christian Science Journal and Christian Science Sentinel . There are more than 400 editions (the last edition being 18 chapters and 600 pages), seven of which are major revisions, according to Gottschalk, and members are encouraged to buy everything. Other income comes from the sale of rings and brooches, photos of Eddy, and 1889 spoonful souvenir Mary Baker Eddy; Eddy asks every Christian Scientist to buy at least one, or a dozen if they can. When copyright in Science and Health ended in 1971, the church persuaded Congress to extend it to 2046. The bill was supported by two aides to President Richard Nixon, Christian Scientist H. R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman. The law was canceled as unconstitutional in 1987, after a challenge by United Christian Scientists, an independent group. In 2001, Science and Health has sold over nine million copies.
Disease as error
Science and Health is extended to Eddy's view that illness is a mental error. People say that just reading Science and Health has healed them; drugs are claimed for everything from cancer to blindness. Eddy wrote in New York Sun in December 1898, in an article entitled "To the Christian World," that he had personally cured tuberculosis, diphtheria and "on one cancer visit that had eaten meat from neck and open jugular veins so that it protrudes like a rope.I have physically restored sight to the blind, heard the deaf, talked to the mute, and made the lame walk. "Eddy writes that his views are partly derived from witnessing the recovery of treated patients with homeopathic remedies that diluted them to drink water. He concludes that the Divine Mind is the healer:
He argues that even naming and reading about illness can turn a thought into a physical phenomenon, and that recording age may reduce human life. To explain how an individual can be harmed by poison without any belief about it, he refers to the power of majority opinion. Eddy permits the exclusion of Christian Science invocations, including for dentistry, optometry and broken limbs; he says he has healed a broken bone using "mental surgery," but this skill will be the last one to learn. But for the most part (past and present), Christian scientists believe that Christian medicine and Science are incompatible. Treatment confirms that something needs to be improved, while Christian Science affirms that spiritual reality is perfect and that confidence to the contrary needs to be improved.
In the 1890s Richard Cabot of Harvard Medical School studied the healing test published by the Christian Science Journal , founded by Eddy in 1883, for his senior thesis. He wrote in [i> McClure ' s in 1908 that the claim was based on a self-diagnosis or a second report from a doctor, and attributed it to a placebo effect. In 1900, the medical professor, William Purrington, called the beneficiaries "hysterical patients... victims of unclear neurological diseases."
Rodney Stark wrote that the key to Christian Science's appeal at the time was its success rate compared to doctors, especially when it came to women's health. Most doctors do not go to medical school, no antibiotics, and bad surgical practices. By comparing the placebo effect (treated at all, no matter what the treatment) works well. Stark argues that "very intricate and highly psychological Christian science care" maximizes such effects, while having the advantage of not causing further damage. "
Magnetization of dangerous animals
In January 1877 Eddy rejected the approach of Daniel Spofford, and everyone was surprised to marry one of his disciples, Asa Gilbert Eddy. Eddy already believes that his former student and business associate, Richard Kennedy, is planning to oppose it. A few weeks after the wedding, Spofford was also suspected. He had hinted in October 1876 that he might be a substitute, but instead he was expelled from the Christian Science Association for "immorality" after a fight with him about money. He filed lawsuits against himself and others for unpaid royalties or tuition fees. McClure's writes that Eddy needs "absolute and unquestionable appeal" from his students.
The belief that he was in the center of the plot and the counter-plot became the hallmark of Eddy's life. He believes that some students use what he calls "the magnet of the beast," or the evil mind, against it. (He also refers to it as An.Mal., Mes., M.A.M., m.a.m., mesmerism, evil mesmerism, animal magnetism, mental malpractice, malicious malpractice, and mental influence.)
Wilson writes that the concept of dangerous animal magnetism is an important one in Christian Science. In 1881 Eddy added a 46-page chapter on it, "Demonology", to Science and Health. From the 16th edition of 1886, when James Henry Wiggin became a book editor, the chapter was reduced and renamed, and in the last edition was a seven-page chapter called "Animal Magnetism Unmasked." Eddy spoke publicly about it, including to the press. When her husband died in 1882 she told the Boston Globe that a dangerous animal magnet had killed her.
While Eddy argues that reality is wholly spiritual (and therefore wholly good), it remains true that humans are influenced by their belief in evil, which means it has power, even if that power is just an illusion. Crime "is like going bankrupt to whom credit is still given", writes Wilson. To defend himself against it, Eddy arranges a "watch", in which the students (known as mental or metaphysical workers) will give "bad treatment" to their enemies. This is called "taking the enemy in mind". According to former students, Eddy will tell them to say (often with Richard Kennedy in mind): "You are affected because you want to influence me Your evil mind reacts to you," then calls Kennedy bilious, consumptive or poisoned by arsenic..
Eddy arranges what he calls the secret societies of his disciples (known as P. M., or private meetings) to deal with the dangerous animal magnetism, but he says the group only meets twice. In his later years, Wilson wrote, Eddy came to see animal magnetism as an impersonal force and concluded that the individual should not be "taken in mind". From 1890 he felt that his disciples were too focused on him, and after that public discussion about the dangerous magnetism of animals declined, although Gottschalk added that it continued to play an important role in the teaching of Christian Science. Adam H. Dickey, Eddy's private secretary for the last three years of his life, writes that long hours-hours are held in his home three times a day to protect him. The Mother Church Manual forbids members from practicing, and requires Christian Science teachers to instruct students "how to defend against mental malpractice, and never repay crime for crime".
Magic court, conspiracy charges
In May 1878 Eddy brought the case against Daniel Spofford, in Salem, Massachusetts, to practice mesmerism. It was later known as Salem's second magic trial. The case was filed on behalf of one of Spofford's patients, Lucretia Brown, who said that she had conjured it, even though Eddy appeared in court on behalf of Brown. In preparation for the hearing, Eddy held a 24 hour clock on 8 Broad Street, where he asked 12 students to think about Spofford for two hours each and block his evil mesmerism from him. He arrived in court with 20 supporters, including Amos Bronson Alcott ("cloud witness," according to Boston Globe ), but Judge Horace Gray ruled out the case.
The attempt to try Spofford is not the end of the dispute. In October 1878, Eddy's husband and another student, Edward Arens, were accused of conspiracy to kill Spofford. A waiter said they had offered him $ 500 to do it; after a series of complex claims and counter claims, the indictment was dropped when a witness revoked his statement. Eddy linked the allegation with a plot by a former student to undermine the sale of the second edition of Science and Health, just published. His lawyer must apply for an attachment to his house to collect the fees.
Growth
In October 1881 there was rebellion. Eight church members resigned, signing documents complaining about "Eddy's angry anger, love of money, and hypocrisy." Only a few students remained, including Calvin Frye, who became Eddy's most loyal personal assistant. They appointed pastor Eddy of the church in November 1881, and made a resolution in February 1882 that he was "the chosen messenger of God for the nations."
Despite the support, the resignation ended Eddy's time in Lynn. The Church is struggling and its reputation has been marred by disputes. Currently 61, he decided to move to Boston, and in early 1882 rented a house on 569 Columbus Avenue, a silver plaque announcing the arrival of the Massachusetts Metaphysical College. The college prospectus, published in 1884, offered three diplomas: Christian Scientist (C.S.) to members of the Association of Christian Scientists; Christian Metaphysician (C.M.) for Eddy's 12-course course and three-year training; and Doctor of Christian Science (D.C.S.) for C.M.s who "lived and character in accordance with the Divine knowledge." Students can study metaphysics, the science of the scriptures, mental healing and midwifery, using two textbooks, Science and Health and the Bible. Between 1881 and October 1889, when Eddy closed the campus, 4,000 students took a $ 300 course per person or married couple, making him a rich woman. Mark Twain writes that he has changed the sawdust mine (probably Quimby) into Klondike.
Death of Asa Gilbert Eddy
Eddy's husband, Asa Gilbert Eddy, died of heart disease on June 4, 1882, shortly after moving to Boston. He invited the Boston Globe to his home on the day of his death to allege that he had been killed by dangerous animal magnetism, thanks to "certain parties in Boston, who have vowed to harm them." The Globe writes:
A doctor performed an autopsy and showed Eddy's heart of her husband's illness, but he responded by giving more interviews about mesmerism. Fraser writes that the articles made Eddy a household name, the real-life version of the charismatic and beautiful Verena Tarrant in Henry James's The Bostonians (1885-1886), with his interest in spiritualism, women's rights and mind healing. Shortly after death, Eddy moved to 571 Columbus Avenue with some students. The following year, in 1883, he founded the Journal of Christian Science (later called the Christian Science Journal), which spread the word about his ideas throughout the United States.
Tremont Temple, first church building
In 1885 Eddy was accused of promoting Spiritualism and Pantheism by Reverend Adoniram J. Gordon, in a letter read by Joseph Cook in one of his popular lectures at Tremont Temple in Boston on Monday. He demanded the right of reply, and on March 16, 1885, he told the congregation that he was not a Spiritualist, and that he believed in God as the Most High and in redemption. He described the healing of Christian Science as "Christ came to destroy the power of the flesh." Stephen Gottschalk writes that the event marked the "emergence of Christian Science into American religious life."
The first church building was founded in 1886 at Oconto, Wisconsin, by local women who believe Christian Science has helped them. For a $ 2,000 down payment and a $ 8,763 mortgage, the church bought land in Falmouth Street, Boston, for the construction of a building. Eddy asked Augusta Stetson, a prominent scientist, to establish a church in New York. By the end of 1886 the Christian Science teaching institutions had sprung up all over the United States.
In December 1887, Eddy moved into a $ 40,000 house, 20 rooms at 385 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston. He has taught four to six classes per year, and by 1889 may have earned at least $ 100,000 (equivalent to $ 2,724,000 in 2017). In 1890, the Church of Christ (Scientist) had 8,724 members in the United States, having started 11 years earlier with only 26.
Debt Eddy to Quimby
Eddy's debt to Phineas Parkhurst Quimby became "one of the most controversial issues" of his life, according to Gillian Gill. Quimby is not the only source of Eddy accused of being copied; Ernest Sutherland Bates and John V. Dittemore, Bryan Wilson, Charles S. Braden and Martin Gardner identify some of the texts he uses without attribution. For example, an open letter from Eddy to church, dated 1895 September and published in Eddy's Miscellaneous Writings 1883-1896 (1897), almost identical to Hugh Blair's essay "The Man of Integrity," published in Lindley Murray The English Reader (1799). Eddy acknowledged the influence of Quimby in his early years. When a prospective student asked in 1871 whether his method had been used before, he replied:
Then he draws the distinction between their methods, arguing that Quimby involves one thought that heals the other, while his property depends on the relationship with the Divine Mind. In February 1883, Julius Dresser, a former patient of Quimby, accused Eddy in letters to the Boston Post who taught Quimby's work as his own. In response Eddy belittles Quimby as a mesmerist and says he has experimented with mental healing in or around 1853, nine years before he met him. He wrote later: "We caught some of his thoughts, and he caught some of us, and we're both happy to say this to each other."
The issue went to court in September 1883, when Eddy complained that his student Edward Arens had copied parts of Science and Health in a pamphlet, and Arens counter-claimed that Eddy had copied it from Quimby in the first place. Quimby's son did not want to produce his father's manuscript so he sent them abroad (perhaps worried about litigation with Eddy or that someone would tinker with it), and Eddy won the case. Things further stirred by Eddy's pamphlet Sketch History of Metaphysical Healing (1885), where he was again called Quimby a mesmerist, and by the publication of Julius Dresser The True History of Mental Healing (1887).
The accusation that Christian Science came from Quimby, not divine revelation, stems partly from Eddy's use of the Quimby script (right) while teaching Sally Wentworth and others in 1868-1870. Eddy said that he has helped fix the unpublished work of Quimby, and is now accused of copying his own corrections. To this, Lyman P. Powell, one of Eddy's biographers, wrote in 1907 that Quimby's son held a nearly identical copy, in Quimby's wife's handwriting, from the Quimby script Eddy used when teaching Sally Wentworth. It was dated February 1862, eight months before Eddy met Quimby.
In July 1904 the New York Times obtained a copy of the Quimby manuscript from Sally Wentworth's son, and the section juxtaposed with Science and Health to highlight the similarities. It also published Eddy's handwritten notes in the Quimby manuscript to show what the newspaper allegedly transitioned from his words to his own. The Quimby Manuscript was published in 1921. The authors of Eddy's biography continue to disagree about his influence on Eddy. Bates and Dittemore, the last former director of the Christian Science church, argued in 1932 that "practically all of Quimby's" practicable matter, Science and Health "is all that, except for the dangerous mesmerism of animals. Robert Peel, who also worked for the church, wrote in 1966 that Eddy might have influenced Quimby as much as he influenced him. Gardner argued in 1993 that Eddy had taken "big chunks" from Quimby, and Gill in 1998 that there were only commonalities.
First prosecution
In 1887 Eddy began teaching "metaphysical obstetrics", two classes one week. He began calling himself "Professor of Midwifery" in 1882; McClure's wrote: "Hundreds of Mrs. Eddy's students then practice who do not know more about obstetrics than babies they help into this world." The first prosecution took place that year, when practitioners were accused of practicing drugs without a license. All were released during the trial, or the conviction was canceled on appeal.
The first murder accusations occurred in March 1888, when Abby H. Corner, a practitioner in Medford, Massachusetts, attended his daughter in childbirth; his daughter died of blood and the baby did not survive. Defenders argue that they may have died even with medical treatment, and the Corner was released. To worry about the Christian Scientists' Association, Eddy distanced himself from the Corner, told the Boston Globe that Corner only attended lectures for a semester and never entered the midwifery class.
From that time until the 1990s about 50 elderly and practitioners were prosecuted, and often released, after adults and children died without medical care; costs range from waiver to second degree murder. The American Medical Association (AMA) declares war on Christian Scientists; in 1895, his journal called Christian Science and similar ideas "molochs to baby, and pestilential perilases to communities in spreading infectious diseases." But the jury was reluctant to punish when the defendants believed they were helping patients. There is also opposition to AMA's efforts to strengthen medical licensing laws. Historian Shawn Peters writes that, in court and public debates, Christian Scientists and Jehovah's Witnesses link their claims of healing to early Christianity to get support from other Christians.
Vaccination is another battlefield. A Christian Scientist in Wisconsin won a case in 1897 that allowed his son to attend a public school even though it was not vaccinated against smallpox. Others were arrested in 1899 for avoiding vaccinations during smallpox outbreaks in Georgia. In 1900, Eddy advised his followers to obey the law, "and then appealed to the gospel to save [themselves] from bad results." In October 1902, after the seven-year-old Esther Quimby, the daughter of Christian Scientists, died of diphtheria in White Plains, New York (she received no medical treatment and was not quarantined), the authorities pursued murder charges. The controversy prompted Eddy to state that "until public thought becomes more familiar with Christian Science, Christian scientists must reject infectious doctors or infectious diseases," and since then the church has demanded Christian scientists to report infectious diseases to the health boards.
Building a Mother Church
In 1888 Eddy became close to his other disciples, Ebenezer Johnson Foster, a homeopath and a graduate of Hahnemann Medical College. He is 41 years old and he is 67 years old, but seems to need the affection and loyalty he adopted him formally in November of that year, and he changed his name to Ebenezer Johnson Foster Eddy.
A year later, in October 1889, Eddy closed Massachusetts Metaphysical College; according to Bates and Dittemore, state lawyers are investigating colleges that fraudulently pass medical students. He also confiscated a mortgage on land bought in Boston by the church, then bought it for himself for $ 5,000 through an intermediary, even though it cost much more. He told the church that they could own land for their buildings on condition that they formally dismiss the church; this is apparently meant to stop the internal insurgency that has bothered him. The following year he dissolved the National Christian Science Association. Wilson writes that the dissolution enabled him to create a central church controlled by a board of directors of five people who only answered him, which gave the church a stability that helped him survive his death.
The foundation of the First Church of Christ, Scientist, containing the Bible, Eddy's writings and a list of directors and financial contributors, was put in May 1894 in the Back Bay area of ​​Boston. Church members raise funds for development, and the building was completed in December 1894 at a cost of $ 250,000. It contained "Mother's Room" in the tower for Eddy's personal use, complemented by rare books, silk, tapestries, rugs, nightgowns and sandals, although he only spent one night there and then converted into storage space. The entrance to the room is made of Italian marble, and the word Mother is engraved on the floor.
In two years, Boston's membership has gone beyond the capacity of the original church. In 1903 a block around the church was purchased by Christian Scientists, and in 1906 the Extension of the Mother Church, which housed 5,000 people, was completed at a cost of $ 2 million. It draws criticism that, while Christian scientists spend money on a magnificent church, they do not care for hospitals, orphanages or missions in the slums.
Christianity became the fastest-growing American religion in the early twentieth century. The federal religious census recorded 85,717 Christian Scientists in 1906; 30 years later, it's 268,915. In 1890 there were seven Christian Science churches in the United States, a number that had risen to 1,104 in 1910. Churches began to appear in other countries as well: 58 in England, 38 in Canada and 28 elsewhere in 1910.
Mark Twain View
Mark Twain is a prominent contemporary critic from Eddy. His first article on Christian Science was published at Cosmopolitan in October 1899. The other three appeared in 1902-1903 at the North American Review , then a book, Christian Science (1907). He also wrote "The Secret History of Eddypus, the World Empire" (1901-1902), in which Christian Science replaced Christianity and Eddy became Pope.
Twain describes Eddy as "[g] hoarse, dirty, deceitful, thirsty for everything he sees-money, power, glory-vain, dishonest, jealous, despotic, arrogant, brazen, pitiless in which thinkers and hypnotic caring, illiterate, superficial, unable to reason outside the commercial path, selfishly immeasurable. "
Science and Health he was called "weird and panicked and incomprehensible and interpreted," and argued that Eddy did not write it himself. "Nothing in Christian Science can not be explained," he wrote, "because God is one, Time is one, Individuality is one, and perhaps one of a series, one of many, as individual human, individual horses, one, not one of the series, but only one and without the equivalent. "Eddy parted ways, Twain felt ambivalent toward the healing of the mind, arguing that" the back thing is wholly generous and beautiful. " His daughter Clara Clemens became a Christian Scientist and wrote a book about her, Awake to the Perfect Day (1956). McClure's McClure's McClure's
The first history of Christian Science appeared in McClure magazine in 14 installments from January 1907 to June 1908, preceded by an editorial in December 1906. The essence of the article, including court documents and a written statement from Eddy's colleagues, is that attention Eddy's primary is money, and that he has obtained Christian Science from Quimby. The material was also published as a book, Mary Baker G. Eddy's Life and Christian Science History (1909). It became a key source for most of the history of non-religious churches. The editor-in-chief assigned five writers to work on the series, including novelist Willa Cather as lead author. The book was not printed since the beginning of his life by the Christian Science Church, which bought the original manuscript. It was reissued in 1971 by the Baker Book House when its copyright ended, and again in 1993 by the University of Nebraska Press.
More Friends Settings, Death Eddy
In March 1907 some of Eddy's relatives filed an unsuccessful lawsuit, "Friend's Next Friend," against a member of Eddy's family, alleging that he could not manage his own affairs. Calvin Frye, his old personal assistant, was the special target of the allegations. The front page of the October 1906, "Mrs. Mary Baker G. Eddy Dying, Footman and Dummy Control Her," says that Eddy lives at home and is dying of cancer, whose staff have controlling his wealth, and that other women imitate him in public.
The newspaper persuaded the family of Eddy (or "subsequent friends") to file a lawsuit. Several joined the action, including Eddy's biological son, George Glover, and adopted son, Ebenezer J. Foster Eddy. Eddy was interviewed at his home in August 1907 by a judge and two psychiatrists, who concluded that he was mentally competent. In response to the McClure's and New York World stories Eddy asked the church in July 1908 to find the Christian Science Monitor as a platform for journalistic accountability.
It appeared in November of that year, with the motto "To harm anyone but to bless all mankind," and then winning seven Pulitzer Prizes between 1950 and 2002.
Eddy died two years later, on the evening of Saturday, December 3, 1910, aged 89. The Mother Church announced at the end of Sunday morning worship that Eddy had "passed from our sight." It is said that "the time will come when there will be no more death," but the Christian scientists "are not looking for the return of [Mr Eddy] in this world." His property is worth $ 1.5 million, most of which he left behind to church.
Decline
The census at the height of religious popularity in 1936 was calculated c. 268,915 Christian Scientists in the United States (2.098 per million). With a downward movement, the church has sold buildings to free the funds; it closed 23 of the churches in Los Angeles between 1960 and 1995, and in 2004 it sold First Church of Christ, Scientist, Manhattan, to Crenshaw Christian Center for $ 14 million. (The building was sold again in 2014 to be converted into condominiums.)
There were about 106,000 scientists in the United States in 1990 (427 per million), according to Rodney Stark. In 2009, the church said that for the first time more new members are being received from Africa than from the United States, even though they do not offer numbers. Although the Manual of Mother Church prohibits church members from publishing membership numbers, churches provide names of Christian Science practitioners (members trained to offer Christian prayer on behalf of others). In 1941 there were 11,200 practitioners in the United States, fighting 965 in 2015 (1,249 worldwide). Stark writes that the group of practitioners enrolled in the Christian Science Journal in 1998 lived in the same pension community.
Stark attributes the emergence of movements in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to several factors, notably the early medical practice. Because patients often fare better without medical treatment, Christian Science invocation is advantageous compared. Other factors include that the church maintains cultural continuity with Christianity by emphasizing that it is Christian and adopting the term, despite the new content that Eddy introduces. It's not puritanical. Members are expected to not drink or smoke, but instead can do what they like, and some exceptions to avoid treatment are allowed.
In 1906, 72 percent of Christian Scientists in the United States were female, compared to 49 percent of the population. The church appeals to women because it offers professional opportunities when it is difficult for women to find work outside the home. As Christian scientists, they can become practitioners after only 12 lessons. Of the 14 practitioners enrolled in the first edition of the Christian Science Journal , 12 were women.
The increase in the efficacy of drugs around World War II touted the decline of religion. Stark mapped the use of sulfonamide to kill bacteria, the availability of penicillin in the 1940s and a breakthrough in immunology. Other factors increase career opportunities for women, and that most of the members are elderly. In 1998, 30 percent of Christian Scientists were over 65 years old. Eddy was in his sixties when the movement began to spread. Stark writes that "the earliest member characteristics of a movement will tend to be reproduced in subsequent conversions." A significant percentage of
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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