Mary Baker Eddy founded a religion with equality at its core

|
Courtesy of the Mary Baker Eddy Library
Mary Baker Eddy, the discoverer and founder of Christian Science.
  • Quick Read
  • Deep Read ( 3 Min. )

Many people of her day considered Mary Baker Eddy’s approach to Christianity as breathtakingly expansive. Others rejected her ideas because she was a woman, and some because her theology was unconventional, even radical – for example, her theological position that the God of Christianity is feminine as well as masculine. 

She published “Science and Health, with Key to the Scriptures,” the central text of Christian Science, in 1875, and founded The Church of Christ, Scientist, in 1879 to “reinstate primitive Christianity and its lost element of healing.” She also started The Christian Science Publishing Society, which produces numerous religious publications as well as the Monitor. 

Mrs. Eddy’s public support of women’s empowerment, as well as her many achievements, contributed to the battle for women’s rights, though Mrs. Eddy did not associate herself with the suffrage movement. She is recognized as the founder of a global Christian denomination with equal roles for women and men. Feminist scholar Susan Lindley remarked on Mrs. Eddy’s “example for other women of one who had broken with cultural limitations on female achievement.” 

Why We Wrote This

The founder of the Christian Science Church, and of the Monitor, was a woman ahead of her time. As The Monitor marks 100 years of women's right to vote, we reflect on her leadership, which enabled others to break through societal and religious limitations.

Think of it for a moment: The story you are reading right now exists because of a woman who wasn’t even allowed to vote. 

Voting was only one of the ways American women were denied a voice in the 19th century. So how did a farm girl from New Hampshire come to be considered one of the most influential, accomplished, and controversial women of her era? Or, as biographer Gillian Gill noted in a talk, “What other woman in American history has ... achieved enough authority ... that she could – essentially by the stroke of a pen – decree that a new daily newspaper ... should forthwith come into existence and should be called The Christian Science Monitor?” 

At a time when few women spoke in public, much less encroached upon all-male clerical territory, Mary Baker Eddy’s voice was prominent. Besides founding the Monitor, Mrs. Eddy is best known for establishing the Christian Science Church and the religion behind it. She published its textbook and her most significant work, “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures,” in 1875, and it became a bestseller. She gave public talks that, eventually, attracted thousands. She wrote articles on issues of the day. Later in life, her every statement and activity were covered by the media. Scholar Rosemary R. Hicks Corbett, in the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, wrote that Mrs. Eddy “participated in enlarging the place of women in ... the male-dominated ‘public’ sector.” 

Why We Wrote This

The founder of the Christian Science Church, and of the Monitor, was a woman ahead of her time. As The Monitor marks 100 years of women's right to vote, we reflect on her leadership, which enabled others to break through societal and religious limitations.

Born in 1821 and raised in the Congregational Church, Mrs. Eddy had long been a deeply spiritual thinker and seeker, willing to challenge convention. A turning point came in 1866, when, walking to a meeting of temperance activists, Mrs. Eddy fell on an icy sidewalk in Lynn, Massachusetts, badly injuring herself. After three days of suffering, she asked to be left alone, and turned to her Bible. Pondering one of Jesus’ healings, she had a flash of insight into the relationship of spiritual understanding to health. She was suddenly well.

She sought to understand how she had been healed, and closeted herself away for years to pray, write, and test her ideas about a scientific system of healing prayer that all could use and understand. Many people saw her approach to Christianity as breathtakingly expansive, but others found the ideas objectionable: some, simply because she was a woman; others, because her theology was unconventional, even radical – for example, her theological position that the God of Christianity is feminine as well as masculine. 

She founded The Church of Christ, Scientist, in 1879 to, she wrote, “reinstate primitive Christianity and its lost element of healing.” Indeed, notes American religions scholar John K. Simmons, healing, “of both sin and sickness, became a focus of the religion, a practical manifestation of the change in thinking from the material to the spiritual.” The movement she started grew rapidly. She started The Christian Science Publishing Society, which produces numerous religious publications as well as the Monitor.

As her prominence grew, Mrs. Eddy came under scrutiny, moving from a once-impoverished outcast to become, as Human Life magazine put it in 1907, “the most famous, interesting and powerful woman in America, if not in the world, today.” 

Dr. Corbett writes that Mrs. Eddy’s public support of women’s empowerment, as well as her many achievements, contributed to the battle for women’s rights, though Mrs. Eddy did not associate herself with the suffrage movement. Mrs. Eddy is recognized as the founder of a global Christian denomination with equality at its core. Feminist scholar Susan Lindley remarked on
Mrs. Eddy’s “example for other women of one who had broken with cultural limitations on female achievement.” 

Mrs. Eddy has left her mark on women’s leadership:

  • In 1992, the Women’s National Book Association named Science and Health as one of 75 books written by women whose words have changed the world.
  • Mrs. Eddy is one of only eight women on The Atlantic’s 2006 list of “The 100 Most Influential Figures in American History.”
  • She was on Smithsonian Magazine’s 2014 list of the “100 Most Significant Americans of All Time.”

When Mrs. Eddy was elected to the National Women’s Hall of Fame in 1995, she was recognized for being “the only American woman to found a lasting American-based denomination.” 

In a nod to the broader sweep of her impact, the Hall of Fame statement noted how she “emerged from obscurity to make an indelible mark on religion, medicine, and journalism.”

Karla Vallance is author of the forthcoming book “A Changed Life: The Mary Baker Eddy Story.”  

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Mary Baker Eddy founded a religion with equality at its core
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Society/2020/0807/Mary-Baker-Eddy-founded-a-religion-with-equality-at-its-core
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe