One hundred and fifty years ago, a woman living in Swampscott, Massachusetts, had an ah-ha moment. She couldn’t describe the epiphany, but it resulted in an instant recovery from an injury caused a few days earlier that had left her bedridden.
The attending physician and friends of the New England woman called the recovery a miracle. She explained her healing as the “falling apple” that compelled her to learn “how” she was healed. It led her to discover a timeless spiritual force that she later labeled, Christian Science.
By the turn of the 20th century, Christian Science was all the rage in America and Europe, along with the woman’s name, Mary Baker Eddy (1821-1910). She was a pioneer in mind-study, though not the human mind, but divine mind.
Eddy became a prolific writer on the subject of Christian Science, defined as a law of God interpreting a divine order. She taught classes on the power of prayer. She started a publishing house. She started a church, headquartered in Back Bay. She founded a secular newspaper. She revised her principal book, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, continuously until her death.
Visitors today can visit the Swampscott house, along with other houses connected to the life of Eddy. The houses are maintained and open to the public by Longyear Museum, founded by Mary Beecher Longyear (1851-1931) and based in Chestnut Hill. Evidence from bygone days’ point to the historical environment from which Eddy plucked her ideas.
During the Industrial Age, religious and secular teachings received a good shaking, along with the belief that cultural standings and physical matter were fixed. Eddy began preaching that there is more to the reality than what we see with our eyes. She valued the systematic approach of science, using logic and inspiration, rather than belief, and applied it to her religion. Prayer became a tool for healing, not only sin, but also physical problems.
Christian Science went on to be chronicled by thousands of people as the power behind remarkable spiritual healings of hate, fear, addictions, depression, tuberculosis, and fatigue. Christian Science was noticeably celebrated more than it was satirized.
Today, Christian Science isn’t well known, or known well. It’s confused with scientology. In retracing the steps of history, one can learn that Christian Science now carries baggage, the heaviest burden picked up in the 20th century when it was nearly redefined by critics and admirers alike to mean radical reliance on prayer or sacred words, instead of relying on a spiritual understanding of God.
It is disingenuous to argue that committed prayer is divorced from Christian Science, as it is to assert that ritualistic prayer is synonymous with Christian Science. History shows, human beings make mistakes. Mary Baker Eddy made mistakes. But those mistakes could be learned from and rightness can reassert itself.
Visitors and enquirers may wonder, is Eddy original or a fraud? Is Christian Science Christian or cult? Is it’s spiritual healing genuine or bogus?
Mary Baker Eddy and Christian Science will be any of those to different people at different times. Their accomplishments will always be up for debate. History shows however, that Christian Science challenged the old thinking that health is a state of physical matter. It challenged mass consciousness to examine and pursue mindful healing. It challenged thinkers to consider how spirituality improves approaches to health, science, and religion.
Bio: Cheryl Petersen’s book is, from science & religion to God: a briefer narrative of Mary Baker Eddy’s Science and Health. Available at Amazon.com Cheryl’s website is www.HealingScienceToday.com
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