Mary Baker Eddy

Mary Baker Eddy, age 65, Apr. 9, 1886

Mary Baker Eddy (July 16, 1821 – December 3, 1910) was the founder of the Christian Science movement, The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, Massachusetts, an international newspaper The Christian Science Monitor, and several religious magazines still in circulation today. She was also an author, teacher, speaker, and healer, whose chief work, the book Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures was included by the Women’s National Book Association on its list of 75 Books By Women Whose Words Have Changed the World.“[1] While the first edition of Science and Health gained limited notice, a decade later Eddy, and the orthodox-challenging form of Christianity she promoted, had gained notoriety in Boston where her teaching drew adherents from male-dominated orthodox churches, many of whose pastors lashed out in response. Though poor and infirm during the years leading up to a pivotal experience of spiritual healing in 1866 that was instrumental in launching her efforts to establish a new Christian denomination, by the end of her life, she had become wealthy and a property owner, and was one of the most famous, controversial and powerful women of her time. More than two dozen biographies have been written about her life, beginning in 1907 (three years before her death). A 2021 book, A New Christian Identity: Christian Science Origins and Experience in American Culture by Amy B. Voorhees is at once a biography of Mary Baker Eddy, a textual and historical study of the evolution of Science and Health, and a social history of the beginnings of the Christian Science movement.

Personal life

Mary Baker Eddy's personal life was, for her times, as unusual as her outer successes later in life. Her first husband moved her across the country and when he died, she was left with no money and six months pregnant. She managed to make the 1400-mile journey back to family in time for the birth, but lacking a home or money of her own, she relegated her young son to relatives and lived by moving among the households of various friends and relatives. She married for a second time, but this husband turned out to be a philanderer and disastrous at managing money, and she divorced him. She later married a third time, a happy union lasting only a few years until the death of her husband. In her later years, she became a healer and teacher, self-published an influential book, managed and guided a rapidly growing mega-church, accumulated personal wealth, and founded a newspaper that over the next century would win seven Pulitzer prizes. She bought land at a time when very few women had rights to land or house ownership. In her old age, she fought off multiple attempts by others to declare her incompetent and seize control of the church, or her personal finances.

Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures

Mary Baker Eddy first self-published Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures in 1875, and continued revising it for more than three decades until closely before her death. Many sources overlook the importance of this book in its finalized form, dating from around 1907. It is well known as the foundational guidance for the Church of Christ, Scientist, but it is far more than that. It is a work of deep philosophical significance, wrestling to express concepts of duality vs. union, as taught by Jesus Christ and (in striking ways) similar to concepts taught by the Buddha. Its claim that prior interpretations of scripture through history frequently misunderstood important concepts is bound to stir up wrath in circles that consider themselves entitled to weigh in on the meaning of Christian scripture. Furthermore, for a woman to found a church and maintain control over it by definition was against prevailing social norms. Eddy biographer Gillian Gill wrote:

"...my central, and unexpected, conclusion was that both Christian Science loyalists and their opponents have attacked and avoided the book because it is too radical. The real issue is the author's audacity, her daring to think that a woman like her, with her resources, could write, not the expected textbook on mental healing techniques, not the comfortable compendium of healing anecdotes, but a book that takes on the great questions of God and man, good and evil, and that rejects orthodox verities."

Biographies

The MARY BAKER EDDY Library provides a timeline for more than thirty attempted biographies of Mary Baker Eddy. Two of these stand out as particularly worth attention.

Georgine Milmine

From 1909, The Life of Mary Baker Eddy and the History of Christian Science by Georgine Milmine was created by aggregating a series of exposé articles published 1907 to 1909 in McClure's Magazine. According to Gillian Gill's extensive investigation of the Milmine work as background for her own 1998 biography, not only is Milmine's authorship in question, but the background sources for the articles were dominated by people who had brought lawsuits against Mrs. Eddy or had previously fallen out with her, and the true authorship of the series more likely belongs with some of McClure's well known staff (which included the now famous Willa Cather).

It now appears that the avowed author of the book probably wrote little of the book which bears her name. Milmine's authorship was not challenged in print until 1993, when a letter was found implicating Willa Cather as author of parts 2-14 of the series. Cather appears not to have wanted any public association with the book, and the terms of Cather's will prevent a key letter about the matter from being published (although Gill paraphrases its contents). Ms. Gill notes the extraordinary influence of this early biography on subsequent biographies (such as Powell 1907; Dakin 1929; and Bates/Dittemore 1932), despite its own source materials being lost and despite the complex mystery surrounding its authorship and the intentions and objectivity of its authors.

The promotion of this book touts it as being free from influence from the Church of Christ, Scientist (not for lack of trying), so it was, perhaps unfortunately, for a time to be considered the single trustworthy source of information on, especially, the first half of Mrs. Eddy's life. While some of the Milmine biography is neutral in tone, or even complimentary, other parts are extremely scathing. And the author was clearly targeting a female audience. The reader may be startled at several figures of speech taken from the realms of knitting and sewing.

Gillian Gill

From 1998, Mary Baker Eddy by Gillian Gill provides a balanced approach. The author was granted, after some patient waiting, access to archives closely held by the First Church of Christ, Scientist in Boston. This now out-of-print, 713-page tome (150+ pages of which are notes, references and appendices) is one of the more clear-eyed examinations of Mary Baker Eddy's life, and contains much useful material about the condition and expectations for women in the latter part of nineteenth-century America. Taking essentially no stand on whether or not Mary Baker Eddy possessed a special healing ability, and making no judgements about her religion, the book examines Mary Baker Eddy as a person, a woman, and later a public figure. It's one of those books where the readers may find themselves spending as much time reading the footnotes as the text itself.