Mary Baker Eddy

Born Mary Morse Baker. By first marriage, known as Mary Baker Glover. After being widowed in 1844, known by her second marriage as Mary Baker Glover Eddy or Mary Baker G. Eddy and best known as simply Mary Baker Eddy (July 16, 1821 - December 3, 1910) founded the Church of Christ, Scientist in 1879 and was the author of its fundamental doctrinal Textbook, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures.

Life

Mary Baker Eddy, the youngest of the six children of Abigail and Mark Baker was born in Bow, New Hampshire. Raised a Congregationalist, though she rebelled against teachings like predestination. She suffered chronic illness and developed a strong interest in the biblical accounts of early Christian healing. In 1843 she married George Washington Glover. He died about a year later, shortly before the birth of their only child, George Washington Glover, Jr. In 1853 she married Dr. Daniel Patterson. In the 1860s she began to explore faith-healing and associated with Phineas Quimby. His influence on her is disputed; she thought highly of him personally but ultimately disavowed his technique as more mesmerism-based than Christian. She divorced Patterson, her second husband in 1873 for adultery that he readily admitted. In 1877 she married Asa Gilbert Eddy. Her third husband died in 1882.

Illness

After a severe injury in 1866, Eddy turned to the Bible and recovered unexpectedly. Despite this unexpected recovery, however, she still tried to claim money from the city for her injury on the grounds that she was ‘still suffering from the effects of that fall’. She then devoted the next three years to biblical study and the development of Christian Science. Convinced that illness was, at base, a mental illusion that could be healed through a clearer perception of God, she began teaching her theory of healing to others privately. She felt that she had discovered a positive rule or Principle to healing in a new understanding of God as divine Principle and infinite Spirit above the limitations of a material sense of reality that she termed error.

Founds her Church

Eddy set forth her understanding of this discovery in a book entitled "Science and Health" (years later retitled Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures), which she called the textbook of Christian Science, and which she published in its first edition of one thousand copies in 1875, writing therein, "In the year 1866, I discovered the Christ Science or divine laws of Life, Truth, and Love, and named my discovery Christian Science" (page 107).

Eddy would devote the remaining years of her life to the establishment of her church, authoring its governing bylaws, "The Manual of the Mother Church," and revising "Science and Health." While Eddy was a highly controversial religious leader, author, and lecturer, thousands of people flocked to her teachings and claimed to find healing.

Builds her Church

Eddy would build her Church on the strength of this healing work by both herself as well as over four thousands students that she taught at her Massachusetts Metaphysical College in Boston, Massachusetts between the years 1882 and 1889. These students spread across the country practicing healing by her teachings. Through the auspices of her church, she would authorize these students to list themselves as Christian Science Practitioners in her church's official monthly organ, the Christian Science Journal.

In 1908, at the age of 87, she founded The Christian Science Monitor, a daily newspaper devoted to balance. She also founded the Christian Science Journal in 1883, a monthly magazine focused chiefly on the church audience; the Christian Science Sentinel in 1898, a weekly religious periodical written for a more general public audience, and the Herald of Christian Science, a religious magazine with editions in non-English languages, for children, and in English-Braille. She died December 10, 1910.

Biographies

A biography which eventually became the church-authorized biography of Eddy is Robert Peel's trilogy Mary Baker Eddy: The Years of Discovery, Mary Baker Eddy: The Years of Trial, and Mary Baker Eddy: The Years of Authority. (1966-1971)
A more recent single volume is another church-authorized 1999 but controversial work by a non-Christian Scientist, Gillian Gill (ISBN 0738202274), which includes review of the numerous other biographies over the years.
See also Stephen Gottschalk, Rolling Away the Stone, Mary Baker Eddy's Challenge to Materialism, (ISBN 0253346738) for a new account of her founding the church and relations to critics such as Mark Twain. (Indiana University Press: 2006)
Mary Baker Eddy, Speaking for Herself (ISBN 0879522755)
Willa Cather and Georgine Milmine The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy and the History of Christian Science (1993) began as a famous Muckraking magazine series 1907-08 and highly critical book in 1909. Scholars who are not Christian Scientists rely on it, but church members disfavor it.
Doris and Moris Grekel also wrote three-part non church-authorized biography on Eddy, The Discovery of the Science of Man: (1821-1888), (ISBN 189310723X), The Founding of Christian Science: The Life of Mary Baker Eddy 1888-1900, (ISBN 1893107248), and The Forever Leader: (1901-1910) (ISBN 0964580381). This biography was aimed at serious students of Christian Science as opposed to the general public.
Former Church treasurer and clerk, John V. Dittemore teamed up with Ernest Sutherland Bates, in 1932, to write a unfavorable biography, Mary Baker Eddy - The Truth and the Tradition. Most of the prose was written by Bates and Dittemore would later distance himself from the book as it was highly opinionated and contained factual and historical inaccuracies. It has some genuinely distinct information including a list of Eddy's students taught at the Massachusetts Metaphysical College.
The famous novelist Stefan Zweig wrote a biography Mary Baker Eddy

Works

Science And Health, With Key To The Scriptures - 1875, revised through 1910
Miscellaneous Writings
Retrospection and Introspection
Unity of Good
Pulpit and Press
Rudimental Divine Science
No and Yes
Christian Science versus Pantheism
Message to The Mother Church, 1900
Message to The Mother Church, 1901
Message to The Mother Church, 1902
Christian Healing
The People's Idea of God
The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany
The Manual of The Mother Church

Notes

External links

The Mary Baker Eddy Library
The Longyear Museum
National Women's Hall of Fame (Inducted in 1995)
First Church of Christ, Scientist
Former Christian Scientists (See Discussion under "Balance")

Gourt Home::Gourt :: Mary Baker Eddy