61st Issue: Mary Baker Eddy

Today I will write about Mary Baker Eddy. She founded the Church of Christ, Scientist, which is also known as Christian Science. I think it’s very interesting that at the turn of the 20^th century, a major religious Christian movement was started by a woman, so I wanted to learn more about her.

Mary was born as Mary Morse Baker in a farmhouse. She had five brothers and sisters. Her father was Protestant and very religious and had a fierce temper. Mary didn’t get along well with her father. He would punish her, but then her mother, who was quiet and kind, would treat her well. Mary had bouts of panic as a child and young woman, where she would lie on the floor screaming and then sometimes go unconscious for hours. Sometimes her family would panic and run off to find a doctor if she was out for too long. Mary also had stomach problems, and for a while went on a diet where she ate one meal a day of only bread, water and vegetables. Because of her health issues, she wanted to learn about things that could cure her or provide relief. She studied allopathy, homeopathy, hydropathy, etc., and got nowhere.

Mary did not go to school, but she spent a lot of time reading at home, and her brother taught her Hebrew, Greek and Latin. She went to school for a little while as a teenager, but had to leave due to her health, and then was tutored privately. When Mary was seventeen, she joined the Congregational Church, but she did not agree with predestination and eternal damnation at all.

Mary’s brother Albert, who had taught her languages, as well as her first husband passed away within three years of each other. She’d only been married for six months. She was pregnant, and gave birth to her son George Washington in her parents’ home. Mary made money by writing articles for some publications, and worked as a substitute teacher for a while. Her mother died in 1849, her fiancé died shortly after, and Mary thought that there was nothing left for her. Her son was sent away to live with relatives because she could not provide for him and as a woman she was not his legal guardian. Her father remarried, and did not want to look after her son. Mary moved in with her sister, Abigail, who also did not want to take in her son, and the family that George was staying with moved away. Mary lost touch with him and did not see him for many years. He ended up tracking her down when he was thirty four years old, married and with two kids by then, having fought in the Civil War.

Mary’s health was still bad. She tried the water cure at a Hydropathic Institute (dumping you in cold water) but it just made her worse. She then tried mesmerism (basically a form of hypnosis) with a man named Phineas Quimby, and it seemed to help her. However the relief was only temporary, and she started becoming sick again.

 

 

Phineas spent a lot of time with Mary. He didn’t believe that mesmerism had anything to do with religion, but Mary believed it was the same kind of healing that Jesus Christ did. They had long discussions, and she edited his manuscripts and added religious ideas to them. Phineas was an atheist, but he didn’t mind Mary adding religious notes to his work, since he knew it would get him more patients and more money.

Mary’s father and Phineas both died around the end of the Civil War. Phineas’s followers didn’t like Mary, and accused her of stealing his work. Soon after, Mary stumbled on a patch of ice and injured her spine, adding that to her other ailments. She then healed and recovered, which she decided was due to some methods and thoughts that became known as Christian Science. She believed that all you had to do to heal was to become religious and reject drugs, hygiene and medicine. Mary thought that if Jesus didn’t need that to heal, neither did she.

Mary worked as a medium and healer for a while. Spiritualism was very popular, and she did participate in some seances, but she was never considered to be a true believer. Her followers later said that she was just participating because she had spiritualist friends and she was being nice. In her writings, she denounced spiritualism and when she went to seances she tried to convert people into Christian Science.

Mary married again to a man named Daniel Patterson, separated from him, and then divorced him. I don’t think she actually lived with him for very long at all. He is not important to her life story. She wrote a book called Science and Health which she said was the textbook of Christian Science. She self-published the books but they caught on, and she taught hundreds of people her methods.

In 1877, Mary married Asa Gilbert Eddy, in a ceremony conducted by a Unitarian Minister. In 1882, she got a charter from the state that allowed her to grant degrees at her own school, the Massachusetts Metaphysical College. Gilbert died that same year.

Mary spent the rest of her life creating a church. She called it the First Church of Christ, Scientist. Her students spread the religion across the country, and she also, along with them, wrote a periodical as well as a magazine that had wide distribution. She opened a reading room in 1888. Christian Science Reading Rooms today are in more than 1200 places across the country, selling her writings and other related books and publications. In 1894 the church building was completed, and Mary served as a pastor. In 1908 she founded the Christian Science Monitor, a daily newspaper, which has since gone on to win several Pulitzer Prizes.

Mary did believe that these healing powers she talked about could be used for bad. She called that animal magnetism, and kicked out at least two of her students for supposedly practicing that.

 

 

Though Mary preached no use of medicine, doctors, or vaccines, she was kind of a hypocrite. Some say that Mary was addicted to morphine. Mary recommended that her son have his children vaccinated. She paid for a mastectomy for her sister in law. When she was older, she went to physicians a lot for treatment.

She died in 1910 and was buried in Cambridge, Massachusetts, but her religion lives on. It has caused legal cases and prosecutions in many situations where children and adults have been denied medical care for completely preventable and treatable diseases because they or their families are Christian Scientists. Learning about Mary’s life did not get me any closer to understanding why someone would do this.