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Learn about the key points of Christian Science, a religion based on the Bible and the healing power of God's love. Find out how Christian Scientists live by the Sermon on the Mount and demonstrate the spiritual laws of Love.
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- The ‘science’ of Christian Science is spiritual healing. Christian Science is a non-Christian sect that was created by New Englander Mary Baker Eddy.
- Christian Scientists claim to have no doctrines—though they do have six tenets. When asked if Christian Scientists had a religious creed, Eddy replied, “They have not, if by that term is meant doctrinal beliefs.”
- Their ‘pastor’ is not a human, but a pair of books. For Christian Scientists, the ultimate textual authority is not the Bible but Eddy’s Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures.
- Christian Scientists distinguish between Jesus and Christ. For Christian Scientists, Jesus was a man who lived in first-century Palestine and Christ is the name for a certain divine idea: “Jesus is the human man, and Christ is the divine idea; hence the duality of Jesus the Christ.”
Christian Science is a set of beliefs and practices which are associated with members of the Church of Christ, Scientist. Adherents are commonly known as Christian Scientists or students of Christian Science, and the church is sometimes informally known as the Christian Science church.
Christian Science is a Science of Christianity based on the Bible and the discovery of God as infinite Love and good. Learn about the founder, Mary Baker Eddy, the Bible, the Christian Science Pastor, and the healing power of prayer.
- Overview
- History, organization, and development
Christian Science, religious denomination founded in the United States in 1879 by Mary Baker Eddy (1821–1910), author of the book that contains the definitive statement of its teaching, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (1875). It is widely known for its highly controversial practice of spiritual healing.
Christian Science emerged in late 19th-century America, when Darwinism, biblical criticism, and other secularizing influences weakened the supernaturalist structure of Protestant orthodoxy. Troubled Christians, divided between what Eddy called a “stern Protestantism” and a “doubtful liberalism,” were drawn to Christian Science because of the practice of spiritual healing and the promise of renewed faith.
Reared in a strict Congregationalist home in rural New Hampshire, Mary Baker (Eddy is the last name of her third husband) broke with the hellfire determinism of her father’s stark Calvinist theology. Yet she retained from that heritage a Bible-centred, though somewhat unorthodox, piety that prevented her from accepting the attenuated Christianity of Unitarianism and, later, of Transcendentalism. Personal misfortune and ill health contributed to Eddy’s preoccupation with the question of God’s responsibility for human suffering.
Eddy’s own search for health led her to experiment with various alternative healing methods, including homeopathy, hydrotherapy (water cure), and the therapeutic techniques of Phineas Parkhurst Quimby, a charismatic healer from Maine. Her association with him from 1862 to 1865 strengthened her belief, acquired by her experiments with homeopathy, in the mental nature of disease. It also spurred her own search for the meaning of New Testament healing stories.
The extent of Quimby’s influence on Eddy is a question of great controversy that first emerged when Eddy published her teachings and later sued a former student for plagiarism. He defended himself by charging that Eddy had merely copied Quimby’s material. The court ruled in Eddy’s favour, but Quimby’s papers were not made available for public scrutiny. As Eddy became increasingly controversial, she was condemned by her opponents as a derivative thinker. Moreover, as New Thought (a metaphysical healing movement) became established in the second decade of the 20th century, it looked to Quimby rather than Eddy as the fountainhead of its work. Only with the publication of Quimby’s papers in 1921 was it possible to see Eddy’s (and New Thought’s) radical departure from Quimby’s main emphases. Recent evaluations of Eddy recognize that Quimby was an important stimulus to Eddy’s development but that the religious teaching of Christian Science as it finally emerged was essentially foreign to Quimby’s thought.
The origins of the Christian Science movement can be traced to 1866, shortly after Quimby’s death. At that time, while reading about one of Jesus’ healings in the New Testament, Eddy suddenly recovered from the effects of what may have been a severe accident. Controversy has surrounded the details of this incident, but it was a turning point in her life, prompting several years of intense scriptural study and writing. Eddy also claimed to have had further healing experiences through which she tested her developing conclusions. In 1870 she taught her first Christian Science class, based on her work The Science of Man by Which the Sick Are Healed; or, Questions and Answers on Moral Science (1870), and attracted a following in the mill town of Lynn, Massachusetts, near Boston, where she remained until 1882. In 1875 she published Science and Health, which she repeatedly revised over the next 35 years to make it more effective as the “textbook” for the study and practice of Christian Science.
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Apr 8, 2019 · Christian Science is a denomination that teaches matter does not exist and sin, sickness, and death are states of mind. Learn about its basic tenets, such as spiritual healing, equality, and salvation, and its distinctive practices, such as silent communion and prayer.
May 29, 2024 · Christian Science subscribes to the Christian belief in an omnipotent purposeful God, accepts the authority (though not the inerrancy) of the Bible, and holds the Crucifixion and the Resurrection of Jesus Christ to be indispensable to the redemption of humankind.
