Search results
Learn about Christian Science, a religion based on the Bible and the teachings of Mary Baker Eddy. Find church services, resources, and stories of healing and progress.
- Online Services and Events
Discover the heart of what Christian Science is, and how it...
- Online Sunday Service
Sunday services are conducted by a First and Second Reader...
- Daily Lift
Find more inspiring audio on the Christian Science Audio...
- JSH-Online
The Christian Science magazines contain thousands of...
- Christian Science Quarterly Bible Lessons
Conveniently use the research from the Christian Science...
- Church Services
There are Christian Science churches, societies, and...
- Concord
In-person support during Annual Meeting weekend. If you’ll...
- Beliefs and Teachings
Tenets of Christian Science. As adherents of Truth, we take...
- Online Services and Events
e. 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 based on the Bible and the discovery of God as infinite Love and good. It teaches that God's laws are spiritual and can heal and transform anyone who turns to God with faith.
- 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.
Are you a student? Get Britannica Premium for only 24.95 - a 67% discount!
People also ask
Do Christian Scientists have a religious creed?
What is Christian Science?
What does a Christian Science writer do?
Who founded Christian Science?
