Basics about the Christian Science Sect

 

Christian Science

 

Origin:               Mary Ann Morse Baker was born in 1821 in Bow, New Hampshire. When she turned 17 years old, she joined the Congregational church of her parents (1838), but it was noted that she did not agree with the church’s position on the sovereignty of God in the salvation of humans, but they accepted her as a member anyway. She married George Glover in 1843, but he died of Yellow Fever only seven months into their marriage. In 1853 she married Daniel Patterson who was a dentist. She remained sick (emotionally and physically) most of the time since childhood. Then she went to a healer in Portland, Maine in 1862 named Phineas Parkhurst Quimby who radically changed her thinking. She became a healer herself using his methods. In 1866 Patterson left Mary and she divorced him for dissertation in 1893. Also, in 1866 Mary healed herself from injuries sustained in a fall on icy pavement and Quimby died. In 1875 after nine years as a Christian Science teacher and healer in which she taught from Quimby’s manuscripts, she wrote her first edition of Science and Health. Much of this material is similar to Quimby’s work, Science of Man. It includes ideas found in the Greek philosopher Plato, as well as ancient Gnosticism, Docetism, and Hinduism. In 1877 she married Asa G. Eddy, one of her followers, who died in 1882. In 1879 she founded the “Church of Christ, Scientist” in Boston, the mother church. In 1883 the sixth edition of her book was published, now called Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. She died in 1910 and was not resurrected as many of her followers expected.

Scriptures:        The Bible, but it is to be used with Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, by Mary Baker Eddy; other authorities include the testimony of the Science of Mind (demonstrations of Divine Science).

Divisions:          The New Thought philosophy came prior to and along with Christian Science, but the following groups have sprung from the philosophical foundations of Christian Science: Unity School of Christianity, Mind Science, Religious Science, Divine Science, and Scientology.

Beliefs:              Christian Science is the law of God, the law of good, interpreting and demonstrating the divine principle and rule of universal harmony.  There is no life, truth, intelligence, nor substance in matter. All is infinite Mind and its infinite manifestation, for God is All-in-all. Spirit is immortal Truth; matter is mortal error. Spirit is real and eternal; matter is the unreal and temporal. Spirit is God, and man is His image and likeness. Therefore, man is not material; he is spiritual.

1.      Jesus was a human man born of a natural birth that only partially represented the spirit of Christ; he was not the Christ, which is an eternal spirit.

2.      Life, Truth, and Love represent the spirit of God on earth. This is the only trinity.

3.      Sorrow, sin, sickness, pain, evil, and death are illusions and are not real. The Mind or the spirit is real, matter is not real, only an illusion.

4.      Nothing is real, eternal, or spirit accept God and His idea.

5.      God is not personal; God is all that is real. All that is real is divine, and God is good, so all is good (pantheism).

6.      Mary Baker Glover Patterson Eddy is the Revelator for this age. The human Jesus was merely a Way Shower. Jesus' death was not a sacrificial payment for sin. It was a demonstration of the principle of love and of man’s unity with God.

7.      The central fact of the Bible is the superiority of spiritual over physical power.

8.      God’s forgiveness of sin is based on his destruction of sin and giving the spiritual understanding that recognizes evil as unreal.

9.      Christ is really the Christ-idea, the Son of God, the greatest manifestation of the eternal Mind. The Holy Spirit is not a person; it is Divine Science, the development of eternal Life, Truth, and Love.

10.   The creation story in Genesis one is correct, man is made in God’s image, the story in chapter two is a false alternative story involving matter.

11.   The sick are healed by “knowing” there is no such thing as sickness. Healing comes by the one Mind or God. The human mortal mind causes the belief in disease.

Practices:

1.      Healing comes from Christian Science beliefs and practitioners, not medical professionals.

2.      The Church of Christ, Scientist mother church in Boston is the model for all other Christian Science churches. It has two pastors only, the Bible and Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. Members have daily readings as well as prescribed weekly readings at the public assemblies.

3.      Only approved reading materials are allowed to be read. These can be found at the Christian Science Reading Room. Censorship is practiced.

4.      Prayer is offered to Father-Mother God.

5.      Baptism and the Lord’s Supper are interpreted spiritually, so these ordinances are never participated in by their members in a literal or physical way.

6.      The first public reader in the weekly service is a woman and the second one is a man.

7.      Publishing of the Christian Science Monitor daily news and weekly magazine.

8.      To adamantly deny that Mary Baker Eddy used morphine from twenty-three years old until her death at eighty-nine years old, as many of her relatives have testified.

9.      To deny Mary B. Eddy’s plagiarism of Quimby’s Science of Man (1868), Lindley Murray’s, The English Reader (4^th ed., 1823), and Francis Lieber “The Metaphysical Religion of Hegel” (1866). Likewise, they deny that the retired Unitarian minister J. H. Wiggin rewrote most of Mary’s book for her including deliberately editing the quoted material to make it appear slightly different than the original sources.

10.   Redefining Christian terms: atonement = at–one–ment; Hell= mortal belief, error, lust, remorse, hatred, sin , sickness; Mortal Mind= nothing claiming to be something

Size:                  Christian Science peaked in the 1950s to around 400,000, but has been in decline and now has between 250,000 to 300,000 members—by best estimates. They are forbidden to report their numbers according to their church manual.