 | |
| Author | Gillian Gill |
|---|---|
| Subject | Mary Baker Eddy |
| Genre | Biography |
Publication date | 1998 |
| Pages | 700 |
Mary Baker Eddy (1998) by Gillian Gill is a biography of Mary Baker Eddy, a religious leader and founder of the Church of Christ, Scientist.
| | |
| Author | Gillian Gill |
|---|---|
| Subject | Mary Baker Eddy |
| Genre | Biography |
Publication date | 1998 |
| Pages | 700 |
Mary Baker Eddy (1998) by Gillian Gill is a biography of Mary Baker Eddy, a religious leader and founder of the Church of Christ, Scientist.
Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of the Church of Christ, Scientist and author of Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures , was a controversial figure both during her lifetime and afterwards, [1] [2] with most previous biographies of Eddy being "divided between demonizing caricatures and Christian Science hagiography" according to Beryl Satter. [3] Gill examines various controversies surrounding Eddy's life, including her relationship with her son, her supposed debt to Phineas Quimby and the longevity of the accusations surrounding him, her use of morphine, and her relations with staff. [4] The book is written from a feminist perspective, and explores and analyzes the significance that gender played in Eddy's controversial life. [2] [5] Satter states that "Gill acknowledges Eddy's human frailties but places them in context of religious struggle, not female irrationality." [4] Throughout the book, including in the extensive appendix and end-notes, Gill discusses previous biographical treatments of Eddy and explores their strengths and weaknesses, as well as discussing the difficulties facing historians writing on the topic. [6] [2] Gill also discusses the frequent revisions of Eddy's book Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures . [7]
Gill constructs her book around four periods of Eddy's life: her early life including her illness, widowhood, single motherhood and other struggles (1821-62); her difficulties as she began to found her religious movement (1863-82); the beginnings of her success as a church leader and author (1883-1905); and her final years (1906-10). [8]
Gill had difficulty obtaining what as she called the "frustratingly limited" access to archival materials at The Mother Church, and in the book discusses the process of obtaining what she did, as well as the other sources which she used. [2] Gill did not have complete access, as the archives at the church had previously been closed to most scholars, [6] [9] [10] but while Gill was working on the book, Virginia Harris, at the time a member of the Christian Science Board of Directors, began the process of opening the archive to scholars, including Gill to a limited extent. [11] [12] In 2002, a short time after Gill's book was published, the archive was fully opened to scholars and the public as part of the Mary Baker Eddy Library. [9] [11] [12] [13]
Gill's book has received generally positive reviews by scholars. Stephen J. Stein writes: "Gill has constructed a well-written and extensively documented, sympathetic yet not uncritical biography of a very complex woman... Gill's biography is a lively, sophisticated, and engaging account of Eddy's life. Historians interested in Eddy, Christian Science, the broader context of New Thought, and nineteenth-century women will find much to use in both the text and the notes." [14] Both Newell G. Bringhurst and Paul C. Gutjahr have listed the book among the most insightful of the numerous biographies on Eddy. [15] [7] According to Cynthia D. Schrager, the book is "[b]alanced, judicious and, above all, skillful at bringing gender to bear as a context lamentably lacking in previous biographies, Gill eschews the polemical tone of most Eddy scholarship and brings a refreshing new angle of vision to her life and achievements." [5] Rennie B. Schoepflin calls the book "an insightful feminist defense," [16] and L. Ashley Squires calls it "an eminently necessary addition to a long list of biographical treatments written since the founder's death in 1910... [Gill's] use of primary sources is like that of a forensic investigator trying to get to the bottom of some of the thorniest controversies that surround Eddy’s life and work." [17] Irene Hall noted that the book was "both weighty (700 pages) and thoroughly researched." [18] Jana Riess wrote that while the book is "not perfect", she expects it to "stand the test of time as the first major study to mine the considerable scholarly possibilities that exist between church-sanctioned hagiography and muckraking exposé." [9]
The book has received some criticism for defending Eddy in places. Caroline Fraser, an ex-Christian Scientist and critic of the church and Eddy, went as far as calling Gill one of "Eddy's apologists". [19] However, Mary Farrell Bednarowski writes that Gill "never... becomes Eddy's hagiographer" [2] and the book is "frankly critical" of Eddy in places according to Riess. [9] Satter, despite her generally positive review of the book, also notes that she was disappointed that Gill, who is not a Christian Scientist herself, fails to explore the theology of Christian Science in-depth, but adds that "Gill's primary goal, however, is not to elucidate Christian Science but to understand Mary Baker Eddy as a woman. In this she has succeeded." [20]
Phineas Parkhurst Quimby was an American folk healer, mentalist and mesmerist. His work is widely recognized as foundational to the New Thought spiritual movement.
Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy is, along with the Bible, one of the two central texts of the Christian Science religion. Eddy described it as her "most important work". She began writing it in February 1872, and the first edition was published in 1875. However, she would continue working on it and making changes for the rest of her life.
Mary Baker Eddy was an American religious leader and author who founded The Church of Christ, Scientist, in New England in 1879. She also founded The Christian Science Monitor in 1908, and three religious magazines: the Christian Science Sentinel, The Christian Science Journal, and The Herald of Christian Science. She wrote numerous books and articles, the notable of which were Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures and Manual of The Mother Church. Other works were edited posthumously into the Prose Works Other than Science and Health.
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. It was founded in 1879 in New England by Mary Baker Eddy, who wrote the 1875 book Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, which outlined the theology of Christian Science. The book became Christian Science's central text, along with the Bible, and by 2001 had sold over nine million copies.
Robert Arthur Peel was a Christian Science historian and writer on religious and ecumenical topics. A Christian Scientist for over 70 years, Peel wrote editorials for the Christian Science Monitor, a publication owned by the Church of Christ, Scientist. He was also a counsellor for the church's Committee on Publication, set up by Mary Baker Eddy (1821–1910), the religion's founder, to protect her own and the church's reputation.
Prose Works other than Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, sometimes called Prose Works other than Science and Health or simply Prose Works, is a single-volume compendium of the major works of Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of Christian Science, outside of her main work, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. Also not included are Eddy's Church Manual, Poems, and Christ and Christmas. The books included in Prose Works were never published together as a single volume during her lifetime but were assembled as a convenience around 1925. When published it became the most popular book printed by the Christian Science Publishing Society besides Science and Health and the Church Manual. The constituent books have historically been published individually in parallel also. It has been issued in both hardcover and paperback.
The New Thought movement is a new religious movement that coalesced in the United States in the early 19th century. New Thought was seen by its adherents as succeeding "ancient thought", accumulated wisdom and philosophy from a variety of origins, such as Ancient Greek, Roman, Egyptian, Chinese, Taoist, Hindu, and Buddhist cultures and their related belief systems, primarily regarding the interaction among thought, belief, consciousness in the human mind, and the effects of these within and beyond the human mind. Though no direct line of transmission is traceable, many adherents to New Thought in the 19th and 20th centuries claimed to be direct descendants of those systems.
Josephine Emma Curtis Hopkins was an American spiritual teacher and leader. She was involved in organizing the New Thought movement and was a theologian, teacher, writer, feminist, mystic, and healer; who taught and ordained hundreds of people, including notably many women. Hopkins was called the "teacher of teachers" and "mother of New Thought" because a number of her students went on to found their own churches or to become prominent in the New Thought Movement, including Charles and Myrtle Fillmore, founders of Unity Church; Ernest Holmes; and H. Emilie Cady, author of Unity's cornerstone text Lessons in Truth. According to Charles S. Braden, Hopkins influenced the development of New Thought "more than any other single teacher", and modern scholars have identified Hopkins as the founder of New Thought.
Christian Science is a 1907 book by the American writer Mark Twain (1835–1910). The book is a collection of essays Twain wrote about Christian Science, beginning with an article that was published in Cosmopolitan in 1899. Although Twain was interested in mental healing and the ideas behind Christian Science, he was hostile towards its founder, Mary Baker Eddy (1821–1910).
Horatio Willis Dresser was a New Thought religious leader and author in the United States. In 1919 he became a minister of General Convention of the Church of the New Jerusalem, and served briefly at a Swedenborgian church in Portland, Maine.
The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy and the History of Christian Science (1909) is a highly critical account of the life of Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of Christian Science, and the early history of the Christian Science church in 19th-century New England. It was published as a book in November 1909 in New York by Doubleday, Page & Company. The original byline was that of a journalist, Georgine Milmine, but a 1993 printing of the book declared that novelist Willa Cather was the principal author; however, this assessment has been questioned by more recent scholarship which again identifies Milmine as the primary author, although Cather and others did significant editing. Cather herself usually wrote that she did nothing more than standard copy-editing, but sometimes that she was the primary author.
Georgine Milmine Welles Adams best known as Georgine Milmine, was a Canadian-American journalist most known for writing about Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of Christian Science. Milmine, along with Willa Cather and others, worked on 14 investigative articles about Eddy that were published by McClure's in 1907–1908. One of the only major investigative works on Eddy to be published in her lifetime, besides Sibyl Wilbur's Human Life articles, the articles were instigated by Milmine: S. S. McClure purchased her freelance research before assigning a group of reporters to verify, expand and write it up.
John Valentine Dittemore was director of The First Church of Christ, Scientist, the Christian Science church, in Boston from 1909 until 1919. Before that he was head of the church's Committee on Publication in New York, and a trustee for ten years of the estate of Mary Baker Eddy (1821–1910), the founder of the church. Dittemore is best known as the co-author, with Ernest Sutherland Bates, of Mary Baker Eddy: The Truth and the Tradition (1932).
Errand into the Wilderness is a 1956 intellectual history book about colonial America written by Perry Miller.
James Henry Wiggin was a Unitarian minister. He also worked as an editor and proofreader.
Samuel Putnam Bancroft, also known as Samuel P. Bancroft, was an American Christian Scientist and an early student of Mary Baker Eddy.
Mary Baker Eddy: The Truth and the Tradition (1932) is a biography of Mary Baker Eddy by Ernest Sutherland Bates, an American academic, and John V. Dittemore, a former director of The First Church of Christ, Scientist.
The Christian Science movement is a religious movement within Christianity founded by Mary Baker Eddy that arose in the mid to late 19th century and that led to the founding of The First Church of Christ, Scientist.
Ursula Newell Gestefeld was an American New Thought leader. She founded the Exodus Club which later was renamed the Church of New Thought and College of the Science of Being. Although she had a large following in her lifetime, the organization she founded did not last past her death.
Stephen Joseph Stein was an American academic, author, and educator. His writings focused on religion in the United States. He was the Chancellor's Professor Emeritus of Religious Studies at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana, and served as President of the American Society of Church History. He is known especially for his writing on eighteenth-century religious thought, particularly the Shakers, Jonathan Edwards, and new religious movements. His 1992 book The Shaker Experience in America won the Philip Schaff prize from the American Society of Church History and has been seen as a definitive work on the topic.