Denominations
Christian Science
Also Known As Church of Christ, Scientist The institutional name of the denomination the atlas records as Christian Science. · The First Church of Christ, Scientist · Church of Christ Scientist The bare form of the name. The atlas files this entry under a longer, shorter or differently punctuated form.
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Origin 1866 to 1879
A church within the metaphysical tradition of Christianity, formally the Church of Christ, Scientist, teaching that reality is fundamentally spiritual and that sickness and sin can be overcome through prayer and a correct understanding of God, as set out in Mary Baker Eddy's Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. It is widely known for its emphasis on spiritual healing and for the newspaper The Christian Science Monitor.
Facts
Status
Status TodayLiving tradition, practised today 1 Trajectory
Membership Over TimeSourced to the subject's own accountIndependent studies put actual US Christian Science membership under 50,000 by 2009, based on the steep drop in the number of congregations and registered practitioners, well below the church's own contemporaneous worldwide claim of about 400,000. 5 Membership Over TimeSourced to the subject's own accountSociologist Rodney Stark's research puts US Christian Science membership at just over 100,000 by 1990, roughly a third of the 1936 count, continuing a decline that began after the movement's 1930s and 1940s peak. 5 Membership Over TimeSourced to the subject's own accountThe 1936 US Census of Religious Bodies counted about 268,915 Christian Scientists in the United States, close to the movement's historical peak. 5 Membership Over TimeSourced to the subject's own accountThe Church of Christ, Scientist has continued to state a worldwide membership figure of around 400,000, a number that has stayed essentially unchanged in its own public statements for decades despite the Manual of the Mother Church's bar on publishing detailed membership statistics. 5 Membership Figure As OfSourced to the subject's own account Membership Figure As OfSourced to the subject's own account Membership Figure As OfSourced to the subject's own account Basis of the Membership FigureSourced to the subject's own account Basis of the Membership FigureSourced to the subject's own account Basis of the Membership FigureSourced to the subject's own accountScholarly or Demographic Estimate 5 Origins
Origin Period Place of Origin FounderMary Baker Eddy (1821-1910). 1 History
Separation or DivergenceThe Congregational churches of New England, in which Eddy was raised. 1 Date of Separation Practice
Liturgical Language Finances
Institutional Wealth or FinancesThe Christian Science Journal's November 2010 issue carried an Annual Meeting 2010 interview with Mother Church Treasurer Ned Odegaard, in which he stated that the Church held about 450 million dollars in funds on hand, against annual expenditures of about 102 million dollars, with no outstanding indebtedness. No more recent public figure of comparable scope was located in this pass. 3 Basis of the Wealth FigureThe Body's Own Published Statistics 3 Financial Disclosure RegimeThe Christian Science Journal, the Church's own official monthly periodical, has carried a Treasurer's financial report from The Mother Church's Annual Meeting, the source of the figures recorded here. No independently audited financial statement published by the Church to the general public outside that own reporting was located in this pass. 3 Wealth Figure As Of Year Belief
Defining Doctrinal PositionNon-trinitarian: the Nicene doctrine of the Trinity is not held 2Tradition: Christianity Organisation
GovernanceA single central governing body over the whole movement 1 The Christian Science Board of Directors at Boston, governing under the Manual of the Mother Church, which Eddy left unamendable. OrdinationNo ordination; authority rests on learning or on the whole body 1 The Bible and Science and Health are the church's pastor Giving
Standing Giving ExpectationThe Manual of The Mother Church sets a per capita tax, at least one dollar a year, payable by every member of The Mother Church to its Treasurer; a member's first contribution of the year to the church's General Fund is treated as satisfying it. This is a fixed due rather than a percentage of income, and it is a By-Law like any other in the Manual: the Manual's own general discipline track for a By-Law violation, admonishment, then probation, then, on a repeated offense, the member's name dropped from the roll, governs it as it governs any other By-Law, and the church's own present-day guidance confirms the practical consequence is that a member who does not pay can be dropped from The Mother Church's membership roster. 4 How the Expectation Is EnforcedCodified Obligation With Consequences 4 Learn More
Mary Baker Eddy and Healing Through Mind
Christian Science is a religious movement founded by Mary Baker Eddy (1821-1910), who organised the Church of Christ, Scientist in Boston in 1879 and set out its teaching in her textbook Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, first published in 1875. Eddy taught that God is wholly good and wholly spiritual, divine Mind, and that the material world, along with sickness, sin and death, is ultimately unreal, an error of mortal belief to be overcome. On this basis the movement holds that healing is achieved not through medicine but through prayer that corrects mistaken thought and realigns the individual with spiritual reality, understood as a recovery of the healing practised by Jesus and the early church.
The Bible and Science and Health together serve as the church's "pastor," and Sunday services consist largely of readings from the two, without a preaching minister. The church trained practitioners, who pray with those seeking healing, together with teachers and nurses within its own system. Eddy also founded, in 1908, The Christian Science Monitor, which became a respected international newspaper quite distinct in character from the church's religious mission.
Distinctiveness, Controversy and Reach
What most sharply distinguishes Christian Science from other Christian bodies is its metaphysics, the denial of the ultimate reality of matter and evil, and the practical priority it gives to spiritual healing over medical treatment. This has been its most controversial feature: the movement has faced legal cases and public criticism where reliance on prayer in place of medicine, especially for children, has been implicated in preventable deaths, though the church stresses that the choice is a personal one and that members are free to seek conventional care.
Organisationally the movement is centralised in The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston (the "Mother Church"), with self-governing branch churches, Reading Rooms open to the public, and a structure fixed by Eddy's Church Manual. Membership, concentrated historically in the United States with a presence in Britain, Europe and elsewhere, has declined markedly since the mid-twentieth century, and the church does not publish membership figures. Scholars generally situate Christian Science within the broader nineteenth-century American metaphysical and New Thought milieu, from which it nonetheless distinguishes itself sharply, insisting on its own distinct revelation and its identity as a Christian church rather than a mere school of mental healing.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
This source names Christian Science directly: "The Christian Science Journal's November 2010 issue, carrying an Annual Meeting 2010 interview with Mother Church Treasurer Ned Odegaard, reporting that the Church held about 450 million dollars in..."
Boston, Cities Christian Science was founded in Boston, and the Mother Church there remains its administrative center.
This source names Christian Science directly: "Wikipedia's article on Christian Science, community edited."
This source names Christian Science directly: "Press wire report, carried by The Christian Science Monitor, on Bishop John Magee's resignation as Bishop of Cloyne, quoting his own resignation statement asking forgiveness of anyone he had failed."
This source names Christian Science directly: "legal and cultural conflicts between Christian Science religious healing practice and American medicine and law, particularly cases where Christian Science parents faced prosecution over healthcare..."
This source names Christian Science directly: "Christian Science sites are held apart from the broader Christian grouping for the same reason Seventh-day Adventist and Latter-day Saint sites already are: a distinct nineteenth century founding..."
This source names Christian Science directly: "Baker Eddy's life and the history of Christian Science, and its pages give first edition publication details, the collaboration with illustrator James F."
This source names Christian Science directly: "including the provisions establishing Christian Science practitioners and teachers."
This source names Christian Science directly: "A 1992 Christian Science Monitor report on Mexico's constitutional reform of that January, which amended Articles 3, 5, 24, 27 and 130 and, with the Law on Religious Associations and Public Worship..."
This source names Christian Science directly: "doctrine of one particular movement, Christian Science or Scientology for instance, needs a source focused on that movement rather than this survey."
This source names Christian Science directly: "Mary Baker Eddy founded Christian Science, and Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, first published in 1875, is her own foundational primary scripture setting out its doctrine, including..."
This source names Christian Science directly: "with elements drawn from Buddhism, Christian Science and the wider international New Thought movement, teaching that illness and suffering belong to an ultimately unreal phenomenal world rather than..."
Belongs to Tradition
Branch Of
Critiqued
Baptism, Rituals Baptism is understood as purification of thought and is not performed with water.
Eddy repudiated the mind-cure and New Thought bodies that grew from the same nineteenth century American mental-healing milieu, holding their teaching a pantheistic distortion of hers, and Christian Science remains institutionally separate from them.
The Mass / Eucharist, Rituals Communion is kept as a silent spiritual communion without bread or wine, twice a year, and the material elements are held to be unnecessary to it.
Christian Science affirms the resurrection while denying that a material body was raised, since matter itself is held to be unreal.
Founded By
Eddy published Science and Health in 1875, organised the Church of Christ, Scientist in 1879 and reorganised it in 1892, and left the Manual of by-laws that governs it.
Held Differently
Angels and Spirits, Disciplines Christian Science reads the angels of scripture as God's thoughts passing to man, spiritual intuitions rather than personal beings, so its angelology is an account of thought and not of creatures.
Gabriel, Archangels Christian Science reads Gabriel as the message of divine Science rather than as a personal being, part of a wider reading of the angels as God's thoughts passing to man.
Michael, Archangels Christian Science reads the angels of scripture as God's thoughts passing to man rather than as personal created beings, so Michael names a spiritual quality and not an individual.
Read together with Mary Baker Eddy's spiritual interpretation, which puts Love in place of the divine name through the psalm, so what a service hears is the psalm and its gloss as a single text.
Rejected Here
With no elements there is no cup, and the church holds no vessel set apart for one.
Demonology, Disciplines Christian Science holds evil to be unreal, an error of mortal mind rather than a being with a will, so there is no demonic order for a demonology to describe.
Communion in Christian Science is kept twice a year by kneeling in silence. No bread and no wine are used, the elements being read as spiritual understanding rather than as substances.
Holds Element
The practitioner devotes full time to healing by prayer as Christian Science teaches it, is listed in the church directory, and charges for the work. The office exists in no other church.
Objects and Practices of This Tradition
Chestnut Hill Benevolent Association was founded in 1916 as a department of The Mother Church, The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and although The Mother Church transferred it to an independent board of trustees in 1981, it continues to operate as a Christian Science nursing care institution realizing Mary Baker Eddy's founding vision, so linked to Christian Science at the denomination level.
Mary Baker Eddy's own illustrated poem, commissioned and personally directed by Christian Science's founder, and openly published rather than restricted.
Healing by prayer alone is the central practice of this body, and its practitioners are listed and paid for that work.
Prayer is understood as the correction of thought rather than as petition to a God who might or might not grant it, and it is the means by which healing is sought.
The church has no preaching clergy: since 1895 the Bible and Science and Health have been its ordained pastor, read by two elected lay Readers who may not comment, from a lesson used identically worldwide each week.
Mary Baker Eddy's teaching that God is wholly good and wholly Spirit, so that matter, sin, sickness and death are errors of mortal belief rather than realities, is the metaphysical claim from which the church's healing practice follows.
Related To
Both grew out of the same nineteenth-century American metaphysical healing milieu associated with Phineas Quimby. Christian Science rejects the New Thought bodies and they reject it.
Sacred to This Deity
Sources
1. Christian Science on Trial: Religious Healing in America
Rennie B. Schoepflin, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003chapters on spiritual healing and the child-death prosecutionsView the Source 2. The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised edition
F. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.), Oxford University Press, 2005s.v. Christian ScienceView the Source 3. A Talk With the Treasurer on Church Finances (The Christian Science Journal, 2010)
4. Manual of The Mother Church, The First Church of Christ, Scientist
Mary Baker Eddy, The First Church of Christ, Scientist, Boston, Massachusetts (The Christian Science Publishing Society)
5. Christian Science (Wikipedia)
The Oxford Handbook of New Religious Movements
James R. Lewis (ed.), Oxford University Press, 2004s.v. Christian Science
New Religious Movements: A Practical Introduction
Eileen Barker, HMSO, 1989the discussion of why the discipline moved to the term new religious movementView the Source Encyclopedia of American Religions
Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures
Mary Baker Eddy, First published Boston; The First Church of Christ, Scientist, 1875
Essays About This Entity (1 essay)
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