Did Mary Baker Eddy intend to form a church?
Market Street, Lynn, Massachusetts, undated. Christian Science church services were held in the Good Templars Hall, visible in the middle of the row of buildings, in 1879.
Patrons have occasionally asked our research staff about Mary Baker Eddy’s intentions for Christian Science after she discovered it in 1866. Did she initially envision it as a new Christian denomination? Or did she expect that other churches would embrace it?
We found information on this in Irving Tomlinson’s Twelve Years with Mary Baker Eddy. A Universalist clergyman before he learned of Christian Science, Tomlinson served on Eddy’s staff and assisted her in other ways from about 1898 to 1910. He included these recollections:
It has often been asked, Why did Mary Baker Eddy found a separate denomination? Why did she not remain in the old church and help it with whatever good she had discovered?
Originally Mrs. Eddy had no plans for establishing a new denomination, for, as I heard her say many times, she confidently expected that the Christian church would welcome her discovery and adopt the healing ministry as an integral part of its activity, even as the early church for three centuries after the resurrection had utilized spiritual means to heal the sick. Indeed, some of her early students spoke in their own prayer meetings of their increased faith in the efficacy of prayer to heal the sick as well as the sinning. But these members frequently were informed by the officers of their churches that such testimony was not welcome, and were advised not to indulge in such blasphemy.
The reception which her discovery encountered in the church was not foreseen by Mrs. Eddy, for she had hopefully looked forward to its immediate acceptance, as is seen by her own words [found on page 330 of Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures]: “Until the author of this book learned the vastness of Christian Science, the fixedness of mortal illusions, and the human hatred of Truth, she cherished sanguine hopes that Christian Science would meet with immediate and universal acceptance.” But this “universal acceptance” did not occur; so the healing of Christ Jesus again come unto its own, but its own received it not. The orthodox church was not ready to restore healing to its ministry.
It was only natural, then, that Mrs. Eddy and her followers should seek to have a church of their own which would permit them to re-establish Jesus’ healing ministry by doing his works…. This resulted in the establishment in Boston, in August, 1879, of the Church of Christ, Scientist, under a Massachusetts State charter, whose purpose it was to “reinstate primitive Christianity and its lost element of healing.”1
It is interesting to note that Eddy led the first Christian Science church services in June 1875 in Lynn, Massachusetts. In the first edition of Science and Health, published in October of that same year, she shared these thoughts: “Because Christendom may resist the word science, we shall lose no faith in Christianity, and because we shall apply this word to Truth, Christianity will lose no hold on us.”2
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- Tomlinson, Twelve Years with Mary Baker Eddy, Amplified Edition (Boston: The Christian Science Publishing Society, 1996), 145–146. In 1879 Eddy organized her Church, then known as the Church of Christ (Scientist). In 1892 it was reorganized as The First Church of Christ, Scientist.
- Mary Baker Glover, Science and Health (Boston: Christian Scientist Publishing Company, 1875), 10.