This month listen in on a conversation prompted by a question our research staff received: Did Mary Baker Eddy ever discuss the Shakers? What we discover are meaningful connections between Shakers and early Christian Scientists. For example, one prominent Shaker woman incorporated the study of Eddy’s teachings into her life, after Christian Science healed her of a grave illness. Others in the community joined her. We also learn of Eddy’s own interest in the Shakers, including her philanthropic support for one of their villages after a fire. The episode explores how the two religious movements interacted with and embraced one another, while also noting differences in their beliefs.
Access more on this topic:
- Ask a Researcher: Did Mary Baker Eddy ever discuss the Shakers?
- “A REMARKABLE STATEMENT,” The Christian Science Journal, December 1907
- Seekers and Scholars: New religious movements and nineteenth-century revolutions
Christian Goodwillie is director and curator of special collections for the Burke Library at Hamilton College in Clinton, New York. He also serves as editor of the Richard W. Couper Press. He was curator of collections at Hancock Shaker Village in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, from 2001 to 2009, and past president of the Communal Studies Association in Amana, Iowa. He has authored, co-authored, or edited 12 books and numerous articles on the Shakers, Freemasonry, and other topics. His most recent book is Richard McNemar: Frontier Heretic and Shaker Apostle (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2023).
Nathan Buchanan is a research associate at The Mary Baker Eddy Library, where he began work in 2020. He holds a bachelor’s degree in history from the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts in North Adams, Massachusetts. He has worked and volunteered for several museums and is particularly interested in twentieth-century American history. Recently he researched and wrote “Did Mary Baker Eddy ever discuss the Shakers?”— a website article in the Library’s “Ask a Researcher” series.
Collage images (from left): Photograph of Jennie H. Fish, n.d. W.G.C. Kimball. Courtesy of the Communal Societies Collection, Hamilton College; Inscription and cover of Mary Baker Eddy’s copy of Shaker Hymnal, 1908. B00287.
Guest headshot of Christian Goodwillie used by permission.
