What’s some background on the Thanksgiving services?

(Updated October 31, 2025)

The Mother Church (The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston), as well as its branches, holds special Thanksgiving services in the United States and other countries. Such a service is somewhat distinctive among Christian churches. 

These gatherings include hymns, readings from the Bible and Mary Baker Eddy’s book Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, and a time for the sharing of “testimonies by Christian Scientists, appropriate for the occasion.”¹ Our Library research staff is sometimes asked about that particular wording and its background.

The order for Thanksgiving services in Christian Science churches was first published in the Christian Science Sentinel on October 30, 1902,² as well as in the November 1902 Christian Science Journal.³ At that time the wording about the testimony period was identical to what Eddy had specified in an October 12, 1902, letter to Hermann Hering, then First Reader of The Mother Church. Testimonies, she said, were to be by “members of the church.”⁴

Several years later William B. Johnson, Clerk of The Mother Church and a member of the Christian Science Board of Directors, wrote this in a letter to Eddy:

It is eminently probable that there might be persons in the audience who although not members of the Church have been wonderfully healed and whose testimony would be of great value. 

 

The elimination of these words “members of the church” would give all who have been benefited, especially those who have been very lately helped, a chance to show their appreciation of Christian Science.⁵

In that letter Johnson recommended the complete elimination of the phrase “members of the church.” But instead the present Thanksgiving Day order of services appeared for the first time in the Manual, the following year. That wording, with its reference to “testimonies by Christian Scientists,” has since remained unchanged.⁶