The radical difference that separates the Church of Christian Science from other confessions is that, by spiritual means, it claims to achieve not only the healing of the ills of the soul, but also of physical illnesses. Its founder, Mary Baker Eddy, experienced in 1866 a sudden disappearance of the chronic illness that afflicted her while she was reading in the New Testament about a healing performed by Jesus. Years later, in 1879, she founded the Church of Christian Science in the United States.
Mary Baker
Educated in a Congregationalist church -with an autonomous structure-, Mary Baker rebelled against her father’s strict Calvinism. Her weak health did not correspond to the signs of prosperity that accompany divine election in Calvinist theology.
The experience of her healing directed her ideas toward a universal spiritual principle underlying the healings narrated in the New Testament. Devoted to the study of Sacred Scripture and to teaching, she gained numerous followers, and they supported her in founding this new ecclesial congregation, whose purpose was to restore “primitive Christianity and its ancient healing power”.
Beliefs
In an age of great materialist influence -evolutionism- and scientistic influence -Protestant “liberal” criticism-, Mary Baker Eddy insisted on the power of the spiritual, to the point of abandoning Christian thought on creation by denying that God had made matter, which would only correspond to a human error of perception. Christ is not God, but he is divine by his divine sonship, in which all men also share. Nevertheless, Christ is not a mere moral example, as liberal Protestantism affirms, but the true spiritual state of man; his crucifixion and resurrection constitute the central event of history, indispensable for the redemption of humanity. Illnesses are the consequence of erroneous ideas and of the overestimation of matter, and must be healed by the power of the spirit
Social Significance
The church founded by Mary Baker Eddy has spread to more than fifty countries, although she prohibited the publication of statistics for their merely quantitative value. Worship revolves around the Bible and the founder’s work Science and Health, under the guidance of her Manual of the Mother Church. Socially, it has helped to highlight the role of women, both that of the founder and that of the women ministers of worship. Its newspaper The Christian Science Monitor, besides providing adequate general journalistic information, fosters the desire for study and faith in a progressive healing of all material ills.
Source: Enciclopedia Hispánica
