Christian Science: An Overview

Christian Science, officially known as the Church of Christ, Scientist, is a 19th-century American religious movement often classified among the “mind sciences". Emerging in the United States shortly after the Civil War, it represents a radical departure from orthodox Christianity by promoting a strictly monistic, purely spiritual worldview that denies the actual existence of matter, sin, sickness, and death.

Origins and Founder

• The movement was founded by Mary Baker Eddy (1821–1910).
• Throughout her early life, Eddy suffered from numerous severe physical ailments, including convulsive attacks and hysterical episodes.
• In 1862, seeking relief, she met Phineas Parkhurst Quimby, a mental healer who taught that illness is merely an error of the mind.
• In 1866, after slipping and falling on an icy pavement, Eddy claimed to have experienced a miraculous healing. She later identified this event as the pivotal “discovery” of Christian Science.
• Heavily influenced by Quimby’s metaphysical ideas, Eddy published the movement’s foundational text, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, in 1875.
• In 1879, Eddy and her followers officially established the Church of Christ, Scientist in Boston, Massachusetts.
• The “Mother Church” was formally organised in Boston in 1892.
• In 1881, Eddy opened the Massachusetts Metaphysical College to train practitioners in her system of mental healing.

Core Doctrines

Christian Science employs traditional Christian terminology but redefines these terms with entirely spiritualised, non-literal meanings — a practice often compared by historians to ancient Gnosticism. Its central teachings include the following:

• The Nature of God and Reality: God is understood as the “Divine Mind” or “Divine Principle" – an impersonal, all-encompassing spiritual reality. Since God is all-in-all and purely spirit, matter has no actual existence.
• The Illusion of Evil: Sin, disease, sickness, and death are not real; they are merely illusions or “errors” of the mortal mind and senses. True healing and well-being come from realising one’s perfect spiritual identity with God and rejecting the belief in these illusions.
• Rejection of the Trinity: The orthodox Christian Trinity is rejected. Instead, the Trinity is redefined as the triple divine principle of "life, truth, and love". The Holy Spirit is not a person but is identified as “divine science" itself.
• Jesus vs Christ: Christian Science makes a sharp distinction between Jesus and Christ. Jesus was a human being who perfectly demonstrated the “Divine Idea", while Christ is the eternal divine manifestation of God. The religion denies that Jesus physically died on the cross or experienced a bodily resurrection.
• Salvation: Salvation is not received through God’s grace or faith in Christ’s atoning sacrifice. Instead, individuals must “save” themselves by mentally overcoming the illusion of sin and death. There is no literal hell; heaven is the complete realisation and reign of Divine Science.

Practices and Organization

• Mary Baker Eddy exercised highly centralised control over the movement to prevent doctrinal deviations.
• Traditional preaching by pastors is banned in Christian Science churches.
• Worship services consist solely of prescribed readings from the Bible and Science and Health, read aloud alternately by a male and a female reader (no sermons).
• Eddy elevated her own writings to a status equal to – or in some interpretations superior to – the Bible. She declared that the divine inspiration of Science and Health represented the fulfilment of the Second Coming of Christ.