Mary Baker Eddy

Mary Baker Eddy (1821-1910), founder of the Church of Christ, Scientist. Mary Baker was born in Bow, New Hampshire. She received most of her early education at home from her brother, and began a lifelong study of the Bible. She was widowed shortly after her marriage to George W. Glover in 1843. She married twice again: in 1853 to an itinerant dentist, whom she divorced 20 years later, and in 1877 to Asa Eddy, a follower of her new religion. Before founding Christian Science, Eddy was convinced that the Bible's New Testament accounts of healing held promise; she also explored popular curative systems. Due to her poor health, in 1862 she consulted Phineas Quimby, a mental healer who restored her health temporarily. Eddy eventually rejected Quimby's healing method, however, because she came to believe that healing came through the power of God, not the human mind. She attributed this belief, and the discovery of Christian Science, to the spiritual revelation she claimed to have had while reading the Bible in 1866 after suffering severe injuries from a fall. She believed that her quick recovery, and the restoration of her health in general, resulted from her understanding of the spiritual truths that formed the basis of Jesus' healing ministry.

Eddy spent the remainder of her life studying and teaching her doctrine and founding the Church of Christ, Scientist. During the 1870s she taught her religious system in Lynn, Massachusetts. In 1875 the first version of her most important book, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, was published. In 1879 she obtained a charter for the Church of Christ, Scientist. She opened the Massachusetts Metaphysical College in Boston in 1882 to provide systematic training in her doctrine; the college was closed in 1889 and was later replaced by the church's Board of Education. In 1892 she reorganized the church in Boston, creating a central administration for the rapidly growing movement, and renamed it The First Church of Christ, Scientist, familiarly The Mother Church. She later retired, leaving management of the church to a board of directors, who govern under guidelines established in Eddy's book Manual of The Mother Church (1895, final revision 1908). She maintained a role in church affairs as pastor emeritus until shortly before her death.

Eddy founded the Christian Science Publishing Society in 1898 and organized and edited various Christian Science publications. In 1908 she established the Christian Science Monitor, a highly regarded international daily newspaper. Among her other writings are Christian Healing (1886), the autobiographical Retrospection and Introspection (1891), Unity of Good (1887), and Miscellaneous Writings (1896).