A New Christian Identity: Christian Science Origins and Experience in American Culture

Independent scholar Voorhees debuts with an excellent study of Mary Baker Eddy, founder of Christian Science Church. Voorhees argues that Christian Science blurs the lines traditionally used to understand religion in modern America by relying on pseudoscience and “healers” who claim to cure ailments (both physical and spiritual) with techniques based on Eddy’s 1875 Science and Health with Key to the Scripture. Voorhees establishes Eddy as a key figure in the religious life of America in the late 19th and early 20th century—and Christian Science as a pivotal shift away from mainstream denominations for many Christians who felt disenfranchised. While Voorhees meticulously details Eddy’s life, she focuses on the period between 1865 and 1900, when Eddy’s development of the dogmas of Christian Science followed her own “revelatory” healing from debilitating “nervous inflammation and digestive problems” diagnosed as “neuralgia of the spine and stomach.” Her conviction that Jesus had saved her launched her lifelong work to “find and explain the gospel truth operating on human individuality to effect the cure” of any ailment. Voorhees has done exceptional work among the archival and primary sources, including close comparison of the many editions of Science and Health. This definitive look establishes Eddy as a major figure in America’s faith history. (Mar.)