It’s All in the Mind: Christian Science and A Course in Miracles

Abstract

Like the Circle Seven Koran and The Twelve Blessings, Mary Baker Eddy’s Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures and A Course in Miracles, scribed by Helen Schucman, are used in ritual settings. Science and Health was first published in 1875, but Eddy continually tinkered with it, and it had gone through 50 editions by 1891.¹ In December 1894, just before the opening of the newly constructed Mother Church in Boston, she declared that “the Bible and ‘Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures’ shall henceforth be the Pastor of the Mother Church. This will tend to spiritualize thought. Personal preaching has more or less of human views grafted onto it. Whereas the pure Word contains only the living, health-giving Truth.”² In the following months, that directive was extended to cover all Christian Science worship services not just those in the Boston Mother Church. Eddy’s attempt to establish uniformity signals a transition in the movement from reliance on personalized, charismatic authority to a more bureaucratic form. In the process, it elevates Eddy’s own “textbook” for the movement to an authority equal to that of the Bible.