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Christian Science
Aerial photograph of a triangular lot between roads and their sidewalks. The lot contains a small, Romanesque church filling the front point to the sidewalks, connected to a much larger and impressive domed, Neoclassical building behind it, filling the lot to the sidewalks to the left and right.
The First Church of Christ, Scientist, Christian Science Center, Boston, Massachusetts. The original Mother Church (1894) is in the foreground and behind it the Mother Church Extension (1906).
Founder Mary Baker Eddy (1821–1910)
Texts Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy and Bible
Members Estimated 106,000 in the United States in 1990; 400,000 worldwide in 2008, according to the church.
Beliefs "Basic teachings", Church of Christ, Scientist
Website
christianscience.com
Mary Baker Eddy
photograph
Born (1821-07-16)July 16, 1821
Bow, New Hampshire
Died

December 3, 1910(1910-12-03) (aged 89)
Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts
More details
Resting place Mount Auburn Cemetery, Cambridge, Massachusetts
Spouse(s) George Washington Glover
(m. 1843–1844)
Daniel Patterson
(m. 1853–1873, separated 1866)
Asa Gilbert Eddy (m. 1877–1882)
Children George Washington Glover II (born 1844)
Parent(s)

Mark Baker (d. 1865)
Abigail Ambrose Baker (d. 1849)

Christian Science is a set of beliefs and practices belonging to the metaphysical family of new religious movements. It was developed in 19th-century New England by Mary Baker Eddy, who argued in her book Science and Health (1875) that sickness is an illusion that can be corrected by prayer alone. The book became Christian Science's central text, along with the Bible, and by 2001 had sold over nine million copies.

Eddy and 26 followers were granted a charter in 1879 to found the Church of Christ, Scientist, and in 1894 the Mother Church, The First Church of Christ, Scientist, was built in Boston, Massachusetts. Christian Science became the fastest growing religion in the United States, with nearly 270,000 members by 1936, a figure that had declined by 1990 to just over 100,000. The church is known for its newspaper, the Christian Science Monitor, which won seven Pulitzer Prizes between 1950 and 2002, and for its public Reading Rooms around the world.

Eddy described Christian Science as a return to "primitive Christianity and its lost element of healing." There are key differences between Christian Science theology and that of other branches of Christianity. In particular, adherents subscribe to a radical form of philosophical idealism, believing that reality is purely spiritual and the material world an illusion. This includes the view that disease is a mental error rather than physical disorder, and that the sick should be treated not by medicine, but by a form of prayer that seeks to correct the beliefs responsible for the illusion of ill health.

The church does not require that Christian Scientists avoid all medical care—adherents use dentists, optometrists, obstetricians, physicians for broken bones, and vaccination when required by law—but maintains that Christian-Science prayer is most effective when not combined with medicine. Between the 1880s and 1990s the avoidance of medical treatment led to the deaths of several adherents and their children. Parents and others were prosecuted for, and in a few cases convicted of, manslaughter or neglect.


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