The Ambiguous Feminism of Author(s): Susan Hill Lindley Source: The Journal of Religion, Vol. 64, No. 3 (Jul., 1984), pp. 318-331 Published by: The University of Chicago Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1202666 . Accessed: 22/10/2014 15:07

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This content downloaded from 66.31.143.47 on Wed, 22 Oct 2014 15:07:18 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions The Ambiguous Feminism of Mary Baker Eddy

Susan Hill Lindley/ Saint Olaf College

Among women who have achieved recognition in the field of religion, Mary Baker Eddy frequently appears as a pioneer, a woman who founded and led a major religious movement and who used feminine imagery for the divine. During and since her lifetime, biographers and historians have presented portraits of the founder of of an almost dizzying variety, from unadulterated adulation to devas- tating attack.' More recently, Mary Baker Eddy as woman has been the focus of scholarly analysis, with mixed conclusions as to her place in the women's movement of nineteenth-century America and her heritage for contemporary feminism. Gail Parker'sstudy stresses psychological analysis, seeing in Eddy's denial of the material an attempt "to avoid any confrontation between the two halves of her profoundly divided personality"2-that is, willfulness and submission, the appropriate I The most recent major biography is Julius Silberger, Jr., Mary Baker Eddy. An Interpretive Biography of the Founder of Christian Science (: Little, Brown & Co., 1980). The work is balanced and provocative, dealing with Eddy from a psychological perspective; however, it includes little focus on Mary Baker Eddy as a woman and a religious thinker. The most extensive biography of Mary Baker Eddy is the 3-vol. work by Robert Peel, vol. 1, Mary Baker Eddy. The Yearsof Discovery (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1966), vol. 2, Mary Baker Eddy. The Years of Trial (1971), and vol. 3, Mary Baker Eddy. The Yearsof Authority (1977). The care and detail of Peel's work, especially in its use of primary sources previously unavailable to scholars, is significant; equally evident is the work's apologetic nature. Another recent work, , The Emergence of Christian Science in American Religious Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973), is also clearly sympathetic to Mrs. Eddy. Edwin Franden Dakin's, Mrs. Eddy: The Biography of a Virginal Mind (New York: Blue Ribbon Books, 1929) is a fascinating psychological study but frequently critical to the point of hostility. and John V. Dittemore's, Mary Baker Eddy. The Truth and the Tradition (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1932) is particularly interesting because of Dittemore's position as a former director of the Mother Church. Among early biographers, , The Life of Mary Baker Eddy and the History of Christian Science (New York, 1909), is quite critical, while , The Life of Mary Baker Eddy (New York, ca. 1908), is very sympathetic. The goal of a balanced scholarly study of Eddy is frustrated by the inaccessibility of Christian Science archives to general scholarship. 2 Gail Parker, "Mary Baker Eddy and Sentimental Womanhood," New England Quarterly43 (March 1970): 11. ? 1984 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. 0022-4189/84/6403-0003$01.00

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This content downloaded from 66.31.143.47 on Wed, 22 Oct 2014 15:07:18 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Ambiguous Feminism masculine and feminine identities of nineteenth-century America. According to Parker, Eddy tried to use the "Sentimental Womanhood" ideal of her time to overcome masculine dominance but was ultimately unsuccessful, in part because of her claims to divinity and her method of exercising power, in part because "when the redoubtable sensitivity of women was raised to a supernatural pitch, it was not a viable basis for widespread feminism."3 Susan Setta argues that in Mary Baker Eddy's thought is to be found "an early attempt to achieve this goal [of incorporating feminine and masculine qualities into one's life] by integrating the masculine and the feminine in her image of God and in her theology of Mind Heal."4 Like Parker, Setta sees in Eddy a rebel against the dominant masculine culture of her time, but unlike Parker, Setta sees her endeavor as at least partially successful. But to achieve this goal of affirming the feminine, Eddy had to deny "her womanhood, as the nineteenth cen- tury defined it, through the negation of her body."5 If there is no mat- ter, there can be no restrictive sex roles based on the body; if God is both masculine and feminine (in a spiritual sense, of course), men have no advantage over women of closer identification with the divine. Mary Farrell Bednarowski includes Christian Science as one of four examples of religious movements "outside the mainstream" in nineteenth-century America which, because of their theological posi- tions, were able to allow women greater freedom and power than the orthodox Protestant churches of the time.6 Bednarowski, too, sees a key to Christian Science's greater openness to women in Eddy's denial of the material and her insistence on an androgynous God. "Two aspects, particularly, of the Christian Science concept of deity have sig- nificance for women. First, Eddy stressed that God is nonanthro- pomorphic, but nonetheless incorporates the feminine as well as the masculine. Second, Eddy divorced God from responsibility for the world's ills: God is not the creator of the material world-that is the

3 Ibid., pp. 9-10. 4 Susan Setta, "Denial of the Female, Affirmation of the Feminine: The Father-Mother God of Mary Baker Eddy," in BeyondAndrocentrism. New Essays on Women and Religion, ed. Rita M. Gross (Missoula, Mont.: Scholars Press, 1977), p. 289. 5 Ibid., p. 290; see also p. 296. 6 Bednarowski identifies four theological characteristics common to movements which were sympathetic to women's religious leadership: "(1). A perception of the divine that deemphasized the masculine either by means of a bisexual divinity or an impersonal, nonanthropomorphic divine principle; (2) a tempering or denial of the doctrine of the Fall; (3) a denial of the need for a traditional ordained clergy; (4) a view of marriage that did not stress the married state and motherhood as the proper sphere for woman and her only means of fulfillment" (Mary Farrell Bednarowski, "Outside the Mainstream: Women's Religion and Women Religious Leaders in Nineteenth Century America," Journal of the American Academy of Religion 48 [June 1980]: 209).

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This content downloaded from 66.31.143.47 on Wed, 22 Oct 2014 15:07:18 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions The Journal of Religion work of mortal mind."7 Thus Bednarowski concludes, "Christian Science demanded of women that they give up the claim of reality for their material bodies, but in return it gave them a connection to the numi- nous in the Father-Mother God, and it promised them power over their own lives as well as equal participation in the religion they had chosen."8 Thus all three authors see Christian Science, the child of Mary Baker Eddy, as at least partially rooted in and rebelling against the restricted roles permitted to women in nineteenth-century America; yet they disagree on the success or failure of Eddy's solution-that is, denial of the material - and none deals fully with the consequences and implications of that solution. Such diversity of opinion is not surpris- ing, for Eddy's ideas about women and religion are complex, even ambiguous, both in the context of her own time and in light of con- temporary feminist theology. The purpose of this essay, then, is to survey briefly Mary Baker Eddy's ideas about women and religion, set in a context of nineteenth- century American views of women and religion, and to compare them with contemporary feminist theology. To do so, however, one needs to suggest something of the nineteenth century and the contemporary contexts. Nineteenth-century American feminism, broadly and in its religious manifestation, saw two streams: a more "radical" wing based on a firm premise of human equality of men and women and typified in a figure such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton; and a more "conservative" stream which tacitly accepted differentiation of nature and roles by sex, along the lines of the "cult of true womanhood"9 but then argued, first, that the peculiar female nature and role was not inferior but equally as or more important and valuable than the male nature and role, and second, that it was just because of woman's superior moral sensitivity that her influence should be felt more in the public sphere. Frances Willard is a prominent example of the second type.10

7 Ibid., p. 218. 8 Ibid., p. 221. 9 Barbara Welter, "The Cult of True Womanhood, 1820-1860," AmericanQuarterly 18 (Summer 1966): 151-74. 10 Welter herself noted at the end of her classic article the radical potential of the cult to expand women's roles and "legitimate"interests (ibid., pp. 173-74), and that potential has been widely noted in scholarly research since 1966. Compare such recent works as Rosemary Radford Ruether and Rosemary Skinner Keller, eds., Womenand Religionin America,vol. 1, TheNineteenth Century(San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1981); Hilah F. Thomas and Rosemary Skinner Keller, eds., Womenin New Worlds:Historical Perspectives on the WesleyanTradition (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1981). For an early statement of the two types of feminism, see William L. O'Neill, EveryoneWas Brave: A Historyof Feminismin America(Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1969, 1971), p. x. Nancy Hardesty's article, "Minister as Prophet? or as Mother? Two Nineteenth Century Models," in Thomas and Keller, eds., presents a particularly clear example of this typology. 320

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To define "contemporary feminist theology" is no easy task, in light of the diversity which has emerged in the field in recent years. To use the typology suggested by Judith Plaskow and Carol Christ, there are the revolutionaries and the reformists. 1 The former argue that Chris- tianity and Judaism are so pervasively sexist and patriarchal that a new religion for women is needed, while the latter believe that the patriarchy of Judaism and Christianity is not so essential that it cannot be over- come; one can work from within. There are those feminist theologians who deny any peculiarly "feminine" nature beyond cultural condition- ing and those who argue for a distinctive female perspective or psychol- ogy, but one which should be valued and celebrated rather than deni- grated. There are disagreements among feminists about the kind of female experience to be considered and the weight to be placed on it. Christ and Plaskow distinguish between "woman's feminist experience and... woman's traditional experience, which includes, but is not limited to, woman's body experience."12 Such differences are real and important; feminist theology today is no monolith. Nevertheless, one can identify some common, if not universal, themes which characterize the religious concerns of contemporary feminists. First, there is the basic agreement that women are not naturally inferior to men and that God is not male. Such assertions may sound so elementary as to be gratuitous, but they run counter to the vast major- ity of Western religious tradition, and their implications include criti- cism of exclusively male language and imagery of God and humanity and of the exclusion of women from ordination and religious leadership. Second, virtually all contemporary religious feminists would agree that marriage and motherhood (or, in the Roman Catholic tradition, a religious vocation) are not the only proper and fulfilling spheres - the "natural" roles -for a woman. Again, this assertion only seems obvious if one ignores the overwhelming weight of Western tradition in the past and, in some quarters, even today. Third, most religious feminists would affirm the goodness of the material, rejecting any dualistic philosophy which identifies the spirit

1l Carol P. Christ and Judith Plaskow, eds., WomanspiritRising: A FeministReader in Religion (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1979), pp. 9-11. 12 Ibid., p. 8. A similar distinction can be found in recent scholarship on women and religion. Earlier work focused on the "extraordinary"woman, the one who defied cultural standards and expectations. More recently, attention has been given to the study of what most women actually did and its value and validity for historical research. At best, the two foci are complementary, not competitive. Compare Peggy McIntosh, "The Study of Women: Implications for Reconstructing the Liberal Arts Disciplines," in TheForumfor Liberal Education (October 1981), published by the Association of American Colleges, pp. 1-3; Kathryn Kish Sklar, "The Last Fifteen Years: Historians' Changing Views of American Women in Religion and Society," in Thomas and Keller, eds.

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This content downloaded from 66.31.143.47 on Wed, 22 Oct 2014 15:07:18 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions The Journal of Religion with "good" (and usually male) and the body with "evil" or, at best, "inferior" (and usually female). One might argue that such an affirma- tion is simply a recovery of a genuine Hebraic and biblical understand- ing, forJews and Christians, or of the value system of a Great Goddess religion, for the revolutionary feminist. True-but nonetheless, that understanding has been obscured for much of Western history to the particular detriment of women, and it is a typical and central theme of religious feminism. Fourth, most contemporary religious feminists prefer an egalitarian model to a hierarchical one for personal and social relationships and for institutional structures. An authoritarian church receives no more approval than an authoritarian, patriarchal family. Similarly, they express a strong preference for cooperation rather than patterns of dominance and submission. This list is by no means comprehensive, but it does suggest areas of agreement within the diversity of contemporary religious feminism and hence a basis for comparison with the ideas of Mary Baker Eddy. Mary Baker Eddy has been praised for a number of ideas in her reli- gion favorable to women. Most obvious is her description of the Deity as "Father-Mother God." The concept as well as the title is pervasive in her writings. Images of Father and Mother present different aspects of the divine, and the feminine is at least as important as the masculine. "The ideal man corresponds to creation, to intelligence, and to Truth. The ideal woman corresponds to Life and to Love. In divine Science, we have not as much authority for considering God masculine, as we have for considering Him [sic] feminine, for Love imparts the clearest idea of Deity.'13 If then, God is both masculine and feminine, men and women are equally in the image of God. "Man and woman as coexistent and eternal with God forever reflect, in glorified quality, the infinite Father-Mother God."14 Such nontraditional female imagery for God distinguished Mary Baker Eddy in her own time and has been one of the most remarked qualities of Christian Science in contemporary feminist scholarship; it was not, however, necessarily unique or original. The most obvious American predecessors with a Mother ele- ment in the Godhead were the Shakers. There is some confusion as to the degree to which Eddy picked up the idea from the Shakers: she was

13 Mary Baker Eddy, Scienceand Health with Key to the Scriptures(Boston, 1906), p. 517; hereafter cited as Science and Health. While Eddy invariably associated Love with the feminine aspect of God, she was less consistent about other qualities, as when she spoke of "God as divine Principle, -as Life, represented by the Father; as Truth, represented by the Son; as Love, represented by the Mother" (Science and Health, p. 569). 14 Ibid., p. 516. See also p. 577, and Mary Baker Eddy, Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 (Boston, 1896), p. 33. 322

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exposed to a Shaker community in her youth, but there is question about how influential that exposure was.15 Mary Baker Eddy apparently considered it no accident that the reve- lation of God's female nature should come by a woman. As one author writes, "Mrs. Eddy felt that her womanhood was essential to the very nature of her mission; for she and her followers believed that it had been given to her to reveal the Motherhood of God."16 Eddy herself believed in "woman's special adaptability to lead on Christian Science,"'7 and she spoke at an 1888 address in Chicago of the unique role of woman "to awaken the dull senses, intoxicated with pleasure or pain, to the infinite meaning of [Christ's] words [of Truth and Love]."'8 In sum, from a contemporary perspective, among the most significant charac- teristics of Christian Science was not only the fact that it was a major religion founded by a woman but also its belief that a woman, specifi- cally, had to perform the task of revealing the fullness of a Mother- Father God. What does Christian Science have to say about equality between the sexes? Mary Baker Eddy could be bitingly critical of the male power structures of her day, particularly the church and the medical profes- sion,19 and she did advocate equal rights for women. She endorsed especially equal legal and economic rights for men and women and praised women for their activity in reforms of her era,20 although her commitment to woman's suffrage was qualified. "If the elective fran- chise for women will remedy the evil [of discrimination] without encouraging difficulties of greater magnitude, let us hope it will be granted."2' While Eddy supported major issues of feminism of her day, women's rights were, for her, a subordinate interest.22 Perhaps more

15 Peel minimizes the influence, emphasizing the way Eddy "revolutionized" the Shaker idea. Rather, he cites the influence of Mary's pious and gentle mother in the development of her image of God as Mother and as Love (Peel [n. 1 above], 1:53). Less sympathetic biographers see the debt as more significant (see Dakin [n. 1 above], pp. 13, 193). Bates and Dittemore (n. 1 above) see the influence as possible, but slight (p. 155). Other Christian theologians have spoken of God as Mother as well as Father, from the medieval Dame Julian of Norwich to the nineteenth- century American Transcendentalist Theodore Parker, but I found no evidence in Eddy's own writings or the discussions of her biographers of an explicit influence other than that of the Shakers on this point. 16 Gottschalk (n. I above), p. 166. 17 Eddy, Miscellaneous Writings, p. 210. 18 Ibid., p. 100. 19 Eddy, Science and Health, chap. 6. 20 Eddy, Miscellaneous Writings, p. 245, and Scienceand Health, pp. 63, 340. One might also note the cryptic reference in the glossary of Science and Health, where Eddy notes that Gihon, a biblical stands river, for "the rights of woman acknowledged morally, civilly, and socially" (p. 587). 21 Eddy, Science and Health, p. 63. 22 Gottschalk's conclusion on this point seems a bit overstated: "Mrs. Eddy spoke out on the of subject women's rights more explicitly than on any other single issue. She stood for the equality

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significant than her statements on theoretical equality was the practical opportunity Eddy allowed in Christian Science for women to become religious leaders and healers, and to support themselves thereby. The central text of Christian Science is Scienceand Health with Key to the Scriptures, and Mary Baker Eddy's "spiritual" interpretation of the Bible was a foundation of her theology. Here, too, one can trace Eddy's positive view of women in her comments on famous women of the Bible. Hers was not the typical interpretation of the role of Eve in the Fall; she argued that the woman was the first to confess her fault. She says, "The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat;" as much as to say in meek penitence, "Neither man nor God shall father my fault." She has already learned that corporeal sense is the serpent. Hence she is first to abandon the belief in the material origin of man and to discern spiritual creation. This hereafterenabled woman to be the mother of Jesus and to behold at the sepulchre the risen Saviour, who was soon to manifest the deathless man of God's creating. This enabled woman to be first to interpret the Scriptures in their true sense, which reveals the spiritual origin of man.23 One can see even in this brief passage the way Eddy traced her central theological assertion, the nonreality of matter, through the women of biblical history. Eve begins the rejection of the material for the spiritual, but other women of the Bible follow her lead. "The masculine belief called Isaac cherished the spoils of error or Esau, 'but feminine belief named Rebekah was drawn to the more spiritual Jacob.'"24 Mary was important particularly for her virgin conception of Jesus, which signified spirituality.25 But the biblical female figure which appears to have held the most fascination for Eddy was the woman of the Apocalypse, Rev. 12:1 if. In Scienceand Health, she wrote, "The woman in the Apocalypse symbolizes generic man, the spiritual idea of God; she illustrates the coincidence of God and man as the divine Principle and divine idea."26 Later in a long section of interpre- tation on the passage, she asserts that the woman also typifies "the spiritual idea of God's motherhood."27 In Eddy's interpretation, the woman, or Spirit, stands against the dragon, symbolizing the evil and

of the sexes before law, including the right of women to vote and to an improved legal status in the holding and disposition of property" (p. 269). H. A. L. Fisher, Our New Religion. An Examina- tion of Christian Science (New York: Jonathan Cape & Harrison Smith, 1930), p. 125, is more realistic: the "promotion of feminine rights, though strong, was, nevertheless, only a subordinate interest to the authoress of Science and Health." 23 Eddy, Science and Health, pp. 533-34. 24 Quoted from a manuscript by Mary Baker Eddy in Bates and Dittemore (n. I above), p. 135. 25 Peel (n. 1 above), 2:27. 26 Eddy, Science and Health, p. 561. 27 Ibid., p. 562.

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This content downloaded from 66.31.143.47 on Wed, 22 Oct 2014 15:07:18 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Ambiguous Feminism lie of "materiality." Toward the end of the discussion, Eddy implies- but only implies, there is no direct claim-that she is the woman of the Apocalypse.28 When pressed, Mary Baker Eddy specifically denied such a literal identification; nevertheless, the hint is obvious in Science and Health, and clearly some of her followers made that identification.29 Similarly, many Christian Scientists saw in Mrs. Eddy a kind of second incarnation, this time in the form of a woman. Again, she made no clear, direct claim to divinity, but there are passages in her writings which suggest that conclusion. For example, having suggested that the meaning of the parable of the woman hiding leaven in three measures of meal "signifies the Science of Christ and its spiritual interpretation," she asks, "Did not this parable point a moral with a prophecy, foretell- ing the second appearing in the flesh of the Christ. . . ?"30Moreover, given the theme of the motherhood of God, now revealed in Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy's preference of the title "Mother" is sugges- tive, although it was a title she later repudiated, "owing to the public misunderstanding of this name...."31 In view of the apparent conflict over Eddy's claims, the conclusion of John Dittemore, a former direc- tor of the Mother Church, is worth nothing: "Despite public disclaim- ers of equality with Christ, Frye's diary makes it clear that Mrs. Eddy privately regarded herself in that light."32 Whether or not Mary Baker Eddy's exposition of the "true"meaning of Scripture or claims about her own position are found to be convinc- ing may well depend on one's agreement or disagreement with Chris- tian Science as a faith. But beyond such questions, Eddy offered rein- terpretation of some traditional views of biblical women and empha- sized their importance in the divine scheme of redemption, thus con- tributing to a positive view of women in Christianity. Women were not, to her, in any sense second-class citizens of the religious world. In sum, she projected an equal feminine nature and image for God; she encouraged equality of the sexes; she offered a religion in nineteenth- century America in which a woman, and women, played leading roles. Yet, at least from the perspective of twentieth-century feminism, Mary Baker Eddy's ideas are ambiguous. In her own time, she avoided clear identification with the woman's movement. If she, too, suffered

28 Ibid., pp. 56(, 565. 29 Gottschalk (n. 1 above), p. 167. :0 Eddy, Science and Health, p. 118. :' Mary Baker Eddy, Manual of the Mother Church, 89th ed. (Boston: First Church of' Christ Scientist, 1895), p. 65. :2 Bates and Dittemore (n. 1 above), pp. 357-58. was Mary Baker Eddy's general secretary and house manager for the last twenty-five years of her life and probably closer to her than any other person.

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This content downloaded from 66.31.143.47 on Wed, 22 Oct 2014 15:07:18 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions The Journal of Religion from the limitations her age put on women, she was no self-conscious feminist. Her poem, "Woman's Rights," called for no radical shifts in society and indeed might well have drawn praise from the most con- servative defenders of "true womanhood." Grave on her monumental pile: She won from vice, by virtue's smile, Her dazzling crown, her sceptred throne, Affection'swreath, a happy home; The right to worship deep and pure, To bless the orphan, feed the poor; Last at the cross to mourn her Lord, First at the tomb to hear his word: To fold an angel's wings below; And hover o'er the couch of woe; To nurse the Bethlehem babe so sweet, The right to sit at Jesus' feet; To form the bud for bursting bloom, The hoary head with joy to crown; In short, the right to work and pray, "To point to heaven and lead the way."33 A major recommendation of Christian Science, as presented by Mary Baker Eddy, was its morality. But what was the content of that morality? Its central thrust was, as she put it in Scienceand Health, the promotion of "chastity and purity" over "sensualism and impurity."34 "Christian Science despoils the kingdom of evil, and pre-eminently pro- motes affection and virtue in families and therefore in the community."35 Beyond the unorthodox nature of some of her religious ideas, Mary Baker Eddy posed few challenges to reigning nineteenth-century American morality. Chapter 3 of Scienceand Health discusses marriage, and while Eddy suggests that this mundane institution will have no place in the final spiritual Kingdom,36 she is absolute in her endorse- ment of conventional marital morality for this age. "Chastity is the cement of civilization and progress. Without it there is no stability in

33 Eddy, MiscellaneousWritings (n. 14 above), pp. 388-89. 34 Eddy, Scienceand Health, p. 272. "Purity"as a theme and a movement was widespread in America in the latter half of the nineteenth century, uniting in the cause Protestant reformersand feminists. See David J. Pivar, Purity Crusade.Sexual Morality and Social Control, 1868-1900 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1973). In this light, Eddy's views on marriage and the rela- tive importance of its sexual component were by no means unique. 35 Eddy, Scienceand Health, pp. 102-3. 36 Ibid., p. 56; Eddy, MiscellaneousWritings, p. 286.

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This content downloaded from 66.31.143.47 on Wed, 22 Oct 2014 15:07:18 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Ambiguous Feminism society, and without it one cannot attain the Science of Life."37 "Man should not be required to participate in all the annoyances and cares of domestic economy, nor should woman be expected to understand polit- ical economy."38 No challenge to traditional sex roles or to the sacred institution of the family, so dear to nineteenth-century moralists, would be raised by Mary Baker Eddy. Though she herself took virtually no part in the raising of her son, she seemed to have had no quarrel with the prevalent ideals of motherhood for most women, writing, "A mother is the strongest educator, either for or against crime."39 And "Mothers should be able to produce perfect health and perfect morals in their children.. by studying this scientific method of practising Chris- tianity."40 The home was "woman's world'41 and on the female guardian of that world rested the responsibility for the virtue and nurture of future American citizens. Christian Science endorsed values of purity and temperence in other ways. High on Mary Baker Eddy's list of sins or errors was the use of alcohol and tobacco,42 and many of the testimonials which fill the last one hundred pages of Scienceand Health report the efficacy of Christian Science in enabling the writer to overcome the liquor and tobacco habits. Perhaps it was the very conventionality of her moral statements which led outsiders to commend Christian Science and Mary Baker Eddy, despite what they regarded as the heresy of her religious beliefs. A reviewer from the SpringfieldRepublican includes the revealing judg- ment that the doctrines of Christian Science are "high and pure, wholly free from those vile theories about love and marriage which have been so prevalent among the spiritualists."43 It has frequently been observed, and rightly, that the majority of Mary Baker Eddy's followers were women and that Christian Science offered them a position of religious independence and leadership unavailable in most mainline Christian churches of the time. Nor was the significance of Eddy's sex as founder of Christian Science lost on her followers. As one female lecturer on Christian Science commented, "No women had ever founded a Church before, far less had any woman been the inspired leader of a scientific and religious movement. In

37 Eddy, Science and Health, p. 57. 38 Ibid., p. 59. 39 Ibid., p. 236. 40 Eddy, Miscellaneous Writings, p. 5. So concerned was Eddy to guard every detail of feminine modesty and propriety that the Manual specifies that "when it is possible the body of a female shall be prepared for burial by one of her own sex" (p. 50). 41 Eddy, Miscellaneous Writings, p. 287. 42 Eddy, Science and Health, pp. 406-7. 43 Eddy, Miscellaneous Writings, p. 462.

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achieving this she lifted all womankind forever."44 In her own person, Eddy set an example for other women of one who had broken with cul- tural limitations on female achievement. Yet generalizations about the religious leadership of women in Chris- tian Science must be qualified: the supreme leader was a woman, yet men filled the great majority of prestigious and responsible places below her in the church structure. As Peel notes, women did the "pioneer work in far-off areas" and were active in healing, but men filled the executive positions.45 Women who became too strong or too prominent-most notably, Augusta Stetson-and thus might rival Mary Baker Eddy were not tolerated, and Eddy's closest support came from a succession of men. It is true that the Manual of theMother Church, with its absolute authority for Christian Scientists, specifies that "the Readers for the Mother Church shall be a man and a woman, one to read the Bible, and one to read Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures";46yet the same Manual, in its section on Committees on Publication, states, "The Committee on Publication shall consist of men generally.... If a suitable man is not obtainable for the Commit- tee on Publication, a suitable woman shall be elected."47 How, then, did Mary Baker Eddy fit into the context of nineteenth- century American feminism? On the one hand, some of her ideas might be identified as religiously radical: her dual image of God; her own role as a religious founder; the possibilities she opened for other women, both in terms of religious leadership and of an alternative spirituality; her break with much of traditional-and patriarchal- Christianity. On the other hand, Eddy could be aligned with the "con- servative" wing of nineteenth-century religious feminism, insofar as she seems to have endorsed a peculiar (and superior) nature and role for women, just as she raised few questions of the prevailing moral pat- terns and assumptions of her day. Yet although she argued for a broad and positive impact on society at large from the emergence of women and the feminine, her primary concern and vision were personal, even individualistic, and spiritual. Despite a secondary concern with issues like suffrage and economic rights for women, it is striking how limited were the practical and political implications of her form of conservative feminism, particularly if one compares her to a contemporary like Frances Willard.

44 Quoted in Fisher (n. 22 above), p. 153. 45 Peel (n. 1 above), 2:223; see also Fisher, p. 151. 46 Eddy, Manual (n. 31 above), p. 29. 47 Ibid., pp. 99-100.

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Finally, there are two points on which Christian Science and con- temporary religious feminism are in great contrast. The first is the mat- ter of power and structures. Where contemporary religious feminism generally criticizes hierarchical systems in favor of egalitarianism and cooperation, Christian Science under Mary Baker Eddy was extremely authoritarian. She was the authority, whose word was never to be ques- tioned. Those who disagreed with her were simply in error. "Diverse opinions in Science are stultifying. All must have one Principle and the same rule; and all whofollow the Principleand rulehave but one opinion of it."48The absolute nature of her authority included the institutional as well as the theological aspects of Christian Science. On any matter of policy or government, her word was final. This authority extended to Christian Science worship: she was the only pastor. Services, according to the Manual, were to consist primarily of readings from the Bible and from Science and Health, and readers were forbidden to comment on those passages.49 Supporters of Mary Baker Eddy defended her actions, seeing her as possessed of a unique revelation and beset continually by those whose ignorance or malice would distort the truth. Critics, on the other hand, decried Eddy's unquestioned and arbitrary authority, and none was more biting than Mark Twain.50 Whatever its justification, the fact of the hierarchical and authoritarian structure of Christian Science, as decreed by Eddy, is clear.51 The second area of contrast between Mary Baker Eddy and contem- porary religious feminism lies in their views of the material. Eddy inherited a Christian tradition which was basically dualistic in its pref- erence for the "spiritual" realm and its suspicion, if not outright rejec- tion, of the worth of the material, which was seen as transitory, or a source of temptation, or, at best, of secondary importance. Yet that

48 Eddy, Miscellaneous Writings, p. 265. 49 Eddy, Manual, p. 32. Peel quotes a letter written by Eddy which explains the restrictions on readers' comments: "The Bible and 'Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures' shall hence- forth be the Pastor of the Mother church. This will tend to spiritualize thought. Personal preach- ing has more or less of human views grafted into it. Whereas the pure Word contains only the living, health-giving Truth" (Peel [n. 1 above], 3:72). 50 Mark Train, Christian Science, with Notes Containing Correctionsto Date (New York: Harper & Bros., 1907). 51 The degree to which an antiauthoritarian attitude is historically an accompaniment to women's religious activity and leadership is an interesting question. Recent scholars such as Elaine H. Pagels, in The Gnostic Gospels (New York: Random House, 1979), and Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza, in "'You Are Not to Be Called Father': Early Christian History in a Feminist Perspective," Cross Currents29 (Fall 1979): 301-23, argue for such a correlation within the Chris- tian tradition, while radical feminists have also argued for a cooperative, egalitarian society in a prepatriarchal time of the Great Goddess. See Charlene Spretnak, ed., The Politics of Women's Spirituality. Essays on the Rise of Spiritual Power within the Feminist Movement (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Co., 1982). Yet the historical verdict is far from decisive at this time.

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This content downloaded from 66.31.143.47 on Wed, 22 Oct 2014 15:07:18 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions The Journal of Religion tradition also decreed that men were more closely identified with the spiritual (hence superior) and women with the material (hence inferior - a concept which fit neatly with the traditional legacy of Eve as bringer of sin and temptress of men). The nineteenth-century American "cult of true womanhood" dealt with the problem by having women switch sides: women are naturally pure, virtuous, and pious. Mary Baker Eddy resolved the dualistic tension, and the identification of women with its inferior half, by simply denying the material altogether. If matter does not exist, there is no dualism, only a monism of Spirit, shared equally by men and women. But Eddy achieved this resolution at a price: not only of her own female body, as Setta and Bednarowski have argued, but of the entire world of the material, not to mention a significant core of Hebraic faith, of God as creator of a heaven and an earth which were pronounced "good." In denying the value and even the existence of the material, Mary Baker Eddy implicitly accepted, in a more drastic way, the very evaluation which had imprisoned her sex for centuries.52 Yet contemporary religious feminism, faced with the same dualistic problem, responds not by denying the reality or worth of the material but by affirming its goodness, including the worth and goodness of the female body. Not only is the old "inferior" half of the equation to be raised to worth, but the sex-related division along spirit-matter lines is rejected as well. Woman is not defined by the body any more than man is; man is no more naturally spiritual than woman. Finally, the very world view that insists on such dualistic division and categorizing is rejected and a more holistic vision advanced. Thus the feminism of Mary Baker Eddy is ambiguous, both in her own time and in its legacy. She, as a woman, founded a religion and gave women a significant place in it; she pressed for feminine imagery of God and insisted that women shared equally with men in the divine image; she defended equal rights for women; she presented positive pictures of biblical women, even the much-maligned Eve. Yet her con- scious identification with the woman's movement of her own day was minimal; she raised few questions of the conventional morality and sex roles of her time beyond the matter of formal religious activity; she gave no quarter to potential female rivals and restricted the power just

52 Similarities between Mary Baker Eddy's thought and current study on women's spirituality might be provocatively pursued, but it is a topic beyond the scope of this essay. Amanda Porter- field, in Feminine Spirituality in America. From Sarah Edwards to Martha Graham(Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1980), includes a brief' section on Eddy. For contemporary expressions of' women's spirituality, see Spretnak. Yet whatever the parallels, especially in the area of healing, it must be recalled that Mary Baker Eddy formally denied the worth or even reality of the body and the material world: a significant contrast to contemporary women's spirituality.

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This content downloaded from 66.31.143.47 on Wed, 22 Oct 2014 15:07:18 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Ambiguous Feminism beneath her own to men. Finally, the authoritarian model she endorsed is uncongenial to contemporary religious feminism, and her resolution of a dualism which denigrated women and the material was no real solution to the tension, for it denied rather than redeemed the "lost half."

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