Christian Science, New Thought, and Scientific Discourse1

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE, NEW THOUGHT, AND SCIENTIFIC DISCOURSE1 Jeremy Rapport Introduction Among the more insistent proponents of the claim that scientific and religious systems of knowledge complement and reinforce each other are Christian Science and the various New Thought groups. New Thought and Christian Science emerged as alternatives to main- stream American Protestant movements during late 19th and early 20th century. As their names suggest, Christian Science and the New Thought movements, including Divine Science, Religious Science, and the Unity School of Christianity, understood themselves to be pre- mised on what they considered scientific understandings of the world and of the divine forces that they believed controlled the world. This chapter explores the use of science in those movements. It focuses on healing testimonials in Christian Science and healing methods in New Thought, especially the Unity School of Christianity. Both Christian Science and New Thought testimonials and healing practices demon- strated reliance upon a specific type of popular scientific epistemology. Christian Science and New Thought were centrally influenced by late 19th century America’s increasing emphasis on material explana- tions for the world. As a result, both systems developed strategies for dealing with the material world that depended on the assumptions 1 This chapter is derived from a larger body of work on embodiment issues and cultural influences in Christian Science and New Thought. I first presented portions of this research at the 2008 meeting of the American Academy of Religion in Chicago. I published related work in an article analyzing vegetarianism in the development of the Unity School of Christianity, “Eating for Unity: Vegetarianism in the Early Unity School of Christianity,” Gastronomica Vol. 9, No. 2 (Spring 2009); and in the forth- coming “Corresponding to the Rational World: Scientific Language and Rationales in Christian Science and the Unity School of Christianity,” Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions. My thanks to James R. Lewis, who both encour- aged me to pursue this line of research and whose work on legitimizing strategies in new religious movements is formative to my thinking about this topic, as well as to Benjamin Zeller, who has provided many helpful comments on drafts of the Nova Religio paper that have aided me in constructing the arguments in this chapter. 550 jeremy rapport and modes of science. Although neither Christian Science nor New Thought understood the mundane, material world as the ultimate reality upon which their systems of belief and practice must be based, both did understand that world to indicate a larger reality where salva- tion was possible. Christian Science emerged in the late nineteenth century when Mary Baker Eddy (1821–1910) believed she healed herself of a dev- astating injury by reading her Bible. Eddy began an investigation of scripture and eventually composed Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, the textbook of Christian Science, first published in 1875. Eddy’s system was clearly influenced by her experiences with Phineas Parkhurst Quimby (1802–1866), a healer generally considered the father of New Thought. New Thought coalesced as a movement with the work of Emma Curtis Hopkins (1849–1925), an early Christian Science apostate, and the development from 1899 to 1904 of the International New Thought Alliance, an umbrella organization that promoted many of the small, New Thought-inspired religious movements that were emerging at that time. However, clearly the longest lasting, largest, and most influential New Thought group is the Unity School of Christianity (henceforth Unity), which was born in 1889 in the wake of Myrtle Fillmore’s personal healing experience. Unity will be the primary example of New Thought in this chapter. Both Christian Science and New Thought leaders wrote about their religious beliefs and practices in a manner meant to invoke scientific principles and procedures. For example, they argued that their beliefs and practices were based on logical observation of the world, and they framed religious concepts in terms of causes and effects. They contended that their observations led to laws about God and the universe, and held that by understanding the basic laws through which God operated, an individual practitioner could manipulate his or her place in the world for the better. Christian Science and New Thought focused heavily on healing as both a result of engaging in their practices and as a demonstration of the power of their principles. Testimonials to healing and practices intended to facilitate healing became the primary method to demonstrate the “scientific” basis of both movements. An examination of how these two important alternative religious movements dealt with the issues of the emerging modern world reveals that by incorporating some of the most basic premises of that world into their developing religious systems both groups negoti-.

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