Church of Christ, Scientist
The Church of Christ, Scientist, often known as The Christian Science Church, is a Protestant Christian denomination, founded by Mary Baker Eddy in 1879. The Bible and Eddy's book Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures are together the church's key doctrinal sources.
Mrs. Eddy argued that given the absolute perfection and goodness of God, sin, disease, and death could not be of Him, and therefore could not be truly real. The material world was thus an illusion, and an inaccurate picture of spiritual truth, or reality. This material "error" could be remedied through the elevated spiritual understanding of God and man. This understanding, she contended, was what enabled Jesus in the Christian biblical record to heal. Adherents of this teaching, known as Christian Scientists, thus believe that disease can be healed through prayer and an ever-deepening understanding of man's relation to God. Christian Scientists use prayer instead of medical care, sometimes with the aid of Christian Science practitioners (people who devote their full time to treating others through prayer) and claim to experience healing, often reporting these experiences in church publications since the church's founding.
The practice of healing led to some measure of stir in the theological realm: particularly under the eye of the scientific revolutions of the 19th century, many mainstream denominations had relegated it to the realm of a one-time dispensation rather than a modern practice. During Christian Science's early days of rapid growth, healing under its influence became a subject of heated debate at Christian conventions, but it also became, for the same reason, a subject of wider reawakened interest beginning in the 1960s and 1970s.
The Mother Church is the church's world headquarters, and is located in Boston, Massachusetts. A newspaper, the Christian Science Monitor, founded by Eddy in 1908 and winner of seven Pulitzer prizes, is published by the church through the Christian Science Publishing Society.
Branch Christian Science churches and Christian Science Societies are at once related to the central church but with large autonomy. They can be found worldwide, primarily in the US though also in Europe and other locations, and usually maintain a Christian Science Reading Room for reading and study open to the public. Churches have usually one one-hour church service each Sunday, consisting of hymns, prayer, and readings from the Bible and Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. They also hold a one-hour Wednesday evening testimony meeting, with similar readings and accounts by those attending, and sponsor Christian Science lectures in their communities annually.
The church is structured by a 138-page constitution of sorts by Mrs. Eddy titled the Manual of The Mother Church, consisting of various Articles of By-Laws ranging from duties of officers to discipline to provisions for church meetings. The Manual was an unusual establishment, as it enacted a rule of law in place of hierarchy, placing binding requirements on even its top executives whom she subordinated to it.
Christian Science is not to be confused with Scientology, the churches of Christ, the international Churches of Christ movement, or Religious Science founded by Ernest Holmes. Although it has outward similarities to the New Thought Movement, of which Religious Science is a part, partly through ties between the New Thought Movement and certain ambitious and disloyal students such as Emma Curtiss Hopkins, Christian Science regards itself as more restrictedly Christianity-focused.