Article October 25, 1993 Issue

Mary Baker Eddy: spiritual pioneer

Talk on Mrs. Eddy's life opens public celebration of Women's History Month

The mid-1800s saw a boom of reform movements. The abolitionists were in full swing, and Harriet Beecher Stowe's book Uncle Tom's Cabin was an overnight sensation. The temperance movement flourished. There was active campaigning for prison reforms. And Elizabeth Cady Stanton and her partner Lucretia Mott held the first Women's Rights convention in Seneca Falls, New York.

At this time in United States history, three-fourths of the country's population were churchgoers. Transcendentalism, which held that nothing was more sacred than one's own mind, was widely popular in New England—in large part because of its famous spokesmen, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Bronson Alcott. At the same time, this was a period of intense interest in science. In 1859 Darwin's book The Origin of Species was published. The credibility of Christianity became an important issue.

In the midst of these currents of thought and major events, Mary Baker Eddy emerged as a spiritual pioneer: the Discoverer of Christian Science and the Founder of The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, Massachusetts. She soon became the Leader of a worldwide movement.

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