Article January 3, 2005 Issue

Way out in front

By Marilyn Jones

Avant-garde: "new and unconventional; vanguard; ahead of its time." In the arts, avant-garde ideas pump the life-blood of progress. But in the field of religion, new ideas crawl toward the light, usually for centuries, bringing few if any changes.

But about 100 years ago something revolutionary happened. A New England woman—a contemporary and neighbor of the most radical thinkers of her day, the Transcendentalists—made a discovery that redefined reality and set the course for individual transformation not practiced systematically since the time of Jesus.

This radical discovery? Neither matter nor evil is real. Rather, they exist only as mental illusions. When Mary Baker Eddy published her discovery in 1875, most people found her ideas radical and unconventional. And today those concepts still seem far-reaching and futuristic to most people. Yet increasingly, forward-thinking physicists, health practitioners, and theologians are beginning to draw conclusions that approach the same ideas that Mrs. Eddy presented over 100 years ago.

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