Christian Science (the Church of Christ, Scientist)

Movement·Founded 1879 CE·The church does not publish membership figures and is forbidden to by its own Manual, Article VIII, Section 28. Independent estimates for the late twentieth century range from under 100,000 to several hundred thousand and are not reconcilable. What can be counted is public: practitioners and teachers listed in the Christian Science Journal in the United States fell from 4,965 in January 1971 to fewer than a thousand, and branch churches from roughly 1,800 to about 1,000.

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Story of Christian Science (the Church of Christ, Scientist)

The fall on the ice at Lynn.

On a February evening in 1866 Eddy slipped on ice, was carried to a house and, on the third day, read the healing of the palsied man in Matthew 9 and got up. The attending physician later disputed how badly she had been hurt, and the argument over that disputed fact has run for a hundred and fifty years.

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Where it is toldScience and Health and Eddy's Retrospection and Introspection (1891)
Who appearsMary Baker Eddy; the doctor at Lynn; the man sick of the palsy in Matthew 9
What it teachesThat the founding of the movement was a healing and is offered as evidence
Understanding it — context, not catechism: how this passage is held

The Lynn fall is the founding event and it is contested in its particulars. Eddy's account, given in Science and Health and at greater length in Retrospection and Introspection, is that she was severely injured, that her recovery was not expected, and that on the third day she read Matthew 9:2 and rose healed. Dr Alvin M. Cushing, who attended her, later gave a sworn statement that he had not considered her in danger. Whether the injury was grave is not a detail the movement can concede, because the healing is offered as the first demonstration of the principle. Willa Cather and Georgine Milmine's hostile serial in McClure's in 1907-08, and later Eddy's authorised biographers, fought over exactly this. The episode is a fair illustration of the whole: a claim advanced as evidence, disputed on the evidence, and held regardless.

The same ground, other faiths

claims that share this one's ideas
The First Vision. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Read it in full →
The Era of Manifestations — when the dead started sending things. The Shakers (United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearing) Read it in full →
Sound rightly spoken has power. Vedic Religion · core tenet Go deeper →
Samadhi — union in stillness. Hinduism · the interior Go deeper →
V Vairocana — the cosmic buddha. Buddhism · figure Meet them →
K Kundakunda. Jainism · figure Meet them →

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