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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 November 2011
Late in 1888, a swift and public rift occurred between Mary Baker Eddy and her student Ursula N. Gestefeld. Historians agree it was a significant break, generally glossing its cause as a personal quarrel later codified in separate organizations: Eddy's Church of Christ, Scientist, reorganized in 1892, and Gestefeld's Church of the New Thought. This article finds, however, that the rift between Eddy and Gestefeld is best explained in terms of theology and religious practice. The two expressed incompatible views of Christianity and its relationship to Theosophy, eclecticism, truth, ethics, ambiguity, and special revelation. They ultimately codified these profound religious differences, not merely personal quarrels, in their distinct churches. The article's findings cause us to rethink the scope and shape of Eddy's self-professed Christianity; the common characterization of her as excluding powerful women from her church for authoritarian reasons; and the terrain occupied by the traditions and churches Eddy and Gestefeld subsequently developed. I show that in their case, contact resulted not in combination but in conversation and contestation, and ultimately perhaps in co-existence. This builds on and sharpens the theoretics describing the religious milieu in which they operated.
1 Ursula N. Gestefeld (hereafter UNG) to Mary Baker Eddy (hereafter MBE) (30 June 1884). All letters from Gestefeld are courtesy of the Mary Baker Eddy Library.
2 Charles Brodie Patterson reported Gestefeld's healing in a biographical sketch of her in Mind 9, no. 4 (January 1902), 251Google Scholar. She was his close colleague in the New Thought movement. Gestefeld joined Eddy's only Chicago class on May 13, 1884.
3 MBE to UNG, F00421 (19 December 1884). All letters from Eddy are © The Mary Baker Eddy Collection and used with permission.
4 See Peel, Robert, Mary Baker Eddy: The Years of Trial (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971), 123Google Scholar; Thomas, Robert David, With Bleeding Footsteps: Mary Baker Eddy's Path to Religious Leadership (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994), 211–12Google Scholar; Gill, Gillian, Mary Baker Eddy (Reading, Mass.: Perseus Books, 1998), 307Google Scholar; and Gottschalk, Stephen, Rolling Away the Stone: Mary Baker Eddy's Challenge to Materialism (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006), 176–79Google Scholar. See also Annie Knott's “Reminiscences of Eddy, Mary Baker” in We Knew Mary Baker Eddy (Boston: Christian Science Publishing Society, 1979), 85–86Google Scholar; and Eddy's, “Unchristian Rumor,” Christian Science Journal 5, no. 12 (March 1888), 631Google Scholar.
5 The Mary Baker Eddy Library counts over three thousand outgoing letters in its collection during the 1880s, though hundreds or more are no longer extant.
6 Eddy, Mary Baker, Church Manual (Boston: Christian Science Publishing Society, 1936), 17Google Scholar.
7 Satter, Beryl, Each Mind a Kingdom: American Women, Sexual Purity, and the New Thought Movement, 1875–1920 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 126Google Scholar. Satter writes that Gestefeld was expelled from the Christian Science Association, but as this paper shows, she was never a member.
8 Gill, Mary Baker Eddy, 340.
9 Thomas, Footsteps, 173, 220; Schoepflin, Rennie, Christian Science on Trial: Religious Healing in America (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003), 71–72Google Scholar.
10 Gottschalk, Rolling Away the Stone, 207.
11 Harley, Gail M., Emma Curtis Hopkins: Forgotten Founder of New Thought (New York: Syracuse University Press, 2002), 23Google Scholar; Griffith, R. Marie, Born Again Bodies: Flesh and Spirit in American Christianity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), 83CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For the general argument that Eddy was authoritarian with gifted female students, see Braude, Ann, “The Perils of Passivity: Women's Leadership in Spiritualism and Christian Science,” in Women's Leadership in Marginal Religions: Explorations outside the Mainstream, ed. Wessinger, Catherine (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993), 55–67Google Scholar; and Lindley, Susan Hill,“You Have Stept out of Your Place”: A History of Women and Religion in America (Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox, 1996), 269Google Scholar.
12 Braden, Charles, Spirits in Rebellion: The Rise and Development of New Thought (Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, 1963), 138–39Google Scholar; Braden revised and slightly expanded this sketch in Notable American Women, 1607–1950: A Biographical Dictionary, ed. James, Edward T., James, Janet Wilson, and Boyer, Paul S. (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 1971), 27–28Google Scholar. Both versions rely mainly on Brodie Patterson's profile of Gestefeld's later career.
13 Peel, Years of Trial, 229–35. Braden places Eddy's brief response to Gestefeld's polemic before the polemic itself, characterizing it as an “attack,” which leads him to mistakenly portray Eddy as aggressor in the rift. This problem is especially evident in his 1971 account. Close study of sources shows that Peel's dating is correct.
14 Of their at least thirty letters, twenty-five still exist. I also examine their correspondence with key third parties, other writings published during their relationship (including some previously un-cited or unexamined), and a few relevant later documents.
15 Gill, Mary Baker Eddy, 340–44; Hicks, Rosemary R., “Religion and Remedies Reunited: Rethinking Christian Science,” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 20, no. 2 (Fall 2004): 25–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gottschalk, Rolling Away the Stone; and Eva Payne, March 10, 2010, Laura Lathrop's Letters: The Challenge of Theology and Practice to Scholarship on Christian Science, Harvard Divinity School, unpublished paper. Also see Peel, Robert, Mary Baker Eddy: The Years of Authority (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1977)Google Scholar.
16 Cronon, William, Nature's Metropolis (New York: W. W. Norton, 1991), 344Google Scholar. For a more recent history, see Pacyga, Dominic A., Chicago: A Biography (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Also see Seager, Richard Hughes, The World's Parliament of Religions: The East/West Encounter, Chicago, 1893 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995)Google Scholar.
17 UNG to MBE (30 June 1884).
18 The reference is to 1 Thessalonians 5:19.
19 MBE to UNG, L14278 (2 July 1884).
20 Later tensions in Gestefeld's thought, writes Satter, “all help explain why some women were drawn to the contradictory and nonconfrontational doctrines of New Thought” (Each Mind a Kingdom, 134). Similarly, Emma Hopkins's “ambiguities . . . may have been the key to her importance” (Each Mind a Kingdom, 81).
21 Gestefeld, Ursula N., “The Test of Sincerity,” The Christian Metaphysician 1, no. 3 (July 1887), 62–63Google Scholar.
22 UNG to MBE (24 July 1884).
23 UNG to MBE (5 January 1885).
24 See UNG to MBE on the following dates: 24 July 1884, 5 December 1886, 12 December 1886, 27 December 1886.
25 UNG to MBE (5 January 1885).
26 Peel, Years of Trial, 234.
27 Editorial introduction to Gestefeld's “What is Christian Science?,” Religio-Philosophical Journal 41, no. 12 (13 November 1886), front pageGoogle Scholar.
28 UNG to MBE (5 January 1885).
29 Gestefeld, Ursula N., The Woman Who Dares (New York: Lovell, Gestefeld, 1892)Google Scholar.
30 Gestefeld, “The Test of Sincerity,” 62–63. Gestefeld's description is similar to what we know of Emma Curtis Hopkins's teaching style; see Albanese, Catherine, A Republic of Mind and Spirit: A Cultural History of American Metaphysical Religion (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2007), 317Google Scholar. The two women probably rubbed shoulders in Chicago theosophical circles.
31 UNG to MBE (5 January 1885).
32 Gestefeld's name does not appear in the records of either the Boston or the Chicago CSA.
33 MBE to UNG [attributed recipient], L13406 (20 January 1885). This letter bears no recipient address or definite greeting, but an archival note concludes the recipient was almost certainly Gestefeld.
34 MBE to UNG F00422 (21 August 1885). The reference to the buried talent, or coin, is in Matthew 25:25. Regarding “dead” or miscarried letters, see for example MBE to UNG, L07824 (17 April 1885).
35 MBE to UNG, V03136 (4 July 1886).
36 MBE to Ellen Brown Linscott, L04105 (5 July 1886).
37 UNG to MBE (27 July 1886).
38 UNG to MBE (24 July 1884).
39 MBE to UNG, L12898 (28 July 1886).
40 Gestefeld joined the International Theosophical Society through a Chicago lodge on May 8, 1886, and she remained a member throughout the rest of her correspondence with Eddy. Along with many others she resigned from the Society on September 13, 1895, after it split into factions. I am indebted to the archives of the Theosophical Society in Pasadena for these dates.
41 Campbell, Bruce F., Ancient Wisdom Revived: A History of the Theosophical Movement (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), 29Google Scholar.
42 In 1886, the year many American lodges were first organized, Chicago had two Theosophical organizations: the Chicago Lodge and the Chicago Theosophical Society. These were soon joined by the Ramayana Lodge in 1887. Membership numbers are difficult to come by. The Theosophical Society has no membership figures for these early organizations and notes that publishing (and perhaps early on, keeping) such figures was and is against their policy. This is not the case for the Theosophical Society in America (or Adyar branch), formed after the 1895 schism, but they have few pre-1895 records. Lodges are able to form with a minimum of seven members but usually involve more. The TSA estimates 40 as a very conservative figure for each of the three lodges, and I have extrapolated to 150 each as a liberal figure. This would put the group at between .0002 percent and .0007 percent of the overall Chicago population (629,895 in 1886, among the top three or four largest U.S. cities), although this figure does not include those casually interested or all who read the three English-language periodicals then in circulation. Indeed, Theosophy seems to have had an outsize influence belying its numbers. I thank Jim Belderis at the Theosophical Society in Pasadena and Janet Kerschner at the TSA in Wheaton, Illinois, for responding to my membership queries.
43 Gestefeld, “What is Christian Science?,” front page.
44 MBE to UNG, F00424 (19 November 1886).
45 Gestefeld, “What is Christian Science?,” front page.
46 MBE to UNG, F00424, (19 November 1886).
47 UNG to MBE (15 November 1886).
48 UNG to MBE (29 November 1886). The endorsement of Frances Willard held weight for Eddy, who consistently praised Willard and her temperance movement. Eddy once asked Linscott to recruit Willard as a Christian Science speaker, though this apparently never happened and Eddy later reconsidered. See MBE to John F. Linscott, L11037 (11 August 1887).
49 UNG to William I. Gill [probable recipient], (undated, probably late November 1886). This letter is missing its first page or pages. However, its wording and content are quite similar to the letter Gestefeld wrote to Eddy in mid-November 1886 (UNG to MBE, F00424 [19 November 1886]). The letter is also clearly to the editor of the Christian Science Journal, who in November 1886 was Gill. This is confirmed by Gestefeld's request for “your book.” During the timeframe in question, no Journal editor but Gill marketed his own book.
50 The surface issue revolved around the theological accuracy of Gill's preaching and book, which he had written before learning of Christian Science but now marketed and used as an authority on the religion. The underlying issue appears to have been Gill's feelings on Eddy's theodicy, which left him “spiritually paralysed” and convinced “I have not thoroughly understood you yet” (Gill to MBE, L&M 20-2555; cited from Peel, Years of Trial, 197). Peel is the only biographer to cover the Gill episode; see Years of Trial, 191–98.
51 MBE to UNG, F00552 (16 January 1887).
52 MBE to UNG, F00420 (undated, probably early 1887). There is a faint possibility that this letter was sent after Gestefeld's final letter of August 1887, but in context it fits better as a follow-up to Eddy's own January 16, 1887, letter to Gestefeld.
53 See Peel, Years of Trial, 198, 201; and Gill, Mary Baker Eddy, 340.
54 MBE to Nellie B. Woodhead, L14376 (27 April 1887).
55 Gestefeld, , “Christian Metaphysicians,” The Christian Metaphysician 1, no. 1 (January 1887): 6Google Scholar.
56 Gestefeld, , “Christian Science: Its Origin,” Religio-Philosophical Journal 41–42 (18 June 1887), 8Google Scholar.
57 MBE to John F. Linscott, L11035 (26 June 1887). The “Gesterfeld” misspelling was relatively common.
58 See Gill, Mary Baker Eddy, 243, 332; Peel, Years of Trial, 243; Peel, Years of Authority, 339; Thomas, With Bleeding Footsteps, 144, 246–48.
59 This chapter was split into two (“Prayer” followed by “Atonement and Eucharist”) in 1891, though the contents remained largely the same. In 1886 the term “cup” appears in it thirteen times, out of a book total of twenty-five.
60 Eddy, Mary Baker G., Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (Cambridge, Mass.: University Press, John Wilson & Son, 1886), 497Google Scholar.
61 For Eddy on the virgin birth of Jesus, see her final edition of Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (Boston: Trustees under the Will of Mary Baker Eddy, 1911), 332Google Scholar. Also see Peel, Years of Authority, 422–23nn8–9; and Thomas, With Bleeding Footsteps, 248–56.
62 Peel and Gill both mention such loneliness, though Gill makes much of it. See Gill, Mary Baker Eddy, 125, 526, passim. Gottschalk also finds it to be a major theme but sees it fully resolved in a satisfying family of students in her church and household. See Rolling Away the Stone, 287–90 and 312–19.
63 MBE to John F. Linscott, L11037 (11 August 1887).
64 UNG to MBE (31 August 1887). The situation in Kansas is confirmed by Arthur Schooley to his teacher, Joseph Armstrong, 13 October 1887, courtesy of the Mary Baker Eddy Library. Writing from Topeka to Irving, where Armstrong lived, Schooley noted, “I find CS is not unknown here by any means. The most that stands in the way is this false teaching a party came here from Chicago about a year or so ago and offered to teach for almost nothing she could not even heal herself and did not use Mrs Eddy's S&H only tried to teach by some lectures. this has prejudiced a good many but there are a good many ready people here after all” (the Dunbar brothers “are both doing good work”; he also mentions Mr. Fisk and Mrs. Coleman). Gestefeld was in Kansas City a month or two prior to Schooley's letter, and possibly still in residence there.
65 MBE to Ellen Brown (later Linscott), L11008 (8 March 1887). Gottschalk discusses the pervasive nature of such writings; see Rolling Away the Stone, 140–41.
66 Eddy's biographers have noted her consistent rejection of these elements. A perusal of primary sources corroborates their findings. A Bible Lesson from early 1884 (reprinted in mid-1885) refers to “pagan religionists” in the same breath as “wicked mortals such as crucified our Master,” both of whom “opposed the doctrines of Christ” (Eddy, Mary Baker, “Bible Lesson,” Christian Science Journal 1, no. 6 [2 February 1884]: 5Google Scholar; reprinted August 1885; the text for the lesson was 1 Corinthians 15:45). In late 1884, about six months after teaching Gestefeld, one of Eddy's sermons noted that “whenever [my] thoughts had wandered into the bypaths of ancient philosophies or pagan literatures, [my] spiritual insight had been darkened thereby, till [I] was God-driven back to the inspired pages” of the Bible (Eddy, Mary Baker, “Editor's Extracts from Sermon,” Christian Science Journal 2, no. 12 [1 November 1884], 1Google Scholar; reprinted 1 December 1884). These are but two of several similar passages; even in her first edition of Science and Health, in 1875, no discernible counter-examples exist.
67 MBE, Christian Science: No and Yes (Boston: Mary Baker Eddy, 1887), 13Google Scholar.
68 In the 1891 edition, see pages 111, 129, 139. More such passages were added in later editions.
69 Phebe L. Haines to MBE, L17416 (24 October 1888), courtesy of the Mary Baker Eddy Library. Eddy's followers may or may not have constituted a smaller group than Theosophists; membership numbers are similarly difficult to come by. However Satter estimates Eddy's “Christian Scientists” as twenty percent of the total group using that name (Each Mind a Kingdom, 2).
70 MBE to Emma Curtis Hopkins and Mary Plunkett, V01015 (22 August 1887). The word “may” is in superscript, inserted as a second thought. This letter changes the view that Eddy issued continual “attacks” on Hopkins by 1887 and generally complicates the picture of their relationship found in Harley's, GailEmma Curtis Hopkins: Forgotten Founder of New Thought (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 2002), 23Google Scholar.
71 See Harley, Emma Curtis Hopkins, 23.
72 Phebe L. Haines to MBE (24 October 1888).
73 MBE to Ruth B. Ewing, V01088 (3 February 1889).
74 A New York Times article places Ewing at the dedication of a Christian Science church in Detroit on February 14, 1898. See “Christian Science Church in Detroit,” http://query.nytimes.com (accessed May 10, 2011). Ewing was also a reader in Eddy's church in the late 1890s; see Peel, Years of Authority, 89.
75 Eddy, Mary Baker, “Jesuitism in Christian Science,” Christian Science Journal 6, no. 8 (November 1888), 428Google Scholar.
76 Gill, Mary Baker Eddy, 340.
77 Eddy, Mary Baker, “Bible Lesson,” Christian Science Journal 2, no. 7 (April 5, 1884), 4. The text of the lesson was John 14:12Google Scholar.
78 Bogue, Martha Harris, Miscellaneous Documents Relating to Christian Science and its Discoverer and Founder Mary Baker Eddy (Providence, R.I.: Carpenter Foundation, 1961), 70Google Scholar. Quoted in Gottschalk, The Emergence of Christian Science, 119.
79 Blavatsky, Helena P., “The Arya Samaj,” in A Modern Parnarion: A Collection of Fugitive Fragments (The Theosophy Company of Los Angeles, 1981/1895), 188 (probably first published in the late 1870s)Google Scholar; “What is a Theosophist?” originally published in October 1879 and reprinted in A Modern Parnarion, 262. For both references, see http://www.phx-ult-lodge.org/Panarion.htm (accessed January 20, 2010).
80 Blavatsky, Helena, “The History of a Planet,” Lucifer 1 (September 1887), 15–22Google Scholar. For further (and later) nuance, see the Theosophist J. J. van der Leeuw's 1930 lecture “Revelation or Realization: The Conflict in Theosophy,” http://www.tphta.ws/JJL_RRCT.HTM (accessed January 16, 2010). Van der Leeuw writes that while historically “realization” has predominated in Theosophy from its inception, to the exclusion of “revelation,” revelatory elements have been present. However, he judges that revelation involves a “hierarchic system” in which “the authority of superiors is not be questioned and the slightest hint is an order not to be criticised but to be obeyed.” Therefore, “We must sharply distinguish revelation from authority.”
81 Gestefeld, Ursula N., Ursula Gestefeld's Statement of Christian Science, Comprised in Eighteen Lessons and Twelve Sections (New York: Ursula Gestefeld, 1888)Google Scholar. The work was originally published as twelve pamphlets in 1888 and bound into a self-published, 259-page book in 1889. An edition of the book may have also been produced in 1888, but probably not; see L17835.
82 Gottschalk, Rolling Away the Stone, 141.
83 Gestefeld, Ursula N., “Christian Science,” Lucifer 3, no. 14 (October 15, 1888), 164Google Scholar.
84 Albanese, A Republic of Mind and Spirit, 318.
85 Christian Science Journal 6, no. 11 (February 1889), 583Google Scholar. The Journal reprinted Gestefeld's advertising circular.
86 Excerpted from an advertising circular printed by Gestefeld and quoted in the Christian Science Journal 6, no. 11 (February 1889), 583Google Scholar.
87 When she published her lectures as a book in 1889, Gestefeld mentioned Eddy in an advertising circular, though not in the book itself. Two references to Science and Health can be found in the book.
88 Peel, Years of Trial, 227–28. On the problem of book “borrowing,” see Peel, Years of Trial, 134–35; and Gill, Mary Baker Eddy, 314. Eddy, addressed the problem in her “Vainglory,” Christian Science Journal 5, no. 8 (November 1887), 379Google Scholar; and “Things to Be Thought Of,” Christian Science Journal 5, no. 12 (March 1888), 595Google Scholar. At times even her most faithful students copied her words verbatim as their own; see Gill, Mary Baker Eddy, 340; Peel, Years of Trial, 201; and Gottschalk, Emergence, 113. For perspective on changing practices regarding nineteenth-century book ownership, see McGill, Meredith L., American Literature and the Culture of Reprinting, 1834–1853 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002)Google Scholar.
89 MBE notation on Mary Hinds Philbrick to MBE (24 May 1888).
90 See Christian Science Journal 6, no. 11 (February 1889), 583Google Scholar.
91 Christian Science Journal 6, no. 6 (September 1888), 290Google Scholar.
92 MBE to Nellie N. Woodhead, L14381 (7 October 1888).
93 Christian Science Journal 6, no. 7 (October 1888), 345Google Scholar.
94 Gestefeld, Ursula N., Jesuitism in Christian Science (Central Music Hall, Chicago: Ursula N. Gestefeld, 1888)Google Scholar.
95 Gestefeld, Jesuitism, 41.
96 That year she mentioned Jesuitism briefly to two students, once in response to a query. See MBE to Malinda J. Lancaster, L04539 (7 November 1888); and MBE to Ellen Brown Linscott, L11018 (9 November 1888).
97 Eddy, “Jesuitism in Christian Science,” 427–28. A third unpublished fragment also exists; possibly it was initially part of one of the other two drafts.
98 MBE, A10163 (November 1888), 16.
99 Eddy, Mary Baker, “Things to Be Thought Of,” Christian Science Journal 5, no. 12 (March 1888), 595Google Scholar.
100 Eddy, “Jesuitism in Christian Science,” 427.
101 MBE, A10164 (undated).
102 Gestefeld, Jesuitism, 10, 15, 38.
103 Gestefeld, Jesuitism, 32.
104 Gestefeld, Jesuitism, 32.
105 Gestefeld, Jesuitism, 45.
106 Gestefeld, Jesuitism, 48.
107 Blavatsky herself challenged Gestefeld on such points. See Blavatsky, H. P., “Christian Science,” Lucifer 2, no. 11 (July 1888), 410–14Google Scholar. Theosophical responses to Gestefeld's ideas were generally muted, even skeptical; see Editor's Note [by William Q. Judge] in The Path (February 1892), 346Google Scholar. Perhaps for this reason, Gestefeld's involvement with the organization seems to have peaked before she left it in 1895. Mixed reviews of her theosophically oriented books appeared in Theosophical publications into the 1900s.
108 Christian Science Journal 6, no. 11 (February 1889), 574–79Google Scholar.
109 Thomas, Footsteps, 265, dates this to late 1888 or early 1889.
110 MBE to George B. Day, L14736 (18 March 1889).
111 MBE to M. Bettie Bell, L09908 (24 December 1887).
112 She may also have been influenced by earlier spiritualism, in which the medium was thought to be a trance vessel through which others spoke, inspired by spirits in the divine beyond. The vessel was considered special but interchangeable with other vessels and therefore essentially disposable. Further, the medium was considered worthy in proportion to how much she did not claim a special relationship to the “truth” she voiced. The classic text on nineteenth-century spiritualism is Braude's, AnnRadical Spirits: Spiritualism and Women's Rights in Nineteenth-century America (Boston: Beacon, 1989)Google Scholar. More recent work includes Weisberg's, BarbaraTalking to the Dead: Kate and Maggie Fox and the Rise of Spiritualism (New York: HarperOne, 2005)Google Scholar; and McGarry's, MollyGhosts of Futures Past: Spiritualism and the Cultural Politics of Nineteenth-century America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008)Google Scholar.
113 Eddy, “Jesuitism in Christian Science,” 427. Eddy wrote that Gestefeld “attempts to vilify” me and my works “while she, a suckling, is drawing her nutriment from them. This is at least, silly.”
114 Eddy, , Science and Health (1911), x. Similar verbiage first appeared in the 1897 editionGoogle Scholar.
115 MBE, A10163, 7.
116 Eddy, Mary Baker, Retrospection and Introspection (Boston: Trustees under the Will of Mary Baker Eddy, 1891), 76Google Scholar.
117 Satter, Each Mind a Kingdom, 290.
118 Materra, “Women in Early New Thought: Lives and Theology in Transition, From the Civil War to World War I” (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Santa Barbara, 1997), 108. “For most of their participants,” Materra writes, “the ‘heart and soul’ of New Thought was ‘practical Christianity,’” a phrase popular in the women's club movement, though here imbued here with eclectic meaning.
119 Gestefeld, The Builder and the Plan, 9–12.
120 Patterson, A Biographical Sketch, 251.
121 Braden, Spirits in Rebellion, 18. J. Stillson Judah agrees: “It is unfortunate that Christian Science has made such an issue concerning the uniqueness of Mrs. Eddy's revelation.” Quoted in Harley, Emma Curtis Hopkins, 25.
122 Leigh Eric Schmidt ably describes such Emersonian lenses, including key aspects of Gestefeld's theosophical milieu, in his Restless Souls: The Making of American Spirituality from Emerson to Oprah (New York: HarperCollins, 2005)Google Scholar.
123 Gottschalk, Emergence of Christian Science, 98–157; Taves, Ann, Fits, Trances, and Visions: Experiencing Religion and Explaining Experience from Wesley to James (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1999), 219Google Scholar; Gill, Mary Baker Eddy, 341; and Satter, Each Mind a Kingdom, 4, 64. Materra has argued that because Christian language and themes of redemption are found in New Thought, the distance between New Thought and Christian Science was not as strong as Gottschalk suggests; yet Gottschalk urges attention to different meanings underlying similar forms. The phrase “apparently oriented” is also key. Religions identifying as apparently or usually Christian-oriented can be mapped to a different continuum, as a class, than those identifying as exclusively Christian and further, fulfilling biblical prophecy through special revelation.
124 Gottschalk, Emergence of Christian Science, 100.
125 My thanks to Ann Taves for a conversation leading to the “networks” concept.
126 Klassen, Pamela E., “Textual Healing: Mainstream Protestants and the Therapeutic Text, 1900–1925,” Church History 75, no. 4 (December 2006): 819CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
127 Klassen, “Textual Healing,” 838.
128 Klassen, “Textual Healing,” 839.
129 Eddy, Retrospection and Introspection, 70; Eddy, , Science and Health (Boston: W. F. Brown, 1875), 275Google Scholar. The entire sentence reads, “The great point, is to understand the Principle of being,—the Life that is eternal, without beginning and without end, and this study will absorb the attention of sage and philosopher at a not far-distant day; but the Christian alone will fathom it, for he it is that understands better the Life that is God.” By the final 1911 edition this had been distilled to “Christian Science may absorb the attention of sage and philosopher, but the Christian alone can fathom it” (556).
130 Albanese, Catherine L., “Horace Bushnell Among the Metaphysicians,” Church History 79, no. 3 (September 2010): 653CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
