Christian Scientist founder ‘ahead of her times’
by Elana Bergeron, reporter

    Mary Baker Eddy was a woman ahead of her times, a guest lecturer told NE Campus students during the third in a series designed for Women’s History Month.

    Marian English, a member of the board of lectureship for The First Church of Christ, Scientist, described a bumper sticker she recently saw: “Thou shall have no other gods before her.” She said the bumper sticker illustrates that society is finally starting to see the motherhood in god and the world.

    English discussed Eddy’s accomplishments as a woman in the dawn of the women’s liberation movement and her accomplishments in translating the Bible into a means of Christian healing.

    Eddy was the discoverer and founder of Christian Science. She wrote the book Science and Health with the Key to the Scriptures, the textbook of Christian Science published in 1875. Eddy’s works are written for citizens of the world, English said.

    Born in 1821 in an era of great women role models such as Harriet Tubman, Florence Nightingale and Susan B. Anthony, Eddy did not start out to make a difference, English said. However, she started her research with the true image of God as written in the Bible, and her search was to find evidence of God’s practical influence in the world.

    Widowed after six months of marriage, Eddy was forced to give away her child. That was the custom in an age when women had no rights. Women could not vote, own property or speak publicly, but were expected to be homemakers and bear children.

    After falling on the ice and injuring herself, Eddy was not expected to live. During her recovery, she began to study the Bible as a way to deal with her own self-healing when she saw other methods were not working.

    After her speedy recovery, she devoted three years of her life to making notes from her Bible. Those notes became her book that she would share with the world to help others as she had helped herself, English said.

    “She was a controversial figure in her time. No woman was expected to find something in the Bible that theologians had not found,” she said.

    At the age of 89, Eddy established the Christian Science Monitor, a newspaper still in operation. She had lived beyond the age expectancy of her time, English said, and had accomplished the active role of helping mankind at a time when such things were not expected of women.

    “Today she is recognized by people outside of her rank as being an outstanding woman, for making a huge contribution,” she said.