A system of healing and a religion founded my Mary Baker Eddy, which maintains and teaches that disease and sin are caused by mental error.
A religion, and system of healing through prayer and the control of mind over matter. The services of Christian Science sanatoria are covered under some health insurance programs including Medicare and, in some States, Medicaid, often with an exemption from standards applied by such programs to traditional medical providers.
A religion based on religious teachings that promote the belief that healing comes from God through “heartfelt, yet disciplined prayer.” Christian Scientists turn to prayer rather than conventional medicine to heal illness.
Also known as the “Church of Christ, Scientist”. This religious group prohibits all forms of medical care and relies solely on spiritual healing. This groups is similar to the “Peculiar People” who have presented the courts in England with the same questions as Christian Scientists have presented in the United States. While adults can refuse medical treatment, courts routinely allow medical authorities to treat children against the wishes of the parent, even when these wishes are based on religious beliefs. While some states have adopted statutes which provide that children are not being abused if treated only by spiritual healing, these statutes apply only to “recognized” churches. These statutes were the result of lobbying by the Christian Scientists. However, it is considered that these statutes are unconstitutional because they violate the Establishment clause of the U.S. Constitution. They require the state to determine which churches are “recognized” and which are not, which improperly advances religion and entangles church and state.
A system of religious teaching based on Christian Scientists’ interpretation of Scripture, founded in 1866 by Mary Baker Eddy. The system emphasizes healing of disease by mental and spiritual means.
Among the first of several 19th-century religious teachings that utilized the emerging authority of science to define its place in popular culture. Christian Science was the name given by Mary Baker Eddy (1821-1910) to her discovery of God, the mind, and the mind’s superiority over matter. Eddy had been a sickly person most of her life, but in 1862 had discovered one Phineas Parkhurst Quimby (1802-66), a former mesmerist turned mental healer who resided in Portland, Maine. She became one of Quinrby’s students, and from him received relief of her symptoms, but found they returned soon after she left his center. Shortly after Quimby’s death in 1866, Eddy fell on the ice and seriously injured herself. She was in great pain and many thought she might die. Instead, her days of recovery were spent in reflection on all she had learned, which culminated in her revelation of truth. As a result of that revelation, she was instantly healed. She set about the task of teaching students and putting her ideas on paper, first as a booklet, the Science of Man (1870), and then her textbook, Science and Health (1875), later renamed Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures.
Eddy’s use of the term science raised basic questions of definition. While calling her system “science,” she used the word in a manner at some variance from that of orthodox scientists, v/ho understand science to be a body of systematized knowledge based upon observation of the world. Eddy defined Christian Science as the unfolding of true metaphysics, of explaining God, or Mind, and God’s attributes. Science proves its truth by demonstration. The demonstration of Christian Science was in the healings experienced by those who accepted Eddy’s teachings. Christian Science begins with God and attempts to explicate the laws that flow from a realization of God’s omnipotence. As such, it stands against human science, as commonly understood, based as that is on what Eddy considered to be a false principle: the reality of matter and the fallible observation of the universe.