Mary Baker Eddy

Mary Baker Eddy was the central figure for the "Church of Christ, Scientist", or "Christian Science Movement" founded in New England in 1879.  Eddy formed the group to "reinstate primitive Christianity and its lost element of healing",[1] which would play a key role in laying the foundation for the Latter Rain and Voice of Healing Revivals of the late 1940s and 1950s.  Baker's publications were extremely popular, especially Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures which had sold over nine million copies by 2001.[2]

Eddy was heavily influenced by the work of Phineas Quimby, a "mesmerist" who claimed to have the ability to cure people without medicine.  Eddy, who struggled with mental illness due to an eating disorder and abusive childhood,[3] was temporarily "cured" by Quimby after Baker's husband summoned him for healing.  Though Quimby did not suggest any spiritual claims for his work, Eddy began claiming that her temporary "healing" was the result of divine intervention.  This event became the primary building block of the Christian Science Movement, considering that Quimby's work made its way from his extensive notes into Eddy's writing after Quimby died in 1866.  Eddy was "accused of stealing Quimby's philosophy of healing, failing to acknowledge him as the spiritual father of Christian Science, and plagiarizing his unpublished work."[4]

Regardless of how her "healing" doctrine originated, Eddy laid a foundation for rejecting medical science that many people in the Healing Revival would later adopt.  Also, like many of the Post WWII Healing revivalists, Eddy herself relied upon medication while pushing that her audience did not; Eddy was addicted to morphine.[5] Publicly, however, Eddy claimed that because Jesus Christ did not use drugs, hygiene, or medicine in the accounts of miracles described in the Bible, Christians should explicitly reject them in modern times. Adherents to Eddy's faith, or "Scientists", refused doctors and medicine — often leading to deaths and criminal prosecution.[6] Instead of "Medical Science", Eddy stated that a deeper understanding of "Christian Science" was necessary for healing.

It is plain that God does not employ drugs or hygiene, nor provide them for human use; else Jesus would have recommended and employed them in his healing. ... The tender word and Christian encouragement of an invalid, pitiful patience with his fears and the removal of them, are better than hecatombs of gushing theories, stereotyped borrowed speeches, and the doling of arguments, which are but so many parodies on legitimate Christian Science, aflame with divine Love.[7]
- Gillian Gill, Mary Baker Eddy

In the late 1860s, Mary Baker Eddy became involved with Spiritualists and adopted some of their practices. After participating in séances, Eddy was advertised as a spiritual healer in The Banner of Light, a Spiritualist newspaper.  The "spirits" allegedly informed Eddy to inform her audience that they should seek the ways of Phineas Quimby for healing.  Eddy said, "P. Quimby of Portland has the spiritual truth of diseases. You must imbibe it to be healed. Go to him again and lean on no material or spiritual medium."[8]

But she was never able to stay long in one family. She quarrelled successively with all her hostesses, and her departure from the house was heralded on two or three occasions by a violent scene. Her friends during these years were generally Spiritualists; she seems to have professed herself a Spiritualist, and to have taken part in séances. She was occasionally entranced, and had received "spirit communications" from her deceased brother Albert. Her first advertisement as a healer appeared in 1868, in the Spiritualist paper, The Banner of Light. During these years she carried about with her a copy of one of Quimby's manuscripts giving an abstract of his philosophy. This manuscript she permitted some of her pupils to copy[9]
- Mesmerism and Christian Science: A Short History of Mental Healing

Eddy also adopted Hindu philosophy into her healing practice. From the 24th edition of Science and Health to the 33rd edition, Eddy admitted the harmony between Vedanta philosophy and Christian Science. She also quoted from an English translation of the Bhagavad Gita, though the quotes were later removed from Science and Health.

Mrs. Eddy quoted certain passages from the English edition of the Bhagavad-Gita, but unfortunately, for some reason, those passages of the Gita were omitted in the 34th edition of the book, Science and Health ... if we closely study Mrs. Eddy's book, we find that Mrs. Eddy has incorporated in her book most of the salient features of Vedanta philosophy, but she denied the debt flatly