

If the patients admit that he tells them their feelings, &c., then his explanation is the cure and, if he succeeds in correcting their error, he changes the fluids of the system and establishes the truth, or health. His advertising flyer, "To the Sick" included this explanation of his clairvoyant methodology: ".he gives no medicines and makes no outward applications, but simply sits down by the patients, tells them their feelings and what they think is their disease. The movement traced its roots in the United States to Phineas Parkhurst Quimby (1802–1866), a New England clockmaker turned mental healer. This provided fertile soil for the mind-cure groups, who argued that sickness was an absence of "right thinking" or failure to connect to Divine Mind. Medical practice was in its infancy, and patients regularly fared better without it. The metaphysical groups became known as the mind-cure movement because of their strong focus on healing.

Adherents believed that material phenomena were the result of mental states, a view expressed as "life is consciousness" and "God is mind." The supreme cause was referred to as Divine Mind, Truth, God, Love, Life, Spirit, Principle or Father–Mother, reflecting elements of Plato, Hinduism, Berkeley, Hegel, Swedenborg, and transcendentalism. The term metaphysical referred to the movement's philosophical idealism, a belief in the primacy of the mental world. From the 1890s the liberal section of the movement became known as New Thought, in part to distinguish it from the more authoritarian Christian Science.

In the latter half of the 19th century these included what came to be known as the metaphysical family: groups such as Christian Science, Divine Science, the Unity School of Christianity, and (later) the United Church of Religious Science. Several periods of Protestant Christian revival nurtured a proliferation of new religious movements in the United States. Between the 1880s and 1990s, parents and others were prosecuted for, and in a few cases convicted of, manslaughter or neglect. Most controversially, the reliance on prayer and avoidance of medical treatment has been blamed for the deaths of several adherents and their children. The church does not require that Christian Scientists avoid medical care-adherents use dentists, optometrists, obstetricians, physicians for broken bones, and vaccination when required by law-but maintains that Christian Science prayer is most effective when not combined with medicine. This includes the view that disease is a mental error rather than physical disorder, and that the sick should be treated not by medicine but by a form of prayer that seeks to correct the beliefs responsible for the illusion of ill health. In particular, adherents subscribe to a radical form of philosophical idealism, believing that reality is purely spiritual and the material world an illusion. There are key differences between Christian Science theology and that of traditional Christianity. Įddy described Christian Science as a return to "primitive Christianity and its lost element of healing". The church is known for its newspaper, The Christian Science Monitor, which won seven Pulitzer Prizes between 19, and for its public Reading Rooms around the world. Christian Science became the fastest growing religion in the United States, with nearly 270,000 members there by 1936, a figure that had declined to just over 100,000 by 1990 and reportedly to under 50,000 by 2009. The Mother Church, The First Church of Christ, Scientist, was built in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1894. Įddy and 26 followers were granted a charter by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in 1879 to found the "Church of Christ (Scientist)" the church would be reorganized under the name " Church of Christ, Scientist" in 1892. The book became Christian Science's central text, along with the Bible, and by 2001 had sold over nine million copies. It was founded in 19th-century New England by Mary Baker Eddy, who wrote the 1875 book Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, which outlined the theology of Christian Science. Adherents are commonly known as Christian Scientists or students of Christian Science, and the church is sometimes informally known as the Christian Science church.

Christian Science is a set of beliefs and practices which are associated with members of the Church of Christ, Scientist.
