Category: Historical Context

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From the Archives: The ‘Fall On The Ice’

By Jeremy, an Ex-Christian Scientist group editor/writer.

Like almost any other religion, Christian Science has its own mythology: those stories that form the core of the faith’s origins, and which often serve to bind its followers together and to the faith, and to validate the faith’s claims. A central story in the anthology of Christian Science myths is what’s often referred to as the ‘Fall On The Ice In Lynn (Massachusetts)’. If you visit the city of Lynn, which is just north of Boston, you can see a memorial plaque at the location at the corner of Market Street and Oxford Street in the downtown area, where our story starts. Anyone who has grown up in, or been in Christian Science for any amount of time knows the story well. This is considered to be the central event that led directly to Mary Baker Eddy’s ‘discovery’ of Christian Science.

A foundational legend of the origins of Christian Science

On February 1, 1866, Eddy was on her way to a Temperance movement meeting in downtown Lynn. She slipped and fell on the ice-covered sidewalk and was transported unconscious to a nearby house, where a doctor was summoned to treat her.

According to Eddy’s account, her condition was beyond the ability of medical practice to help. She claimed that the attending doctor gave her only a few days to live. Somehow, she managed the strength to ask for her Bible and began a deep study of it, focusing her attention particularly on Jesus’s healing of a paralyzed man (Matthew 9:2). Miraculously, after about three days, she had an ‘immediate recovery’:

It was in Massachusetts, in February, 1866. . .that I discovered the Science of divine metaphysical healing which I afterwards named Christian Science.1

From this point on, so the story goes, Eddy sought to understand and ultimately explain this miraculous healing. She claimed an “immediate recovery” from the effects of her injury.

My immediate recovery from the effects of an injury caused by an accident, an injury that neither medicine nor surgery could reach, was the falling apple that led me to the discovery how to be well myself, and how to make others so.2

Some overlooked facts

There is no doubt that Eddy fell on the ice on a cold February evening in Lynn in 1866 and was taken unconscious to a nearby home where she was seen by a local physician. Beyond this, the story starts to take on the traits of a myth. There is fact and truth at its core, but it is shrouded in a blanket of hyperbole and exaggeration. Here are some facts that are ignored or revised in the ‘official’ Christian Science canon:

  1. The injury Eddy suffered was not life-threatening or nearly as serious as claimed by Eddy: Eddy claimed that the attending doctor, Dr. Alvin Cushing, told her that there was no hope for her recovery and that she only had about three days more to live.3 According to Cushing’s own records, consisting of case notes he made at the time he treated Eddy, that is not true. In a sworn affidavit, Cushing, referring to his notes, directly refutes a central part of Eddy’s version of events: “I did not at any time declare, or believe, there was no hope for Mrs. Patterson’s recovery, or that she was in critical condition, and did not at any time say, or believe, that she had but three or any other limited number of days to live.” (sworn affidavit of Dr. Alvin Cushing, January 2, 1907 – Hampden County, Massachusetts).4 Eddy also was treated on at least two subsequent occasions by Cushing following her miraculous three-day recovery, as well as professional visits in August of that year.5
  2. The ‘healing’ may not have been as quick, complete, and/or miraculous as later claimed by Eddy and her followers: just two weeks after her fall in Lynn, Eddy also sought metaphysical treatment from Julius Dresser, a fellow student of Phineas Parkhurst Quimby. In her imploring letter to him, she expressed a feeling quite opposite of what she portrays in her own autobiographical recollection: “Two weeks ago I fell on the sidewalk . . .and was taken up for dead . . . ” She goes on to say, “The physician attending said I had taken the last step I ever should but in two days I got out of my bed alone, and will walk; but yet I confess I am frightened, and out of that nervous heat my friends are forming, spite of me, the terrible spinal affection from which I have suffered so long and hopelessly.”6 Eddy also was treated on at least three subsequent occasions by Cushing following her ‘immediate’ three-day recovery.
  3. Eddy initiated a lawsuit against the City of Lynn in connection to the accident: it is worth noting, as one considers the veracity of Eddy’s claims of the epiphanic nature of this ‘healing’, that she began the process (later rescinded) of suing the city, claiming that the city was responsible for her injuries due to unsafe conditions in the street. In a petition presented to the city in the summer of 1866, she stated that she was seeking damages for “serious personal injuries from which she had little prospect of recovering.“7 (emphasis is mine).
  4. Eddy didn’t cite her 1866 fall and ‘healing’ until years later: Nowhere in her published writings does Eddy describe a ‘fall on the ice’ (it only occurs in her letter to Julius Dresser). Her slim autobiography, Retrospection and Introspection, published in 1891, refers vaguely to “an injury caused by an accident.” (p. 24) She goes on to say that after her recovery she “withdrew from society about three years, — to ponder my mission, to search the Scriptures, to find the Science of Mind that should take the things of God and show them to the creature, and reveal the great curative Principle,–Diety.” (pp. 24-25) If her 1866 accident and miraculous healing had been the revelatory event that led to her ‘discovery’ of Christian Science, one would think she would have mentioned it in her early writings. But the first edition of Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, which appeared in 1875, makes no reference to the event. Only years later, well after the establishment of her church, does she refer to a healing of an injury in 1866. 

Some concluding thoughts

As one who grew up in and practiced Christian Science for 41 years, I took the story of the ‘Fall In Lynn’ as the origin point of my faith. This story was presented as the first and penultimate proof of the effectiveness of Christian Science as a healing agent. Mary Baker Eddy was near death, and she miraculously healed herself, and from that moment on she set about to putting her ‘discovery’ to words and sharing this system of healing with the world. That is the story that I and many others accepted as the whole and complete truth. It is the version that fuels the legend of Christian Science, and gives it its so-called ‘power’.

The facts presented here cast serious doubt on the veracity of Eddy’s and Christian Scientists’ claims regarding this important origin story. Sometimes, memories of events change over time, stories get embellished a bit, and smaller details get lost in the mists of one’s memory. But in this case, it appears that Eddy fashioned this story in later years to create a revelatory myth for the origin of her religion. More than a few biographers, both friendly and critical, have mentioned Eddy’s propensity for shaping the truth to suit her needs.

Many religions have a singular origin moment or series of events that spark their birth. For instance, the Mormons have the story of the tablets containing the Book of Mormon being revealed to Joseph Smith in the woods of upstate New York; for Muslims, it is the 22-year period in which Muhammad received revelations he believed to be from God, which were recorded in the Qur’an. History is replete with many other such stories. Eddy and her followers turned a winter accident that resulted in a serious, but not really life-threatening injury into a virtual raising-of-the-dead myth that led to the discovery of the ‘miraculous’ healing system known as Christian Science.

Footnotes:

1 Eddy, Mary B. G. Retrospection and Introspection. Boston, Massachusetts: The Christian Science Board of Directors, 1892. 24. Print.

2 Ibid.

3 Gill, Gillian. Mary Baker Eddy. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Perseus Books, 1998. 162. Print.

4 Milmine, Georgine. The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy: and the History of Christian Science. New York, New York: Doubleday, Page & Company, 1909. 84-86. Print.

5 Ibid.

6 Gill, p. 158.

7 Ibid.

Related Links:

Mary Baker Eddy (Wikipedia article).

Christian Science (Wikipedia article).

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Why do Christian Scientists go to the dentist (but not doctors)?

One of the most common questions the Ex-Christian Scientist site gets is “Why do Christian Scientists go to dentists but not doctors?” Yeah, that is a good question. While we were raised in Christian Science, practiced Christian Science, and have since left Christian Science, the “logic” eludes us too, but we’re giving it a try. 

TL;DR

  1. Extreme Christian Scientists often choose not to go to the dentist
  2. Mary Baker Eddy’s reasoning allowed for loopholes to avoid lawsuits and CS taking the blame for failure, you may need to so some mental gymnastics, but as a Christian Scientists, you’re used to that, and you can make it work
  3. Dentistry was a well-established comparatively evidence-based practice in the 1800s.
  4. Mary’s second husband (she had three husbands), Daniel Patterson, was a dentist. They were married in 1853.

1) One is fairly self-explanatory, Extreme Christian Scientists often choose not to go to the dentist, pointing to S&H 167:12 “We cannot serve two masters nor perceive divine Science with the material senses.”

2) “The right use of temporary means” loophole, and other excuses that have been used.  

Depending on how you read Science and Health, you can find loopholes that “allow” for medical treatment. You may need to do some mental gymnastics, but as a Christian Scientists, you’re used to that, and you can make it work. 

If Christian Scientists ever fail to receive aid from other Scientists, – their brethren upon whom they may call, – God will still guide them into the right use of temporary and eternal means S&H p. 444:7-10

Other reasons CS have used: 

  • For routine visits: It is “just” a cleaning, you wash your body, you brush your teeth, going to the dentist for a cleaning is fine.  — Never mind Mary Baker Eddy repeatedly rails on about hygiene being ineffective: “Drugs and hygiene cannot successfully usurp the place and power of the diving source of health and perfection.” S&H p.167 12-14
  • Having teeth removed, repaired and replaced is acceptable, as teeth are bones, and “Until the advancing age admits the efficacy an supremacy of Mind, it is better for Christian Scientists to leave surgery and the adjustment of broken bones and dislocations to the fingers of a surgeon, while the mental healer confines himself chiefly to mental reconstruction an to the prevention of inflammation.” S&H p. 401 27-32 This excuse is often also used to deny numbing during procedures, or follow-up pain relief and antibiotics, as “you can pray about that part.” Pro tip: if you can’t “pray enough” to fix the tooth, don’t try and pray about the pain. 
  • Using braces on teeth is fine as they are “aids” to “assist” us until we reach a higher level of understanding & are better able to heal ourselves. S&H 56 3-6 “Suffer it to be so now: for thus it becometh us to fulfill all righteousness,” Jesus’ concessions (in certain cases) to material methods were for the advancement of spiritual good.” (Yes, we know this is from the chapter on Marriage, but it applies to so many things). 
  • Ms. Eddy is known to have used dentists in her time, if it was OK for her, it is OK for current-day Christian Scientists. 
  • As of 2010, The Mother Church has openly encouraged the notion that Christian Science has made a “Truce” with doctors (NYTimes, March 23, 2010) and medical care (including dentistry) is acceptable. 

3) Dentistry was a well-established comparatively evidence-based practice in the 1800s.

Per the American Dental Education Association website: 

“By the 1700s, dentistry had become a more defined profession.  In 1723, Pierre Fauchard, a French surgeon credited as the Father of Modern Dentistry, published his influential book, The Surgeon Dentist, a Treatise on Teeth, which for the first time defined a comprehensive system for caring for and treating teeth.  Additionally, Fauchard first introduced the idea of dental fillings and the use of dental prosthesis, and he identified that acids from sugar led to tooth decay.” (https://www.adea.org/GoDental/Health_Professions_Advisors/History_of_Dentistry.aspx) 

For more about Pierre Fauchard, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Fauchard, https://www.fauchard.org/publications/47-who-is-pierre-fauchard

By Mary Baker Eddy’s day, dental practices had been around for well over 100 years, and were far more evidence-based than the questionable notions of humors being used by doctors of the day (see additional resources). 

4) MBE’s second husband, Daniel Patterson, was a dentist, so dentists must be OK?

They were married in 1853. It does not sound like a particularly happy marriage, as they spent much of their time separated. It ended with a divorce in 1873.

Final Thoughts

It is worth noting that while MBE is quite set against mesmerism, hypnotism, homeopathy, drugs, hygiene, minor curatives, material medicine, chemists, botanists, druggists, doctors, nurses, vegetarianism, hydrotherapy, narcotics, cataplasms, whiskey, apothecaries, man-midwifes, and material hygiene to name a few. Interestingly, dentists don’t get an obvious mention, leaving them open as a possible acceptable option for Christian Scientists to partake in.

Additional Resources 

Christian Science in Historical Context – Further Reading 

History of Dentistry – Further Reading 

19th Century Medicine – further reading 

Christian Science Links – Science & Health in full text as a searchable PDF https://christiansciencemedia.org/files/2010/03/Science-and-Health-with-Key-to-the-Scriptures.pdf

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Coverups, Conspiracies & “Colonel” Glover

Everyone in the year 2020 has experience living through a global pandemic. We have all seen first hand how the corona virus and the fear of covid-19 have dominated the news and reshaped our lives. Our personal experiences living in the age of the corona virus might help us to put into context a long accepted claim by Mary Baker Eddy that her husband died as a result of a yellow fever epidemic.

Young Mary had only been married six months and was pregnant with their son when her husband George Glover died. In later years Mary Baker Eddy would refer to her first husband as Major Glover or, later on, as Colonel Glover.[1] He died June 27, 1844, just days after Mary Baker Glover wrote toasts demonizing the moderate Whigs and praising pro-slavery southern Democrats. Most biographies of Mrs. Eddy repeat her assertion that her first husband died of yellow fever. Sibyl Wilbur, who worked with Mary Baker Eddy in writing the first positive biography, breathlessly describes the scene: “In Wilmington they [George and Mary] found yellow fever raging and the city in a panic. Mr. Glover endeavored to forward his business for a speedy departure; but he was himself suddenly stricken with the fever and survived but nine days.”[2] Early Christian Science historian William Lyman Johnson describes “the harrowing scenes of suffering she witnessed during this epidemic.”[3] Former Christian Science Monitor editor Richard Nenneman claims, more soberly, in his biography, “Wilmington was having an epidemic of yellow fever, and George became ill with the disease.”[4] Even some of the most critical biographies of the Leader of Christian Science accept the claim that her first husband, Mr. Glover, died of yellow fever in Wilmington, North Carolina in June 1844. But they haven’t necessarily done the checking.

When I lived in North Carolina I had the opportunity to do a little research on this period in Mrs. Eddy’s life and North Carolina history. There was an outbreak of yellow fever in Wilmington in 1821, and then not another outbreak of yellow fever until the outbreak in 1862 that lasted for several months and killed hundreds of people in a city of less than 10,000. If there was a raging epidemic of yellow fever in 1844 which panicked the city, it did not produce enough of a panic to make it into the newspapers and histories of Wilmington. You don’t have to go to the libraries, historical societies, and museums of North Carolina and spend hours researching the subject. A simple Google search of yellow fever in Wilmington will bring up a number of articles about the devastating outbreak of 1862. If you refine the Google search to include a search for yellow fever in Wilmington in 1844 you will either be taken to articles referencing the 1862 outbreak (with 1844 omitted) or you will be taken to stories about the death of George Glover. Perhaps there was a raging epidemic of yellow fever causing widespread scenes of great suffering and the only record we have of the epidemic is the account of George Glover’s death (perhaps he was the sole victim) as recounted by Mary Baker Eddy decades later.

 Yellow fever was certainly a highly feared disease at the time, and so the claim that her husband died of yellow fever amidst a panic-inducing outbreak was certainly a far more sensationalized story than the cause of death given for George Glover in all the newspapers at the time, bilious fever. Bilious fever is associated with excessive bile in the blood stream, leading to jaundice, or a yellow skin tone. The claim that her husband died amidst a highly feared epidemic is far more sensational than the idea that he died from bile entering his blood stream.

The critical Bates-Dittemore biography treats the issue well.

“In the early part of June, Glover was suddenly overcome by a severe attack of bilious fever. He struggled gallantly against it for eleven or twelve days but succumbed on June 27.

“Mrs. Eddy always insisted that her first husband died, more dramatically, during an epidemic of yellow fever. But there was no epidemic of yellow fever recorded in Wilmington that year. Had there been such an epidemic, the public funeral which Glover received would hardly have been permitted. The Wilmington Chronicle, the New Hampshire Patriot, and the Masonic Magazine all attributed his death to billious fever.

“Accepting the yellow-fever myth, Miss Wilbur consistently elaborated it by the statement: ‘During his illness his young wife was excluded by his brother Masons from the perilous task of nursing him’ (p. 39). This is contradicted by Mrs. Glover’s letter to George Sullivan Baker, January 22, 1848. [In that letter, she says ‘day and night I watched alone by the couch of death.’[5]]

“In her ‘Reply to McClure’s Magazine,’ Miscellany, page 312, Mrs. Eddy gave ‘about nine days’ as the duration of Glover’s illness; the obituaries gave twelve, corrected in Mrs. Eddy’s scrapbook to eleven. The last is most probably correct.”[6]

According to Robert Peel: “The contemporary accounts all describe the disease as ‘bilious fever.’ Mrs. Eddy’s explanation was that the authorities wished to cover up the fact that the dreaded yellow fever had appeared.”[7] Perhaps this cover-up was so thorough that although the city was allegedly in a panic due to the alleged raging yellow fever epidemic and consequent harrowing scenes of death and suffering, those covering it up were able to suppress all newspaper accounts and historical records of the outbreak. This claim of a conspiracy is a consistent pattern throughout Mrs. Eddy’s life. While it is certainly possible that George Glover died of yellow fever, and it is certainly possible (though quite implausible) that there was a conspiracy to cover up a yellow fever epidemic, if so then this would be one of a very long line of conspiracies connected to what must arguably be the most conspired-against woman in history.

It may be that Mary Baker Eddy’s claims of a yellow fever epidemic and a subsequent massive cover-up of an unheard of scale are true. But for all of us who have lived through the corona virus pandemic of 2020, we know how it has shaped our lives and how it has been a central part of the news for months. The idea that there was a massive coverup that was able to suppress all news and historical accounts of an epidemic in 1844 (but not in 1821 or 1862) strains credulity. Or perhaps it is possible that George Glover died due to bilious fever, as all the contemporary accounts confirm, and yet in the retelling many decades later Mary Baker Eddy felt the need to attribute his already tragic death to a vastly more sensational yellow fever epidemic, of which there is no evidence beyond her own statements.

Tanner Johnsrud was a fifth generation Christian Scientist and a Journal-listed practitioner for over a decade. He and his wife left Christian Science in 2017 and became Christians. He is currently working on a book on the development of Mary Baker Eddy’s teaching and claims about herself.

[1] Whether or not he ever earned the title of Colonel, or whether Mrs. Eddy later referred to him as Colonel Glover is another matter.

[2] Sibyl Wilbur, p. 41

[3] William Lyman Johnson History of Christian Science Volume 3. p. 304

Johnson, the son of the Clerk of The Mother Church writes “[Mary] was married to George Washington Glover, December 12, 1843. Six months later, her husband passed away in Wilmington, Delaware [sic]. Mrs. Glover returned to her father’s home in Tilton, New Hampshire, and in the following September a son was born, whom she named after his father. The shock of her husband’s illness and death from yellow fever, the harrowing scenes of suffering she witnessed during this epidemic, ant eh coming of a fatherless child, brought about an illness which for a time looked very serious. She was not able to nurse her son, and he was nursed by a Mrs. Morrison, who had given birth to twins a few days previous to the birth of this boy.” pp. 304-305

[4] Nenneman, p. 43

[5] Mary Baker Eddy Library Accession F00035. Quoted in In My True Light and Life, p. 54.

[6]The Truth and the Tradition – Bates Dittemore biography, p. 36

[7] Peel, Vol. 1 p. 322 n. 138

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Mary Baker Eddy on Race and Slavery

Many people and institutions in the United States are going through serious self-examination on the question of race right now. Christian Scientists must look at the legacy of Mary Baker Eddy on the question of race and slavery. I grew up believing that Mary Baker Eddy was a brave abolitionist while living in the South, boldly standing up and defending equality and justice for all at great personal cost. These are the stories that she told about herself decades later. At one point I wanted to write a book about Mary Baker Eddy the brave abolitionist. In 2011, I moved to Raleigh, North Carolina, and while there I began to research Mrs. Eddy’s time in the Carolinas. The picture that emerges based upon further research is not consistent with the stories that she told about herself many decades later. In fact they reveal quite the opposite.

Decades after her time in the South, Mrs. Eddy spoke of herself as having been an outspoken abolitionist[1]. But there is no evidence to support that claim. In fact, all the evidence we have shows that in 1844 she enthusiastically campaigned against abolitionist and moderate candidates[2], literally comparing the moderate to demons[3], while supporting pro-slavery politicians[4]. She supported pro-slavery politicians even when the majority of North Carolina voted against her candidate. Decades later she claimed to have freed her husband’s slaves after his tragic death.[5] But there is no evidence to support that claim. In fact, there is no evidence that her husband ever owned slaves.[6] There is no evidence that she freed the slaves, which was illegal in South Carolina and would have required a special act of the North Carolina legislature.[7] Decades later she told stories of one of those slaves heroically rescuing her from thieves after her husband’s death.[8] But there is no evidence to support that claim. In fact she told mutually contradictory stories,[9] and in telling the stories she claimed that her father was a strong abolitionist[10] – when all evidence points to him hating Abraham Lincoln[11] and, like Mary’s brother Albert Baker[12], being a firm anti-abolitionist[13]. Decades later, Mrs. Eddy spoke of herself as having been outspoken in opposing her family on the question of abolition in the 1852 election.[14] But there is no evidence to support that claim. In fact, she opposed the abolitionist candidate for senate in 1852, which the majority of the state of New Hampshire supported, and campaigned for his opponent.[15] Had she been an abolitionist she wouldn’t have made a passing comment saying that she didn’t think much of the book Uncle Tom’s Cabin.[16] In story after story, she paints herself in heroic terms, living a grand, romanticized life. But the documentable facts don’t support any of her claims. In fact they point in the opposite direction.

Decades after the abolition of slavery, she compared Christian Science to the abolition movement in Science and Health. In 1891 she added to this statement a reference to the African slave being “on the lowest plane of life.”[17] She later revised this statement to merely refer to the slave as being “on the lowest plane of human life.”[18] In private conversation, decades after the Civil War she referred to “the negro” of that day as being on the lowest plane of human life, and she told a Christian Science teacher who was teaching African-Americans that they should stop teaching them[19], and shouldn’t teach African-Americans Christian Science until after half of the world had become Christian Scientists.[20] In Science and Health, she contrasted the “Red Men” with the “more enlightened races.”[21]

Though her defenders might say she was merely a woman of her times, she was out of step with the voters of New Hampshire and North Carolina as she campaigned for pro-slavery politicians, and she held to widely denounced and discredited racial teachings as well. In fact, Mary Baker Eddy followed a heretical teaching that claims that the “Anglo-Saxon race” were the real lost tribes of Israel, and that the English and white Americans were the chosen people of God. This Anglo-Israel theory was widely ridiculed and denounced by Christians and historians for decades before Mrs. Eddy publicly espoused it. This teaching is completely heretical, completely unbiblical and completely unfounded in history. Mary Baker Eddy wrote approvingly of an author (C.A.L Totten) who advocated for Anglo-Israel teaching in his many books including Our Race[22]. She supported and encouraged various of her students who held to this Anglo-Israel teaching.[23] She thought that if the Anglo-Israel connections could be shown, that it would prove some sort of spiritual authority and superiority for herself.[24] Some of her students who believed this teaching believed that Mrs. Eddy could be proven to be the heir of the throne of David and entitled to be Queen of England.[25] She referred, in private conversation, to Christian Science as an “Anglo-Saxon religion.”[26] As late as 1898, in a poem published in Boston newspapers, The Christian Science Journal, and Miscellany she referred to the people of England and the United States as “Anglo-Israel” and “Judah’s sceptered race.”[27]  Far from advocating universal equality, she clearly articulated in her published writings that the Anglo-Saxons are the chosen people of God.

Despite all of her claims, the evidence shows that she opposed abolition. Her stories about freeing the slaves were just stories, intended to paint her as a heroic figure – as all of her stories about herself did. In fact, she considered “the African slave” and “the negro” to be on the lowest plane of life. She held to an entirely heretical and completely ridiculous teaching that the Anglo-Saxon race were God’s chosen people. Far from being a heroic abolitionist and defender of equality, Mary Baker Eddy was a serial fabulist and an unrepentant advocate of indefensible teachings about the superiority of the Anglo-Saxon race.

Tanner Johnsrud was a fifth generation Christian Scientist and a Journal-listed practitioner for over a decade. He and his wife left Christian Science in 2017 and became Christians. He is currently working on a book on the development of Mary Baker Eddy’s teaching and claims about herself.

[1] Reverend Irving C. Tomlinson, M.A. C.S.B. Twelve Years with Mary Baker Eddy; Recollections and Experiences. (Boston: The Christian Science Publishing Society, 1996.) 19

[2] Robert Peel Mary Baker Eddy: Years of Discovery. (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.) 71

[3] Ernest Sutherland Bates and John V Dittemore. Mary Baker Eddy: The Truth and the Tradition. (New York: Knopf, 1932.) 33-35

[4] Gillian Gill Mary Baker Eddy. (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Perseus Books.) 66

[5] Lyman P. Powell. Mary Baker Eddy; A Life Size Portrait. (New York: Macmillan, 1930.) 81.

 81;

Julia Michael Johnston. Mary Baker Eddy: Her Mission and Triumph. (Boston: The Christian Science Publishing Society. 1998.) 15

[6] Gill 65

[7] Peel Years of Discovery, p. 323 note 2

[8] Tomlinson 30-31; Gill 64-65

[9] Gill 65

[10] Gill 64-65

[11] McClure’s Magazine January 1907. Volume XXVIII, No. 3. p. 229.

Gill 605, n. 58

[12] Gill 19; 65

[13] Peel Years of Discovery, p. 320 n. 93

[14] Sibyl Wilbur. The Life of Mary Baker Eddy. (New York: Concord Publishing Co., 1908.) 52-54.

[15] Peel vol 1, p. 326 n. 50

[16] Peel vol 1, p. 88 The letter was written January 1, 1853, but it is not quoted in Peel. Evidently it exists in the archives of The Mary Baker Eddy library.

[17] Science and Health 61st Edition, pp. 121-122 (1891)

[18] Science and Health 257th Edition, p. 225 (1902)

[19] Elizabeth Earl Jones Mrs. Eddy in North Carolina and Memoirs pp. 109-110

[20] (Bliss Knapp and Eloise M Knapp – Their Book 1953.) This is from a notebook maintained by Eloise Knapp, wife of Bliss Knapp. It is located in the Principia College archives.

[21] Science and Health 26th Edition, p. 357.

[22] Mary Baker Eddy and Biblical Prophecy p. 17

[23] Peel Years of Authority pp. 116-117

Richard Nenneman. Persistent Pilgrim: The Life of Mary Baker Eddy. Etna, New Hampshire: Nebbadoon Press. 1997. 250-251

[24] Robert Peel Mary Baker Eddy: Years of Authority. New York: Holt Rinehart Winston, 1977. 117

[25] Peel Years of Authority 116.

[26] Elizabeth Earl Jones  Mrs. Eddy in North Carolina and Memoirs. 109-110

[27] Boston Herald May 18, 1898

The Christian Science Journal June 1898

Miscellany 337:15-22

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Calvin Frye & The Pie

By Tanner Johnsrud. Tanner was a journal listed practitioner for more than a decade before leaving Christian Science.

This week lots of people in the United States will be celebrating an important holiday. March 14 is 3.14 or, PI Day. So in honor of Pi(e) Day, I thought I would share a little bit of CS myth-busting.

Many Christian Scientists get their de facto ideas about what happens after death from an account claiming that Mary Baker Eddy raised her secretary Calvin Frye from the dead. (Actually, there are at least five distinct accounts of her “raising” Mr. Frye from the dead.) But the most famous one involves Calvin Frye going downstairs to get a piece of pie in the middle of the night:

“Miss Bartlett said that while Mrs. Eddy was living at 385 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, Mr. Calvin Frye suddenly passed on, and Mrs. Eddy raised him from the dead. Some time elapsed from the moment he passed on until Mrs. Eddy restored him to life. One of the students who witnessed this demonstration asked Mr. Frye what his experience was during the time that, to them he seemed to be dead. He replied that he was in the pantry eating pie.” (Lottie Clark reminiscences, quoted in Mary Baker Eddy Christian Healer p. 269)

The story of Calvin Frye and the pie has been told again and again in Sunday Schools and Association meetings. And many Christian Scientists assume that what happens after death is that we go on exactly as we were before death, just as Calvin Frye supposedly went on and got a piece of pie. The de facto views of life after death for untold numbers of Christian Scientists are based heavily – not on the Bible, or real scientific evidence – but on the testimony of what people said that Julia Bartlett told them, referencing what Calvin Frye purportedly said about his experience. Many Christian Scientists logically assume, based upon their implicit trust in Mrs. Eddy and the details they know, that Calvin Frye died, and after his death he continued on to get pie, and was raised from the dead by Mrs. Eddy.

They are unaware, however, of important history regarding Calvin Frye. Mr. Frye became interested in CS after his mother was treated in CS for insanity by Clara Choate. He soon became the most devoted of Mrs. Eddy’s followers, he was her loyal secretary, not even taking a single day off for decades. However, Calvin Frye had a long history of cataleptic seizures. Catalepsy is characterized by rigid body and limbs, limbs staying in the same position when moved (waxy flexibility), no response (a decrease of sensation), loss of muscle control, and slowing down of bodily functions, such as breathing. In previous centuries people were buried alive who were mistaken for dead as a result of a cataleptic seizure.

Mr. Frye had a long history of these cataleptic seizures, which can be mistaken for death. On July 14, 1888, Mr. Frye wrote a letter about one such seizure, the onset of which he attributed to mental forces trying to attack Mrs. Eddy through him:

“About two years ago, I was having much to contend with from the attacks of malicious mesmerism, by which the attempt was made to demoralize me, and through me to afflict Mrs. Eddy. While under one of those attacks, my mind became almost a total blank. Mrs. Eddy was alone with me at the time, and, calling to me loudly without a response, she saw the necessity for prompt action, and lifted my head by the forelock, and called aloud to rouse me from the paralyzed state into which I had fallen. This had the desired effect, and I wakened to a sense of where I was, my mind wandering, but I saw the danger from which she had delivered me and which can never be produced again.” (Mary Baker Eddy Library L15943, quoted in Mary Baker Eddy Christian Healer Amplified Edition p. 571)

He said that he would never again have such a seizure. But in that, as in much else, Mr. Frye was tragically wrong. There are at least five distinct incidents recorded in authorized Christian Science literature, that tell of students of Mrs. Eddy seeing her rouse Calvin Frye from these cataleptic seizures. Calvin Frye kept a diary – there is no record of him ever saying that he died. These cataleptic seizures were assumed, by the students (who did not know of Calvin Frye’s history), to be incidents of raising him from the dead. In the above letter he spoke of his mind wandering during such an episode – is it possible that during the incident with the pie, his mind wandered and he merely imagined going on to get pie, rather than that being testimony as to a post death world that is exactly parallel with our own?

But for untold numbers of Christian Scientists, their beliefs about the nature of life after death are greatly shaped from what someone said that Julia Bartlett said that Calvin Frye told her about a mental wandering he may have had in connection with one of his recurring cataleptic seizures.

One of the hard things about getting our friends and loved ones to leave CS is that they believe this story. They think that people will just go on, just as they have, and so while death might be unfortunate, nothing really changed for that person, because death isn’t real. As a Christian, I follow what the Bible says about what happens when we die, but I fully understand that my atheist friends believe there is no such thing. Both the Christians and the atheists in this group recognize that the CS teaching that death isn’t real is a huge problem and a huge lie. We both recognize the tragic nature of death. And we want our CS friends and loved ones not to die unfortunate, painful, and early deaths. We both want the people we love to live life to the fullest. Maybe getting the truth out regarding Calvin Frye can help challenge the CS narrative which says that death isn’t real.

Have a happy PI Day.