Sources: Mary Baker Eddy, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (1875); Christian Science Monitor (founded 1908); Stephen Gottschalk, Rolling Away the Stone.

Christian Science (~1879 AD) was founded by Mary Baker Eddy (~1821–1910 AD), who recovered from a serious injury in 1866 while reading the healing accounts in the Gospels and attributed her recovery to divine power. Her metaphysical framework: (1) God is All-in-All — God (Mind, Spirit, Soul, Principle, Life, Truth, Love) is the only reality; (2) Matter is unreal — the physical world, including the body, is an illusion of mortal mind; (3) Disease as error — sickness is a false belief of mortal mind, not physical reality; (4) Healing through prayer — understanding divine Truth destroys the illusion of disease; Christian Science practitioners provide healing prayer as a profession; (5) No clergy, sacraments, or Sunday school curriculum beyond Eddy’s writings. Christian Science demonstrates the late 19th century’s fascination with mind-over-matter healing — it emerged in the same period as New Thought, theosophy, and early psychology. The refusal of medical treatment for children has led to criminal prosecutions in several cases. The Christian Science Monitor (1908) remains a respected secular newspaper, a remarkable institutional legacy of the movement. Membership has declined sharply from a peak of ~270,000 in the 1930s to an estimated 50,000–85,000 today.