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God's Perfect Child: Living and Dying in the Christian Science Church
From Pulitzer Prize-winning author and former Christian Scientist Caroline Fraser comes the first unvarnished account of one of America's most controversial and little-understood religious movements.
Millions of Americans – from Lady Astor to Ginger Rogers to Watergate conspirator H. R. Haldeman – have been touched by the Church of Christ, Scientist. Founded by Mary Baker Eddy in 1879, Christian Science was based on a belief that intense contemplation of the perfection of God can heal all ills – an extreme expression of the American faith in self-reliance. In this unflinching investigation, Caroline Fraser, herself raised in a Scientist household, shows how the Church transformed itself from a small, eccentric sect into a politically powerful and socially respectable religion, and explores the human cost of Christian Science's remarkable rise.
Fraser examines the strange life and psychology of Mary Baker Eddy, who lived in dread of a kind of witchcraft she called Malicious Animal Magnetism. She takes us into the closed world of Eddy's followers, who refuse to acknowledge the existence of illness and death and reject modern medicine, even at the cost of their children's lives. She reveals just how Christian Science managed to gain extraordinary legal and Congressional sanction for its dubious practices and tracks its enormous influence on new-age beliefs and other modern healing cults.
A passionate exposé of zealotry, God's Perfect Child tells one of the most dramatic and little-known stories in American religious history.
Millions of Americans – from Lady Astor to Ginger Rogers to Watergate conspirator H. R. Haldeman – have been touched by the Church of Christ, Scientist. Founded by Mary Baker Eddy in 1879, Christian Science was based on a belief that intense contemplation of the perfection of God can heal all ills – an extreme expression of the American faith in self-reliance. In this unflinching investigation, Caroline Fraser, herself raised in a Scientist household, shows how the Church transformed itself from a small, eccentric sect into a politically powerful and socially respectable religion, and explores the human cost of Christian Science's remarkable rise.
Fraser examines the strange life and psychology of Mary Baker Eddy, who lived in dread of a kind of witchcraft she called Malicious Animal Magnetism. She takes us into the closed world of Eddy's followers, who refuse to acknowledge the existence of illness and death and reject modern medicine, even at the cost of their children's lives. She reveals just how Christian Science managed to gain extraordinary legal and Congressional sanction for its dubious practices and tracks its enormous influence on new-age beliefs and other modern healing cults.
A passionate exposé of zealotry, God's Perfect Child tells one of the most dramatic and little-known stories in American religious history.
688 pages, Paperback
First published August 15, 1999
80 people are currently reading
758 people want to read
About the author
Caroline Fraser
8 books326 followersCaroline Fraser was born in Seattle and holds a Ph.D. from Harvard University in English and American literature. Formerly on the editorial staff of The New Yorker, she is the author of two nonfiction books, God's Perfect Child: Living and Dying in the Christian Science Church and Rewilding the World: Dispatches from the Conservation Revolution, both published by Henry Holt's Metropolitan Books.
She has written for The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, The Atlantic Monthly, Outside Magazine, and The London Review of Books, among other publications. She has received a PEN Award for Best Young Writer and was a past recipient of the Margery Davis Boyden Wilderness Writer's Residency, awarded by PEN Northwest. She lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, with her husband, Hal Espen.
She has written for The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, The Atlantic Monthly, Outside Magazine, and The London Review of Books, among other publications. She has received a PEN Award for Best Young Writer and was a past recipient of the Margery Davis Boyden Wilderness Writer's Residency, awarded by PEN Northwest. She lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, with her husband, Hal Espen.
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September 4, 2017
[Apologies for the mile long review, it's a long and complex book and merits a lot of analysis/recap IMO]
Gripping but not sensational, serious but not soulless, and completely readable, this book flew by and I found myself itching to get back to it every time I had to put it down. In 500+ pages, in a nonfiction book about a small religion, I wasn’t bored for a second.
My interest in Christian Science (academic interest, not “I’m going to join” interest) stems from the fact that about a year ago, I moved to Boston, birthplace of Christian Science, home of Mary Baker Eddy, place of the Mother Church and plaza (which, incidentally, is across the street from my old apartment; its reflecting pools are one of my favourite Boston haunts). I’ve always heard references to the religion, of course (a close friend’s grandmother was a Scientist and passed away after refusing treatment that would likely sustain her life; also, my partner’s friend is a devout Scientist) , but there are just *so* many more of them living here in Boston. That, combined with a discussion I had recently with a Christian Scientist, led me to seek out a comprehensive narrative of the religion.
This was a lovely choice. The author is sincere, intelligent, warm, and even subtly funny at times, without losing the credible tone.
She left the religion because, as she says, “it’s better to turn your back on a religion than on a human being… you can’t pray a lie.” I love that.
-----------------CREDIBILITY-----------------
Now, I know this is an expose-type book written by an ex-Scientist, so it’s not exactly objective, but I also don’t find it sensationalist or gimmicky, and it gives you what seems to be a more or less straight scoop. Plus, it has the added benefit of giving you a better idea of what the religion is actually like from the inside out. Overall, impressed with the amount of objectivity and straightforwardness.
In the preface, the author states this, which I think lends some credibility to her perspective:
“I no longer believe in Christian Science. I do, however, believe that it is a profoundly complex experience to be or to have been a Scientist, an experience worth understanding in its own right… For those experimenting with [alternative or spiritual healing], Christian Scientists are the test case. They have bet their lives on the potency of their beliefs, and not all of them have lived to tell the tale.”
She adds that Christian Scientists are mostly good people, and that “they do not deserve to be mocked any more than Christians do for believing that Jesus rose from the dead, or than Catholics do for believing the wafer and the wine literally become the body and blood of their Savior. But there are beliefs that respect the basic human rights of men, women, and children, and beliefs that do not. Religion in all its innumerable forms is dedicated to helping humanity cope with death and the afterlife. It shouldn’t hurry us on our way there. Christian Scientists deserve religious freedom as much as any other group. They deserve that, and no more.”
---CONTEXT: THE CURIOUS PRIVILEGE OF CHRISTIAN SCIENCE---
According to Wikipedia, there are only about 85,000 Christian Scientists. That’s the size of a medium-sized suburb. There’s only that many in the whole world. Given those numbers, it’s surprising they’re as vocal and visible a group as they are. I’ve either met or heard of a handful of Christian Scientists before coming to Boston. Tiny, insular religious groups, with such divergent beliefs from mainstream religion, tend to be labeled cults.
How, then, has this little group of adherents mostly escaped this label?
Even more curiously, how has this religion been granted such unusual legal privileges?
For instance:
-I don’t know if it’s still true, but at the time of this book’s writing, Christian Science nursing homes could be funded by Medicare- even though there’s zero medicine happening, even though it’s purely religious “treatment.”
-Additionally, laws exist in some jurisdictions which specifically exempt Christian Scientists from being prosecuted for neglect or manslaughter for the consequences of their beliefs (even if a regular person who treated their child the same way, but not for religious reasons, would be charged with a crime).
-CS practitioners can sign certificates of sick leave or disability, even though they’re not doctors.
-The IRS lets you deduct CS spiritual treatment as “medical expenses.”
How can these questions about the social and legal privilege of Christian Science over comparable religions be answered?
Well. though they be but little, they be strong. Christian Scientists are overwhelmingly white and wealthy- not to mention, they have quite a few powerful figures and celebrities among their ranks.
Some examples of CS celebrities and public figures:
-Louisa May Alcott’s father and Ralph Waldo Emerson’s wife
-Mark Twain turned to Christian Science to heal his favourite daughter; when she died of spinal meningitis, he was furious with Eddy and wrote an entire book about how it was all charlatan.
-Clara Barton was a fan.
-Nancy Astor, first female Parliament member, was a Christian Scientist.
-Ginger Rogers, Joan Crawford, Doris Day were all Scientists.
-The artist Joseph Cornell.
-silent film star Mary Pickford.
-Poet Mina Loy.
-Lead singer of Metallica was raised as one, as were Robert Duvall and Elizabeth Taylor.
-George Hamilton (whose son, incidentally, my cousin dated) is a Scientist.
-Monica Lewinsky.
-William Webster, director of the FBI, was a Scientist, as was Stansfield Turner, director of the CIA.
-Astronaut Alan Shepard’s wife and mother were Scientists; he took a microfilm copy of the Christian Science Monitor to the moon on Apollo 14.
-Haldeman and Erlichman, the Nixon White House chief of staff and domestic policy adviser respectively who covered up the Watergate scandal, were Scientists. (Curiously, in fact, the Nixon administration was flush with Scientists- food for the conspiracy theorist’s thought).
These powerful characters have the influence and the personal finances to legal to privileges, and also normalize Christian Science sufficiently to make it an accepted religion in the eyes of America.
But is it a cult regardless? Or should it be viewed as a legitimate religion?
---------------CULT VS. RELIGION?---------------
Let’s talk about the philosophical underpinnings of this religion, because I think they’re very interesting and deserve a moment of thought.
Although the author notes a number of the political and cultural trends that may have given rise to the religion- Calvinist ideas of pragmatism, general American values rooted in self-reliance, the growing desire by and possibility for women to have more influential roles in the world, ineffective medical treatments, the Second Great Awakening during which many religions rose up- there’s also an interesting philosophical influence going on here that doesn’t get brought up: Idealism.
Maybe influence is the wrong word. Considering Mary Baker Eddy was a woman in the 19th century, she didn’t have a strong formal education. She claimed her older brother, the first of the family to go to college, taught her some of what he learned, such as Greek and Latin, there’s no real proof of this and she made up a lot of stuff about her childhood (fun fact: her older brother’s mentor, whose law practice he eventually took over, was Franklin Pierce, future president).
So I’d be surprised if she’d read much of philosophy. In that case, it might be mere coincidence.
Nevertheless, her belief system lines up quite well with classical philosophy- brushings of Neoplatonism, of course, but most of it, it has extremely heavy parallels with Bishop Berkeley’s brand of Idealism. Perhaps a more apt name for this religion would be “Church of Christ, Philosopher.”
This belief set, on its face it’s not crazy. All religions require some suspension of disbelief, of course, but it’s not wild and insane, to a point. All matter is actually Divine Mind, the product of God’s (and humans’) imagination, the physical world is wholly dependent on the mental world. Fine, dandy, I can entertain all this. Bishop Berkeley is with us here, too. All good.
It’s where we veer into the “...and therefore you, being God’s perfect child and part of His Divine Mind, can therefore control your external reality by harnessing your inner Divine Mind” that we start to get into questionable territory, by mainstream religion or philosophical standards.
To suggest a child’s influenza is all in their head, and they just don’t believe enough in God’s omnipresence? That you can make your cancer go away if you keep in mind that all physical matter is an Error of thought/faith, a product of your Mortal Mind? That kids should be careful not to get too angry at other people, because they could literally kill them with their minds? That you shouldn’t wear seatbelts, because, as the author’s father said, “they implied accidents could happen”?
This is a religion that compelled a woman to tell her husband, who came home shaken from watching a fiery car accident, told him sharply, “You’re listening to error. You didn’t see any car on fire.” This is a religion where that same woman let her son die of appendicitis without treatment, then spent two days praying over him, trying to resurrect his rotting corpse, before finally calling the funeral home.
Not to mention, the worship of the personality figure (Mary Baker Eddy) who is practically seen as a goddess, in spite of the glaring inconsistencies she offered. Like the fact that Christian Scientists can see dentists and have bones set by doctors, but can’t have any other kind of medical intervention. What’s with the loopholes? If you can really heal everything with your mind, can’t you will away the plaque and the cavities and the broken bones? Even more, why do you bother eating food if your body and food are both illusions? Can’t you survive without food if nothing, no disease, is real?
So basically, yeah, this is the kind of belief system that usually gets labeled a cult. But because of the members’ influence and personal credibility, it’s usually seen as a more accepted religion, if not a mainstream one.
On the other hand…
-----------CHRISTIAN SCIENTISTS AREN’T CRAZY-----------
That’s a point the author notes that is well-taken. She drives it home quite well. Despite the fact that what they do is sometimes crazy, from the inside out, it’s quite reasonable.
Take the astonishing case of the Swan couiple. One with a doctorate in a mathematics, the other working on her doctorate in Percy Shelley’s poetry. Living ordinary lives except for the fact that they don’t know anything about medicine. Adult, intelligent professionals who had no idea what a coma was, didn’t understand how hospitals worked, didn’t know what diseases were medically treatable.
From their perspective, as presented here, it really did seem perfectly reasonable to be afraid of science contaminating the method you believe to work. It’s actually quite reasonable. As Fraser says, “All Christian Scientists have their own fund of such testimonies that they fall back on in moments of doubt or trouble or when they are questioned by curious or skeptical outsiders.”
I mean, a lot of conditions and diseases do heal on their own with time. If you don’t really know much about the way the “material” body works, it’s sensible to believe that there had to be a reason you got better, and that the reason was that Christian Science prayer works. Especially if you grow up in the religion and have witnessed dozens of these “healings,” big and small, from family and friends.
Think about it: it’s essentially the same thing most of us do. We believe in modern medicine because our parents told us doctors know what’s up, and we can trust them. When they tell us a disease is caused by X and can be cured by Y, we believe them and act accordingly. It almost always works eventually, so we take that as proof. (Most of us haven’t personally run scientific studies testing these theories out, we take scientists for their word that these studies have been done correctly and the results mean what they say they mean.)
If you’re a Christian Scientist, your parents tell you to trust Scientist practitioners. Scientist practitioners tell you the problem is A and can be cured by B. Usually, that works too, and you add that to your mental bank of proof that your parents were right and practitioners know what’s up. Plus, Christian Science has its own “studies” that have ben conducted which “prove” that it works as well as modern medicine- if you’re a Christian Scientist, you’d accept that as readily as the rest of us accept the claims of science.
Christian Scientists aren’t kooks. Everyone else believes in this “magical thinking” too, to an extent-
only our blind trust goes to doctors. It’s worth keeping that in mind for skeptics. Some of what Scientists believe is crazy, and steps need to be taken to protect the victims, particularly children, from suffering as a result, but they aren't lunatics. This is an internally cohesive religious system, like any other.
Gripping but not sensational, serious but not soulless, and completely readable, this book flew by and I found myself itching to get back to it every time I had to put it down. In 500+ pages, in a nonfiction book about a small religion, I wasn’t bored for a second.
My interest in Christian Science (academic interest, not “I’m going to join” interest) stems from the fact that about a year ago, I moved to Boston, birthplace of Christian Science, home of Mary Baker Eddy, place of the Mother Church and plaza (which, incidentally, is across the street from my old apartment; its reflecting pools are one of my favourite Boston haunts). I’ve always heard references to the religion, of course (a close friend’s grandmother was a Scientist and passed away after refusing treatment that would likely sustain her life; also, my partner’s friend is a devout Scientist) , but there are just *so* many more of them living here in Boston. That, combined with a discussion I had recently with a Christian Scientist, led me to seek out a comprehensive narrative of the religion.
This was a lovely choice. The author is sincere, intelligent, warm, and even subtly funny at times, without losing the credible tone.
She left the religion because, as she says, “it’s better to turn your back on a religion than on a human being… you can’t pray a lie.” I love that.
-----------------CREDIBILITY-----------------
Now, I know this is an expose-type book written by an ex-Scientist, so it’s not exactly objective, but I also don’t find it sensationalist or gimmicky, and it gives you what seems to be a more or less straight scoop. Plus, it has the added benefit of giving you a better idea of what the religion is actually like from the inside out. Overall, impressed with the amount of objectivity and straightforwardness.
In the preface, the author states this, which I think lends some credibility to her perspective:
“I no longer believe in Christian Science. I do, however, believe that it is a profoundly complex experience to be or to have been a Scientist, an experience worth understanding in its own right… For those experimenting with [alternative or spiritual healing], Christian Scientists are the test case. They have bet their lives on the potency of their beliefs, and not all of them have lived to tell the tale.”
She adds that Christian Scientists are mostly good people, and that “they do not deserve to be mocked any more than Christians do for believing that Jesus rose from the dead, or than Catholics do for believing the wafer and the wine literally become the body and blood of their Savior. But there are beliefs that respect the basic human rights of men, women, and children, and beliefs that do not. Religion in all its innumerable forms is dedicated to helping humanity cope with death and the afterlife. It shouldn’t hurry us on our way there. Christian Scientists deserve religious freedom as much as any other group. They deserve that, and no more.”
---CONTEXT: THE CURIOUS PRIVILEGE OF CHRISTIAN SCIENCE---
According to Wikipedia, there are only about 85,000 Christian Scientists. That’s the size of a medium-sized suburb. There’s only that many in the whole world. Given those numbers, it’s surprising they’re as vocal and visible a group as they are. I’ve either met or heard of a handful of Christian Scientists before coming to Boston. Tiny, insular religious groups, with such divergent beliefs from mainstream religion, tend to be labeled cults.
How, then, has this little group of adherents mostly escaped this label?
Even more curiously, how has this religion been granted such unusual legal privileges?
For instance:
-I don’t know if it’s still true, but at the time of this book’s writing, Christian Science nursing homes could be funded by Medicare- even though there’s zero medicine happening, even though it’s purely religious “treatment.”
-Additionally, laws exist in some jurisdictions which specifically exempt Christian Scientists from being prosecuted for neglect or manslaughter for the consequences of their beliefs (even if a regular person who treated their child the same way, but not for religious reasons, would be charged with a crime).
-CS practitioners can sign certificates of sick leave or disability, even though they’re not doctors.
-The IRS lets you deduct CS spiritual treatment as “medical expenses.”
How can these questions about the social and legal privilege of Christian Science over comparable religions be answered?
Well. though they be but little, they be strong. Christian Scientists are overwhelmingly white and wealthy- not to mention, they have quite a few powerful figures and celebrities among their ranks.
Some examples of CS celebrities and public figures:
-Louisa May Alcott’s father and Ralph Waldo Emerson’s wife
-Mark Twain turned to Christian Science to heal his favourite daughter; when she died of spinal meningitis, he was furious with Eddy and wrote an entire book about how it was all charlatan.
-Clara Barton was a fan.
-Nancy Astor, first female Parliament member, was a Christian Scientist.
-Ginger Rogers, Joan Crawford, Doris Day were all Scientists.
-The artist Joseph Cornell.
-silent film star Mary Pickford.
-Poet Mina Loy.
-Lead singer of Metallica was raised as one, as were Robert Duvall and Elizabeth Taylor.
-George Hamilton (whose son, incidentally, my cousin dated) is a Scientist.
-Monica Lewinsky.
-William Webster, director of the FBI, was a Scientist, as was Stansfield Turner, director of the CIA.
-Astronaut Alan Shepard’s wife and mother were Scientists; he took a microfilm copy of the Christian Science Monitor to the moon on Apollo 14.
-Haldeman and Erlichman, the Nixon White House chief of staff and domestic policy adviser respectively who covered up the Watergate scandal, were Scientists. (Curiously, in fact, the Nixon administration was flush with Scientists- food for the conspiracy theorist’s thought).
These powerful characters have the influence and the personal finances to legal to privileges, and also normalize Christian Science sufficiently to make it an accepted religion in the eyes of America.
But is it a cult regardless? Or should it be viewed as a legitimate religion?
---------------CULT VS. RELIGION?---------------
Let’s talk about the philosophical underpinnings of this religion, because I think they’re very interesting and deserve a moment of thought.
Although the author notes a number of the political and cultural trends that may have given rise to the religion- Calvinist ideas of pragmatism, general American values rooted in self-reliance, the growing desire by and possibility for women to have more influential roles in the world, ineffective medical treatments, the Second Great Awakening during which many religions rose up- there’s also an interesting philosophical influence going on here that doesn’t get brought up: Idealism.
Maybe influence is the wrong word. Considering Mary Baker Eddy was a woman in the 19th century, she didn’t have a strong formal education. She claimed her older brother, the first of the family to go to college, taught her some of what he learned, such as Greek and Latin, there’s no real proof of this and she made up a lot of stuff about her childhood (fun fact: her older brother’s mentor, whose law practice he eventually took over, was Franklin Pierce, future president).
So I’d be surprised if she’d read much of philosophy. In that case, it might be mere coincidence.
Nevertheless, her belief system lines up quite well with classical philosophy- brushings of Neoplatonism, of course, but most of it, it has extremely heavy parallels with Bishop Berkeley’s brand of Idealism. Perhaps a more apt name for this religion would be “Church of Christ, Philosopher.”
This belief set, on its face it’s not crazy. All religions require some suspension of disbelief, of course, but it’s not wild and insane, to a point. All matter is actually Divine Mind, the product of God’s (and humans’) imagination, the physical world is wholly dependent on the mental world. Fine, dandy, I can entertain all this. Bishop Berkeley is with us here, too. All good.
It’s where we veer into the “...and therefore you, being God’s perfect child and part of His Divine Mind, can therefore control your external reality by harnessing your inner Divine Mind” that we start to get into questionable territory, by mainstream religion or philosophical standards.
To suggest a child’s influenza is all in their head, and they just don’t believe enough in God’s omnipresence? That you can make your cancer go away if you keep in mind that all physical matter is an Error of thought/faith, a product of your Mortal Mind? That kids should be careful not to get too angry at other people, because they could literally kill them with their minds? That you shouldn’t wear seatbelts, because, as the author’s father said, “they implied accidents could happen”?
This is a religion that compelled a woman to tell her husband, who came home shaken from watching a fiery car accident, told him sharply, “You’re listening to error. You didn’t see any car on fire.” This is a religion where that same woman let her son die of appendicitis without treatment, then spent two days praying over him, trying to resurrect his rotting corpse, before finally calling the funeral home.
Not to mention, the worship of the personality figure (Mary Baker Eddy) who is practically seen as a goddess, in spite of the glaring inconsistencies she offered. Like the fact that Christian Scientists can see dentists and have bones set by doctors, but can’t have any other kind of medical intervention. What’s with the loopholes? If you can really heal everything with your mind, can’t you will away the plaque and the cavities and the broken bones? Even more, why do you bother eating food if your body and food are both illusions? Can’t you survive without food if nothing, no disease, is real?
So basically, yeah, this is the kind of belief system that usually gets labeled a cult. But because of the members’ influence and personal credibility, it’s usually seen as a more accepted religion, if not a mainstream one.
On the other hand…
-----------CHRISTIAN SCIENTISTS AREN’T CRAZY-----------
That’s a point the author notes that is well-taken. She drives it home quite well. Despite the fact that what they do is sometimes crazy, from the inside out, it’s quite reasonable.
Take the astonishing case of the Swan couiple. One with a doctorate in a mathematics, the other working on her doctorate in Percy Shelley’s poetry. Living ordinary lives except for the fact that they don’t know anything about medicine. Adult, intelligent professionals who had no idea what a coma was, didn’t understand how hospitals worked, didn’t know what diseases were medically treatable.
From their perspective, as presented here, it really did seem perfectly reasonable to be afraid of science contaminating the method you believe to work. It’s actually quite reasonable. As Fraser says, “All Christian Scientists have their own fund of such testimonies that they fall back on in moments of doubt or trouble or when they are questioned by curious or skeptical outsiders.”
I mean, a lot of conditions and diseases do heal on their own with time. If you don’t really know much about the way the “material” body works, it’s sensible to believe that there had to be a reason you got better, and that the reason was that Christian Science prayer works. Especially if you grow up in the religion and have witnessed dozens of these “healings,” big and small, from family and friends.
Think about it: it’s essentially the same thing most of us do. We believe in modern medicine because our parents told us doctors know what’s up, and we can trust them. When they tell us a disease is caused by X and can be cured by Y, we believe them and act accordingly. It almost always works eventually, so we take that as proof. (Most of us haven’t personally run scientific studies testing these theories out, we take scientists for their word that these studies have been done correctly and the results mean what they say they mean.)
If you’re a Christian Scientist, your parents tell you to trust Scientist practitioners. Scientist practitioners tell you the problem is A and can be cured by B. Usually, that works too, and you add that to your mental bank of proof that your parents were right and practitioners know what’s up. Plus, Christian Science has its own “studies” that have ben conducted which “prove” that it works as well as modern medicine- if you’re a Christian Scientist, you’d accept that as readily as the rest of us accept the claims of science.
Christian Scientists aren’t kooks. Everyone else believes in this “magical thinking” too, to an extent-
only our blind trust goes to doctors. It’s worth keeping that in mind for skeptics. Some of what Scientists believe is crazy, and steps need to be taken to protect the victims, particularly children, from suffering as a result, but they aren't lunatics. This is an internally cohesive religious system, like any other.
November 5, 2022
This is a scathing, but scholarly "biography" of Christian Science. Detailed in the extreme, the book covers the religion's strange, histrionic, attention-seeking quack of a founder, Mary Baker Eddy, as well as the larger development of the movement. Author Caroline Fraser grew up in a mixed Christian Science home: her father was a member; her mother was not. In her late teens, with her rational faculties growing, Fraser left the church. Her break was more or less complete when a young boy, a member of the Mercer Island Scientist community, died of a ruptured appendix. His mother had brought in a "practitioner" to pray over her febrile, vomiting son, rather than taking him to the hospital for surgery. When he died, his mother and the practitioner continued to pray, hoping to resurrect him, only phoning the funeral home when his body began to decay.
I hope to return to Fraser's book one day. It was due back at the library before I could work my way through its many pages. Interestingly, Fraser connects Christian Science to many "thinkers" (can we call them that?) in the New Age movement, including Deepak Chopra, Bernie Siegel, and Louise Hay. The idea that one's mind or one's less-than-optimistic thoughts have something to do with one's receiving a diagnosis of cancer or autoimmune disease plagues many. I recall having a discussion about this notion (of defective thinking somehow being responsible for disease) with my sister when we were in our teens. We had recently lost two lovely dogs to cancer. Who could have had a more cheerful, optimistic, and forgiving nature than those two? my sister pointed out to me. They enjoyed their days and lived them with no apparent tendencies toward imperfect thought. Blaming illness on attitude is simplistic, dangerous (black-) magical thinking.
Heavy though Fraser's book is, it is a worthy and accessible one that links the tenets of this belief system with the wider society it grew out of. As I said, I hope I can return to it later when I've got a bit more time and reading stamina.
I hope to return to Fraser's book one day. It was due back at the library before I could work my way through its many pages. Interestingly, Fraser connects Christian Science to many "thinkers" (can we call them that?) in the New Age movement, including Deepak Chopra, Bernie Siegel, and Louise Hay. The idea that one's mind or one's less-than-optimistic thoughts have something to do with one's receiving a diagnosis of cancer or autoimmune disease plagues many. I recall having a discussion about this notion (of defective thinking somehow being responsible for disease) with my sister when we were in our teens. We had recently lost two lovely dogs to cancer. Who could have had a more cheerful, optimistic, and forgiving nature than those two? my sister pointed out to me. They enjoyed their days and lived them with no apparent tendencies toward imperfect thought. Blaming illness on attitude is simplistic, dangerous (black-) magical thinking.
Heavy though Fraser's book is, it is a worthy and accessible one that links the tenets of this belief system with the wider society it grew out of. As I said, I hope I can return to it later when I've got a bit more time and reading stamina.
October 21, 2012
Eye opening for a former Christian Scientist.
May 31, 2015
Highly researched and footnoted, this is not an emotional book but a journalistic explanation of the religion, the founder, the controversies, and fairly current activities.
July 28, 2012
Decided to re-read it this morning and forgot how incredibly pissed off it makes me at CS. Weeee.
March 24, 2017
The last chapter of this book is one of the best analyses about American religion I have ever encountered. It should be read (even if only as a standalone essay) by anyone interested in the influence individualism has had on the evolution of religious thought in the US.
4/5 for the book as a whole
5/5 for the last 30 pages
4/5 for the book as a whole
5/5 for the last 30 pages
January 2, 2022
I'm a fan of the Christian Science Monitor for its good journalism but have not given much thought to "scientists". Turns out, Mary Baker Eddy was anything but a scientist, whose cult following spread around the world. The author reminds us of their distrust of medicine [isn't that "science"?] and reliance on prayer to heal all wounds & sickness, telling the story of a child who died of appendicitis while his mother only prayed for him. It is so hard for me to comprehend that in the 21st century, people still believe this nonsense.
Miss Mary Baker was a hypochondriac prone to hystrionics as a young person, who claims to have been cured by a "doctor" Quimby, whose words & methods she assumed as she developed her notion of "science" & "animal matter". Her 2 or 3 failed marriages, with a son she gave away to the servants tells us she is not a well-adjusted person. First was Mr Glover, who fathered their son. Then, Mr. Paterson, who died. Then Mr. Eddy. Later in life, she didn't marry her acolytes, but "adopted" one even tho he was 41 years old
Her theories are far fetched: "malicious animal magnetism" or MAM for one. She has convinced her cult that simply because another person is thinking of you, particularly thinking badly of you, that causes you to become ill & need "healing". Her concept of healing is simply faith healing, where someone is praying for you often not even in your presence, without any physical contact. Mary becomes quite wealthy by charging $300 to "teach" her methods, often brief encounters over a few weeks. Not only does she high-jack the word "science" but goes on to confer "doctor" credential from her "university". Today we see a similar trend with online "universities" using the term to equate their programs to the degree from a Big 10 school!!
Around 1890, she shut down her "church" in Boston, foreclosed on the land for her church & instructed her cult to suspend all "rules". One would think this bizarre behavior would drive her followers away, but the faithful stuck with her. She was living in a lovely home, Pleasant View, near Concord, NH at this time. Not coincidentally, the Massachusetts AG was investigating her & her "university" for its "doctor" credential. Perhaps she was putting some distance between herself & the rhubarb over that land she purchased for the church in Boston? Whenever some unsavory news emerged about Mary, she claimed her actions were God's will, as if that absolved her of any wrong-doing.
Her rise to fame corresponds with a boom in the number of faith-healing sects. Even Scientology has its roots in Christian Science.
Mary Baker Glover Patterson Eddy's "Science and Health" document defies logic as her statements often contradict each other. SMH over how so many thousands of people believed her version of christianity! The author provides many examples of this. Mary claimed to be the mouthpiece of God, but does not acknowledge death nor that Jesus died and rose from the dead. She seemed to think she was immortal, requiring her Board of Trustees to get her consent for many actions, ignoring that she too would some day die & leave the Board with the dilemma of following her instructions or not. When she did succumb to kidney stones around the age of 80, the Board scrambled to clarify their role leading her church. Later, they would be engaged in "Big Litigation" with the Board of their publications [incl Christian Science Monitor over which group of men was making decisions about what was printed. The deed of trust for the publications division gave clear authority to their trustees, separating it from the church Board of Directors. Both the church and the magazine survived. But legal wrangling persists throughout the church's existence.
Her mausoleum in Boston was guarded round the clock for years after her death, with rumors of a telephone inside for her to use when she returned from the dead. Is it still there?
Mary's rise to fame and from being a poor farm girl to a wealthy woman is an astonishing story. It seems to me that she was the master at branding herself & her cult in a very successful way, preying upon people's fears of illness [& treatment] as well as death. Mary's faith simply pretended those things did not exist, "errors" of being human. Often, dissent from within created public embarrassment & further decline in church enrollment. There was the "Revere" campaign, warning members that consolidated power with the Mother Church was a threat. Later, the Kelly letters also raised the alarm to current members that financial mismanagement, amoral behavior & much more plagued their center in Boston.
The history of those celebrities who partook in Christian Science is astonishing: Carol Channing, Doris Day, and so many others of the era. During the Nixon years, Haldeman & Erlichman were closet Christian Scientists.
The more I read, the more alarmed I am by the "accommodations" made to this so-called religion: allowing practitioners to be paid by insurance; legislating their ability to practice with impunity, free from liability! despite the best efforts of the AMA; and using their letter writing campaigns to strong-arm representatives in Congress to do what they want, despite what the general public thinks. The more you read their history, the angrier you become. But we should be furious about the "baby cases": detailed accounts of children that died of meningitis, diabetes, bowel obstruction, measles and so many other curable diseases in the last few decades. Some of those parents & their CS practitioners were charged with manslaughter, negligence or indifference but few convicted because they had persuaded our government to create laws exempting them from prosecution, which the courts upheld. Those CS "nurses" who do less than a nurses aid might do in a facility, should not be allowed to use the title "nurse", IMO as an RN x 45 years!!!!!!
This is not an easy book to read. While the church may be gasping its final breath, having lost most of their followers & nearly bankrupted by the foray into TV and radio by the misguided Board, the author takes us on a well-researched journey from the beginning to today. She is an exceptional writer and her passion for the topic is evident in every section, but none more so that the end. I hope Ms. Frasier found peace from writing this eye-opener. She divulges the details of watching her CS father die a painful death from gangrene of his toes, then his foot & eventually up to the knee, in a CS nursing home, after declining any treatment offered by the doctors during his one ER visit.
Miss Mary Baker was a hypochondriac prone to hystrionics as a young person, who claims to have been cured by a "doctor" Quimby, whose words & methods she assumed as she developed her notion of "science" & "animal matter". Her 2 or 3 failed marriages, with a son she gave away to the servants tells us she is not a well-adjusted person. First was Mr Glover, who fathered their son. Then, Mr. Paterson, who died. Then Mr. Eddy. Later in life, she didn't marry her acolytes, but "adopted" one even tho he was 41 years old
Her theories are far fetched: "malicious animal magnetism" or MAM for one. She has convinced her cult that simply because another person is thinking of you, particularly thinking badly of you, that causes you to become ill & need "healing". Her concept of healing is simply faith healing, where someone is praying for you often not even in your presence, without any physical contact. Mary becomes quite wealthy by charging $300 to "teach" her methods, often brief encounters over a few weeks. Not only does she high-jack the word "science" but goes on to confer "doctor" credential from her "university". Today we see a similar trend with online "universities" using the term to equate their programs to the degree from a Big 10 school!!
Around 1890, she shut down her "church" in Boston, foreclosed on the land for her church & instructed her cult to suspend all "rules". One would think this bizarre behavior would drive her followers away, but the faithful stuck with her. She was living in a lovely home, Pleasant View, near Concord, NH at this time. Not coincidentally, the Massachusetts AG was investigating her & her "university" for its "doctor" credential. Perhaps she was putting some distance between herself & the rhubarb over that land she purchased for the church in Boston? Whenever some unsavory news emerged about Mary, she claimed her actions were God's will, as if that absolved her of any wrong-doing.
Her rise to fame corresponds with a boom in the number of faith-healing sects. Even Scientology has its roots in Christian Science.
Mary Baker Glover Patterson Eddy's "Science and Health" document defies logic as her statements often contradict each other. SMH over how so many thousands of people believed her version of christianity! The author provides many examples of this. Mary claimed to be the mouthpiece of God, but does not acknowledge death nor that Jesus died and rose from the dead. She seemed to think she was immortal, requiring her Board of Trustees to get her consent for many actions, ignoring that she too would some day die & leave the Board with the dilemma of following her instructions or not. When she did succumb to kidney stones around the age of 80, the Board scrambled to clarify their role leading her church. Later, they would be engaged in "Big Litigation" with the Board of their publications [incl Christian Science Monitor over which group of men was making decisions about what was printed. The deed of trust for the publications division gave clear authority to their trustees, separating it from the church Board of Directors. Both the church and the magazine survived. But legal wrangling persists throughout the church's existence.
Her mausoleum in Boston was guarded round the clock for years after her death, with rumors of a telephone inside for her to use when she returned from the dead. Is it still there?
Mary's rise to fame and from being a poor farm girl to a wealthy woman is an astonishing story. It seems to me that she was the master at branding herself & her cult in a very successful way, preying upon people's fears of illness [& treatment] as well as death. Mary's faith simply pretended those things did not exist, "errors" of being human. Often, dissent from within created public embarrassment & further decline in church enrollment. There was the "Revere" campaign, warning members that consolidated power with the Mother Church was a threat. Later, the Kelly letters also raised the alarm to current members that financial mismanagement, amoral behavior & much more plagued their center in Boston.
The history of those celebrities who partook in Christian Science is astonishing: Carol Channing, Doris Day, and so many others of the era. During the Nixon years, Haldeman & Erlichman were closet Christian Scientists.
The more I read, the more alarmed I am by the "accommodations" made to this so-called religion: allowing practitioners to be paid by insurance; legislating their ability to practice with impunity, free from liability! despite the best efforts of the AMA; and using their letter writing campaigns to strong-arm representatives in Congress to do what they want, despite what the general public thinks. The more you read their history, the angrier you become. But we should be furious about the "baby cases": detailed accounts of children that died of meningitis, diabetes, bowel obstruction, measles and so many other curable diseases in the last few decades. Some of those parents & their CS practitioners were charged with manslaughter, negligence or indifference but few convicted because they had persuaded our government to create laws exempting them from prosecution, which the courts upheld. Those CS "nurses" who do less than a nurses aid might do in a facility, should not be allowed to use the title "nurse", IMO as an RN x 45 years!!!!!!
This is not an easy book to read. While the church may be gasping its final breath, having lost most of their followers & nearly bankrupted by the foray into TV and radio by the misguided Board, the author takes us on a well-researched journey from the beginning to today. She is an exceptional writer and her passion for the topic is evident in every section, but none more so that the end. I hope Ms. Frasier found peace from writing this eye-opener. She divulges the details of watching her CS father die a painful death from gangrene of his toes, then his foot & eventually up to the knee, in a CS nursing home, after declining any treatment offered by the doctors during his one ER visit.
August 2, 2012
The author provides lots of evidence regarding the mental instability of the founder of Christian Science, the many discrepancies in her own writings, and how strongly the Mother Church has quashed dissension and criticism over the years. The author's major flaw, though, is that she argues the inability of the church to "prove" its healing works, and of course virtually no religion is expected to prove its central tenets because they are based on faith. I think because Christian Science claims to be science when convenient and religion when convenient, she argues there should be scientific evidence. Overall there is lots in the book that leads me to conclude that this belief system may have made a little sense back before medicine had scientific evidence of healing, but nowadays vaccinations, antibiotics, insulin and the like are God-given lifesavers to me and should not be ignored for children. Adults can do as they please. I believe God's answer to prayer includes lifesaving medical treatments.
March 6, 2007
Having grown up as a Christian Scientist, but no longer practicing (just like the author), this book appealed to me.
February 9, 2017
Well, this is very chilling. Super informative, too. The history and blow-by-blow stuff is a little boring, but you know, it's a history of the Church, so...
August 4, 2017
My husband's mother, aunt and grandmother were Christian Scientists (all deceased). Two sisters died from incurable diseases (MS & Parkinson's). Their mother died in an auto accident. An uncle died from a ruptured appendix at age 14. Grandfather died from a heart attack at 55. This book explains their beliefs and includes an an interesting biography of it's founder, Mary Baker Eddy. Strange people and strange beliefs.
December 11, 2018
Caroline Fraser spares no detail in her research and writing, which makes for informative, if not always enjoyable, reading. It was a slog getting through some parts of this exhaustive (and at times exhausting) work, but I'm glad I did. Lots of insight into how mass movements take hold, and brave work on Fraser's part, delving into a subject so close to home and about such a famously litigous bunch as Christian Scientists.
January 6, 2010
The book that blew the roof off the Xtian Science Church.
Now we need one on Mormonism!
Now we need one on Mormonism!
July 17, 2011
fascinating book if you ever want to learn about the history of Christian Scientists
December 28, 2019
I grew up frequently attending a Christian Science church. My grandparents were CS, and they took me to church with them for awhile. It wasn't until years later that I found out how much error the church taught.
This quote from the book basically sums up the contradiction of CS:
God's Perfect Child is a well-researched handbook of sorts about CS. The title, of course, is tongue and cheek. It does not entertain the idea that Mary Baker Eddy was God's Perfect Child, but only that she and her followers seemed to think that she was. The first half of the book deals most with Mary Baker Eddy, while the second half deals primarily with the church after her death.
Read the first half. Skim the rest.
It's amazing to me, given all the facts that are contained in this work, that anybody believed Mary Baker Eddy at all. She appears to have been an eccentric, egotistical, paranoid fanatic. But she must have been somewhat charismatic and convincing to have gained such a following.
The author does not come across as having an ax to grind. She acknowledges some good that CS has accomplished. But overall, she documents a huge piles controversies and cover-ups that surround the CS church.
I would rate this higher if it weren't so tedious to get through. While it, of course, deals primarily with CS, it's also a piercing warning to everyone to be careful to believe truth, not mixed with any error.
This quote from the book basically sums up the contradiction of CS:
"practitioners-who cannot diagnose disease or illness-are allowed to sign certificates for sick leave and disability, although the Church has never explained how practitioners can verify conditions they don't believe in." (p. 274)
God's Perfect Child is a well-researched handbook of sorts about CS. The title, of course, is tongue and cheek. It does not entertain the idea that Mary Baker Eddy was God's Perfect Child, but only that she and her followers seemed to think that she was. The first half of the book deals most with Mary Baker Eddy, while the second half deals primarily with the church after her death.
Read the first half. Skim the rest.
It's amazing to me, given all the facts that are contained in this work, that anybody believed Mary Baker Eddy at all. She appears to have been an eccentric, egotistical, paranoid fanatic. But she must have been somewhat charismatic and convincing to have gained such a following.
The author does not come across as having an ax to grind. She acknowledges some good that CS has accomplished. But overall, she documents a huge piles controversies and cover-ups that surround the CS church.
I would rate this higher if it weren't so tedious to get through. While it, of course, deals primarily with CS, it's also a piercing warning to everyone to be careful to believe truth, not mixed with any error.
April 14, 2025
Thorough, credible, relatable. As one raised in the Christian Science faith (and later turned from it), I find this book an important articulation of the religion's roots as well as its subsequent interpretation, malpractice, institutional mismanagement and inevitable(?) dissolution. I won't unpack my own baggage, but suffice to say this rings as true as Krakauer's excellent "Under the Banner of Heaven," only I've swum in these cultural waters where fundamentalism is the standard (and I lived to tell the tale). I couldn't do it as well as Caroline Fraser has: wholly unemotionally, that is, until her 2017 afterword; in it she finally takes her gloves off, and rawly interprets the whole with general updates and the devastating (personally) conclusion.
October 6, 2020
The first half of the book was very slow and dry, but the information included was interesting enough to keep me reading. It picked up towards the back half, and I definitely felt I learned a lot and had a mostly enjoyable reading experience
August 27, 2016
Wow! This book helped me to understand Christian Science Beliefs. It's just hard for me to understand how you can go on the teachings of Mary Baker Eddy. Why follow someone with such bad character?
August 20, 2018
Shocking. Brought up in the CS church my brother and I saw much hypocracy. Had no idea how bad it was even tho we both left as teenagers.
September 16, 2025
Shelving under memoir although I know that Fraser's personal experiences are largely limited to the beginning and end of the book.
When I was in high school and on the Masterminds (quiz bowl) team, if we didn't know the answer to a question, we'd buzz in and answer "Mary Baker Eddy." I knew nothing of her other than she "founded the Church of Christian Science," and that the Church had a pretty well-respected paper. That was it, until now.
Caroline Fraser's been on my to-read list for a while thanks to Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder and Murderland: Crime and Bloodlust in the Time of Serial Killers. While I was reading up on her, though, I learnt about this book and figured I should give it a whirl. I'm interested in religion precisely because I did not grow up in any kind of religious household, and so I'm curious as to what people believe and why they believe it. Turns out the story of Christian Science is a wild one beyond anything that I could've imagined. I'll also say that while it's a religion, it has a lot akin to a cult as well, what with blind devotion to what MBE dictated for the church.
Christian Science, as it turns out, is pretty fucked up. It's normal in most cases except for a total disdain for medicine and just ... believing sickness isn't real. If you're sick, it's because you've not believed enough, and also you're not actually sick, because God wouldn't create sickness in the world. That's a very basic outline of it all, but it's absolutely bonkers to me that this is such a recent religion (dating back to the nineteenth century). I read a lot of historical fiction and there are times when somebody is ill and people are praying over their body because they don't know what else to do. The difference is that medicine today is far more advanced where we know what to do when it comes to certain illnesses/diseases, but according to the Christian Science folks, that's verboten. Why use medicine when God will clearly intervene (if you believe hard enough)?
You're allowed to decide to do with your body, but you should not be allowed to withhold medical care from children. One of the most distressing/interesting parts of this book discusses court cases against Christian Science parents who let their kids die of distinctly treatable illnesses, relying exclusively on Christian Science practitioners instead. It's absolutely horrifying. I don't always blame the parents because in a lot of cases, they've been indoctrinated into this way of thinking too, but it's also hugely irresponsible not to take your baby to the hospital when they have a 103-degree fever. I had no idea any of this had happened, and it was extremely upsetting to learn about.
Fraser's book is batshit all around--batshit weird (when talking about MBE and her life), batshit terrifying (when discussing the harm done to children by eschewing medicine), and batshit hilarious (when exploring the Church's attempts to expand their media presence and blowing it up spectacularly). I learnt a LOT from this and will be thinking about it for a long time to come. The best nonfiction lingers, and I have a feeling this is going to stay unfortunately relevant given the RFK of it all in our current government. It's made me all the more excited to tackle Fraser's other works.
When I was in high school and on the Masterminds (quiz bowl) team, if we didn't know the answer to a question, we'd buzz in and answer "Mary Baker Eddy." I knew nothing of her other than she "founded the Church of Christian Science," and that the Church had a pretty well-respected paper. That was it, until now.
Caroline Fraser's been on my to-read list for a while thanks to Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder and Murderland: Crime and Bloodlust in the Time of Serial Killers. While I was reading up on her, though, I learnt about this book and figured I should give it a whirl. I'm interested in religion precisely because I did not grow up in any kind of religious household, and so I'm curious as to what people believe and why they believe it. Turns out the story of Christian Science is a wild one beyond anything that I could've imagined. I'll also say that while it's a religion, it has a lot akin to a cult as well, what with blind devotion to what MBE dictated for the church.
Christian Science, as it turns out, is pretty fucked up. It's normal in most cases except for a total disdain for medicine and just ... believing sickness isn't real. If you're sick, it's because you've not believed enough, and also you're not actually sick, because God wouldn't create sickness in the world. That's a very basic outline of it all, but it's absolutely bonkers to me that this is such a recent religion (dating back to the nineteenth century). I read a lot of historical fiction and there are times when somebody is ill and people are praying over their body because they don't know what else to do. The difference is that medicine today is far more advanced where we know what to do when it comes to certain illnesses/diseases, but according to the Christian Science folks, that's verboten. Why use medicine when God will clearly intervene (if you believe hard enough)?
You're allowed to decide to do with your body, but you should not be allowed to withhold medical care from children. One of the most distressing/interesting parts of this book discusses court cases against Christian Science parents who let their kids die of distinctly treatable illnesses, relying exclusively on Christian Science practitioners instead. It's absolutely horrifying. I don't always blame the parents because in a lot of cases, they've been indoctrinated into this way of thinking too, but it's also hugely irresponsible not to take your baby to the hospital when they have a 103-degree fever. I had no idea any of this had happened, and it was extremely upsetting to learn about.
Fraser's book is batshit all around--batshit weird (when talking about MBE and her life), batshit terrifying (when discussing the harm done to children by eschewing medicine), and batshit hilarious (when exploring the Church's attempts to expand their media presence and blowing it up spectacularly). I learnt a LOT from this and will be thinking about it for a long time to come. The best nonfiction lingers, and I have a feeling this is going to stay unfortunately relevant given the RFK of it all in our current government. It's made me all the more excited to tackle Fraser's other works.
July 25, 2025
Second great awakening faiths are fascinating to read about because they are all within the history of modern reporting and so most of their history, good and bad, is known and documented. I mostly read this book because I like the author, but this book on the history of the Christian Scientists was very shocking, well-documented, willing to give credit to the good parts of the faith and its practitioners, and well-written. It's the kind of "obnoxious literature" that is sure to give a Christian Scientist a faith crisis, so caveat emptor if you are one.
This book covers the life of Mary Baker Eddy and follows the faith she created, Christian Science, from its beginnings to the modern day. Eddy was given to psychosomatic illness and found inspiration for her faith in the healing worlds of mesmerism and hypnotism. She claims we're all one spirit with God, and is anti-materialist, insisting our world and our bodies and matter are just an illusion. The basis of her faith is our ability to heal ourselves with prayer, which for them means meditating on the Bible and Eddy's book Science and Health (which is seemingly more important to the faith than the Bible is).
Medicine and doctors are absolutely taboo in this faith and not allowed whatsoever (though dental care and care during/post-birth are exceptions for some reason). Distrusting medicine makes perfect sense in the mid-1800s when Eddy started the faith. They didn't really know about germ theory or hygiene, there were no antibiotics or scans, etc. So this story ends up being about the church's increasing refusal to adapt to new times and new discoveries.
This book was engaging, punchy, and made an esoteric faith plain to outsiders. It was really hard to read some of the modern stories of people refusing medical care, especially when it was for children. Christian Science has nursing homes that are covered by Medicare and Medicaid even though they don't actually provide any medical care beyond prayer. The 20th anniversary version had an author's afterword where she described her father's death of gangrene slowly and agonizingly taking place over seven months, and how hard it was to watch (the author grew up in the faith). I also like how she connected it to new age movements of the modern day and figures like Deepak Chopra and Marianne Williamson, who are resurrecting Eddy's ideas in a form palatable to the modern day reader.
This book covers the life of Mary Baker Eddy and follows the faith she created, Christian Science, from its beginnings to the modern day. Eddy was given to psychosomatic illness and found inspiration for her faith in the healing worlds of mesmerism and hypnotism. She claims we're all one spirit with God, and is anti-materialist, insisting our world and our bodies and matter are just an illusion. The basis of her faith is our ability to heal ourselves with prayer, which for them means meditating on the Bible and Eddy's book Science and Health (which is seemingly more important to the faith than the Bible is).
Medicine and doctors are absolutely taboo in this faith and not allowed whatsoever (though dental care and care during/post-birth are exceptions for some reason). Distrusting medicine makes perfect sense in the mid-1800s when Eddy started the faith. They didn't really know about germ theory or hygiene, there were no antibiotics or scans, etc. So this story ends up being about the church's increasing refusal to adapt to new times and new discoveries.
This book was engaging, punchy, and made an esoteric faith plain to outsiders. It was really hard to read some of the modern stories of people refusing medical care, especially when it was for children. Christian Science has nursing homes that are covered by Medicare and Medicaid even though they don't actually provide any medical care beyond prayer. The 20th anniversary version had an author's afterword where she described her father's death of gangrene slowly and agonizingly taking place over seven months, and how hard it was to watch (the author grew up in the faith). I also like how she connected it to new age movements of the modern day and figures like Deepak Chopra and Marianne Williamson, who are resurrecting Eddy's ideas in a form palatable to the modern day reader.
April 9, 2023
Long but very interesting. I read Caroline Fraser's fantastic Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder a few years ago, and this earlier book of hers is just as thorough but more personal. Fraser was raised in the Christian Science church and had already begun to drift away when a boy who attended her church died from a ruptured appendix after his mother wouldn't seek medical treatment for him. He's just one of many kids who died because their Christian Scientist parents wouldn't seek treatment outside the church. The book goes through the whole history of the church- Mary Baker Eddy's life (I didn't know much about her before reading this, but uh, yeah, she kind of sucked- she abandoned her son, had all kinds of stupid petty grievances with people, and, of course, founded a religion that has led to the deaths of children), the evolution of the church and its in-fighting after Eddy's death, the history of its publications and media, and, sadly, its many casualties, some of which are really painful to read about. Although the number of Christian Scientists was never very high and has been steadily dwindling, it has influenced all kinds of new-agey healing things, the law of attraction crap, Scientology, and people like Deepak Chopra, Louise Hay, and Marianne Williamson. This book was published in 1999, and maybe that explains why there's not more about anti-vaxxers (when did that become a big thing?), but although it mentions a fatal measles outbreak at the Christian Science institution Principia College, there's not much else about vaccines. I'm also not quite sure what Christian Science practitioners and "nurses" actually do- like, what are the specific prayers they do and why can't just anybody do them? Still, this was interesting, and I'd like to know more about what's happened with this church since 1999.
December 8, 2025
I wouldn't say that I enjoyed this book because it's hard to really enjoy a book that documents a belief system that leads to hundreds of children dying and suffering unnecessarily, but I do think it was a valuable read. Caroline Fraser was raised as a Christian Scientist but left the church when she was a teenager. In this book, she documents not only the history of Christian Science and its founder, Mary Baker Eddy, but also looks at how it influenced a lot of the wellness grifting that we're seeing today (Marianne Williamson gets several mentions here). The edition I read was the 20th anniversary one with a new afterword which partially focuses on the death of Fraser's father. There's an overt rage in this afterword that isn't present in the original text, and it gives the impression that in the 20 years since she wrote God's Perfect Child, Fraser's feelings on Christian Science have hardened. I don't know if there are plans to issue a 30th anniversary edition in the future, but even if there's not it would be interesting to see further reflections from Fraser on Christian Science's future.
June 8, 2024
Never knew much about Christian scientists so have wanted to read this for ages. Dense with information, a through takedown of the CS church. Some real highlights peppered throughout, including the fact they don’t allow medical intervention but dentists are okay - because they found out the founder went to the dentist so she had to say something! Interesing it’s the only major religious sect started by a women.
Goes from funny to heartbreaking child abuse/ neglect when they don’t allow medical care for CS children, including the horrifying idea of not giving your diabetic child insulin, but saying if they prey enough they’ll heal. Glad to read its very much in a steady decline, although the last chapter discussion of the rise of wellness cures does provide a chilling echo of CS’s promises to heal with the current day charlatans you see gaining popularity online.
Also Mary Baker Eddy was clearly neurodivergent. Needing to be rocked her whole life reallllllly a leading clue.
Goes from funny to heartbreaking child abuse/ neglect when they don’t allow medical care for CS children, including the horrifying idea of not giving your diabetic child insulin, but saying if they prey enough they’ll heal. Glad to read its very much in a steady decline, although the last chapter discussion of the rise of wellness cures does provide a chilling echo of CS’s promises to heal with the current day charlatans you see gaining popularity online.
Also Mary Baker Eddy was clearly neurodivergent. Needing to be rocked her whole life reallllllly a leading clue.
October 7, 2025
This women is somebody I've met before, her mother as well. While I'm not personally a Christian Scientist, I knew several growing up, and I respect the path that those individuals are on. However, not everybody is ready for that. In truth, Christian Science church and founder has spared millions pain and suffering, and the Christian Science has testimonies of healings in hundreds of books. But, like all spiritual path's, its an individual thing not everybody is ready for. Its unfortunate this women spent her time writing a book condemning a religion rather than her parents method of raising her. Its not constructive. Its also not honest, because there are countless cases of Children being healed in Christian Science which she ignores. I try to be fair about all spiritual paths as a professor of religion, and I encourage anybody seeking alternatives paths for healing to look into Christianity, Christian Science and Course of Miracles which have help many people over the years.
May 6, 2023
One of the most interesting parts of this book is a part that I didn't expect to find in it at all, a history of the Mother Church's media ventures in the 1990's which apparently cost them as much as half a billion dollars and nearly bankrupted the Church.
Occasionally, the author credits too much to Christian Science attributing to it things that are found in other religions. Christian Science being itself not original, rather than others copying Christian Science.
The afterword of the 20th anniversary edition contains some of the best and most dire writing in the book and justifies the somewhat awkward and angry tone of the rest.
Occasionally, the author credits too much to Christian Science attributing to it things that are found in other religions. Christian Science being itself not original, rather than others copying Christian Science.
The afterword of the 20th anniversary edition contains some of the best and most dire writing in the book and justifies the somewhat awkward and angry tone of the rest.
May 11, 2022
God’s Perfect Child by Caroline Fraser:
I came to read this after adoring Fraser’s Prairie Fires and Rewilding the World. I find Ms Fraser a brilliant researcher who writes nonfiction in a very readable way because she’s such a good researcher and writer. This is an exposé of Christian Science and also of the myriad new-age and other modern healing cults that the US gives spawn to — from Louise Hay, A Course in Miracles, Andrew Weil and the “you can heal yourself”, “you create your own reality” — they all came out from under Mary Baker Eddy’s overcoat.
I came to read this after adoring Fraser’s Prairie Fires and Rewilding the World. I find Ms Fraser a brilliant researcher who writes nonfiction in a very readable way because she’s such a good researcher and writer. This is an exposé of Christian Science and also of the myriad new-age and other modern healing cults that the US gives spawn to — from Louise Hay, A Course in Miracles, Andrew Weil and the “you can heal yourself”, “you create your own reality” — they all came out from under Mary Baker Eddy’s overcoat.
May 2, 2023
Thorough, credible, relatable. As one raised in the Christian Science faith (and later turned from it), I find this book an important articulation of the religion's roots as well as its subsequent interpretation, malpractice, institutional mismanagement and inevitable(?) dissolution. I won't unpack my own baggage, but suffice to say this rings as true as Krakauer's excellent "Under the Banner of Heaven," only I've swum in these cultural waters where fundamentalism is the standard (and I lived to tell the tale). I couldn't do it as well as Caroline Fraser has: wholly unemotionally, that is, until her 2017 afterword; in it she finally takes her gloves off, and rawly interprets the whole with general updates and the devastating (personally) conclusion.
July 23, 2023
I entered into reading this book thinking I would be learning about the personal experience of a Christian Scientist's life.
This book, however, is a historical analysis of the creation and demise of a religious community centered on the philosophy of one woman in a time when medicine and prayer were interwoven in an unexpected manner.
For those who enjoy fact-driven books.
This book, however, is a historical analysis of the creation and demise of a religious community centered on the philosophy of one woman in a time when medicine and prayer were interwoven in an unexpected manner.
For those who enjoy fact-driven books.
July 16, 2023
This book was very thorough, which made it long and slightly repetitive. Overall, the information was well thought out and well presented. As someone interested in various religions, this was a must read.
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