Rolling Away the Stone: Mary Baker Eddy's Challenge to Materialism (Religion in North America)

Features

• Cover Type: Hard Cover with 483 pages
• Published by: Indiana University Press November 2005
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 0253346738
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-0253346735
• Book Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.7 x 1.4 inches
• Weighs: 1.7 pounds

From Publishers Weekly
Gottschalk, an independent historian and author of The Emergence of Christian Science in American Religious Life, completed this significant intellectual biography of Mary Baker Eddy before his death earlier this year. As with that earlier work, Gottschalk distinguishes himself by placing Christian Science in the greater context of American religion, rather than looking at it as a mere curiosity or one-off sect. Eddy, he argues, should be taken seriously as a religious innovator whose radical theological teachings were intended not only to start a new religious movement, but also to reform all of Christianity from within. The biography focuses on the last two decades of Eddy's life, when the "retired" leader spent her seventies and eighties overseeing the construction of the Mother Church in Boston, revising Science and Health, battling external critics and internal dissension, and founding the Christian Science Monitor. Gottschalk, who was a Christian Scientist himself and once worked for the denomination, shows a clear pro-Eddy bias at times, especially when he is turning the tables on bombastic critics like Mark Twain or Joseph Pulitzer, but in general the book demonstrates copious and painstaking research. In fact, this is the first major biography of Eddy to be published since the opening of the denomination's archives to researchers a few years ago, and its command of primary sources sheds new light on Eddy's life and work.
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Product Review
". . . a look into how one of the country's more complex religious figures dealt with materialism in the late nineteenth-century America." -- Religious Studies Review, 33:1 January 2007

". . . well told and enriched by fresh material now available from the Mary Baker Eddy Library for the Betterment of Humanity. . . " -- Christian Science Monitor, February 21, 2006

"Gottschalk does a superb job of providing historical context for the chaotic events of Eddy's final decades. . . ." -- Choice, October 2006

Reader Reviews
My comments below will review the book, and also speak to a review in The Christian Science Monitor 2/21/2006 (available in archive at csmonitor [dot] com). This book is an important story about a significant contributor to the intellectual history of the world. But the 'official' review by Monitor reviewer, Richard Bergenheim, editor of the Monitor, seems to wish Gottschalk had told a different story. And he bases some of his critique on the story not told, dismissing the book, in part, as dogmatic -- yet he does not establish his assessment charging 'dogmatism' by citing a single quote. (Here's one of his: "Regretfully, Gottschalk feels compelled to tell the more familiar story yet again, leaving examination of what Mrs. Eddy achieved during this period and how it was accomplished still largely unexplored. . . . Its tone, however, is often uncomfortably dogmatic.") 'More familiar?' RB seems to miss the point that the book is not about the church but about her challenge to materialism. What a pity. Perhaps he's the dogmatist, being more fixated by the (failing?) empire, than focused on the significant insight about the nature of matter and the way of treating it which Eddy has delivered to the world. Yes, the book revisits ground covered by Robert Peel (in what still remains the leading scholarly biography on Eddy), but Gottschalk is on a new mission. The intrigue of prominent thinkers (Twain, Cather, Pulitzer, et al) and their differing perceptions of reality was, for me, worth contemplating. I came away with the distinct feeling that Eddy would have been much further ahead by not allowing herself to be distracted by the founding of a centralized church, an effort she attempted to resist. (Let the local branches be the church!) And one of her appointees strongly attempted to save her much of that trouble, which burdened her shoulders with the cares and struggles of a human institution; (he endeavored to help her focus her efforts, instead, almost exclusively on a publishing thrust). This was refreshing to me. It revealed what could have been. But Eddy was not to be deterred by an underling (especially a man!), even though she herself had resisted organizing a central church. (Why does the story always seem to end by the church crucifying its founder?) What I found fascinating was that at the very end some of her closest students sought with determination to bend her intentions, and from what I can see, perhaps they did. But it is likely that those at the top don't want the pew-sitters to notice "that man behind the curtain." This book deserves the careful attention of any who are truly interested in excellent scholarship on the history of Eddy's radical teaching and lifework. Her central thesis, called 'the scientific statement of being' found on p.468 of her seminal text, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, treats matter in a powerful new way which is far in advance of that even of today's modern physicists such as Penrose, et al, who are presently (and belatedly!) working on this very issue, questioning the relationship between consciousness and matter. They should be realizing that an unschooled little old lady from New England got there ahead of them! Gottschalk provides a balanced view of a remarkable and dynamic woman which effectively dispels or contests much of the falsehood put on record by ax-grinding critics with dubious agendas. He shines light on the many histrionic claims targeted at this vibrant 19th century thinker at their very source. This is dogmatism? In my view, he has helped to melt the fog surrounding this controversial figure. ~eric.