Two autobiographies by one very special woman

from The Christian Science Journal

Jana, did you learn anything special as you were working on this project?

Jana: It made me think very seriously about what it means to write an autobiography, particularly in Mary Baker Eddy’s time. To say to the world, “My life is important enough that other people should read about it”—that’s a fairly intrepid thing for a woman to do in the 19th century. And so I think I came away from the experience with an even deeper appreciation of Mrs. Eddy and what she accomplished in her time period.

Did anything about what you read move you?

Science and Health and its revisions were pivotal to Mrs. Eddy’s life.

Jana: One thing that I had not known before beginning this project was how pivotal Science and Health and its revisions were in Mrs. Eddy’s life. I had this image, and I think many people who are not Christian Scientists have this image, of Science and Health as a book that was written once, was given to the world, and has been unchanging. One of the most special moments for me in the archives was to hold one of her copies of Science and Health and see the marginalia. To see what she had written to improve it the next time. And to know that Mary Baker Eddy was always doing this. That she was a consummate editor even of her own work, always seeking to improve it. That really meant something to me. And the fact that she was doing this into her 80’s was pretty amazing, also.

How did Mrs. Eddy’s work tie in with what other people were doing at that time?

Jana: Thinking more generally about the changing nature of medicine in the 19th century, I could see how very radical Mary Baker Eddy’s ideas were in that field. Also, she’s writing a book that is called Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. Basically, she’s saying, “I’m a woman who has expertise in science—which women in the 19th century were not allowed to have—and I’m a woman who has expertise in theology, and I can provide you a key to understanding the Bible.”

And even today, there are some books about the Bible that are written by women, but I can’t think of any that are as bold as what she was doing. I also think that while Footprints Fadeless is a very defensive document, it’s important to understand that she wrote it at a time when she was being attacked. Reading Footprints Fadeless and having a sense of how vulnerable she felt through all of these attacks in the press created in me a great sympathy for her and for what she had endured.

Unlike Retrospection and Introspection, Footprints Fadeless is not a narrative. It’s a series of vignettes that are often very choppy. They don’t necessarily relate to one another. It’s not even chronological, and for people who aren’t well versed in Mary Baker Eddy’s history, she doesn’t provide a lot of detailed information.

When I got hold of a pamphlet by Frederick Peabody, who was an opponent of Mary Baker Eddy, Footprints Fadeless started to make sense. Peabody first published it privately in 1901. It was entitled A Complete Exposé of Eddyism or Christian Science and the Plain Truth in Plain Terms Regarding Mary Baker Eddy. When you look at it in relation to Footprints Fadeless, you begin to realize that she must have had his pamphlet right in front of her. That the structure of Footprints Fadeless follows the structure—at least to some degree—of what he had written.

Phyllis, as somebody who’s surveyed the religious writing scene for many years, why do you think the publication of Mary Baker Eddy’s two autobiographies has relevance today?

Phyllis: I think that what’s happening is that American religious thinkers are getting a much better understanding of Christian Science and the message it brings and the questions it asks. And there is intellectual as well as religious appreciation of its contribution to the American religious scene.

Does allowing Mary Baker Eddy to speak in her own words contribute to that process? Absolutely! You better believe it does! In fact, probably that’s one of the best things that could happen in the movement toward more appreciation of Christian Science.

Apart from Christian Scientists, who will be most interested in this book?

Phyllis: At first, it will be media people, influence makers, opinion makers, God talkers—folk like me who are religion commentators. Certainly, those of us who deal with the American religion scene. And also scholars.

The questions Mrs. Eddy dealt with are very central issues right now.

But I think the interest will eventually be broader than that. The questions this woman dealt with—as did several others in the 19th century—the questions of the nature of matter and of the nature of the person and of the mind/body relationship and spiritual healing—those are all very, very central issues right now. And they are going to become more and more a part of God talk over the next 25 years. You can’t have that conversation very long—especially in a Euro-American context—without becoming aware of Mary Baker Eddy. I think if you look at the sales figures on Science and Health—you can see that people are buying that book now at a level that wasn’t happening before.

You can’t stand at a cash register and ask for the buyer’s religious commitment. But I’ll bet that if you could, you’d find that a lot of those buyers of Science and Health are not just going to be Christian Scientists, simply because the questions Mrs. Eddy addressed are now more common in mainstream conversation than they were in the 19th century

Also, we know a great deal more about physical science now than we did 125–130 years ago. So we have the tools with which to refine and make the conversation much more sophisticated than it could have been when Mrs. Eddy herself was alive. But, consistently, the ability to deal with these questions goes back historically to Mary Baker Eddy. And I think the opportunity to let her talk for herself is absolutely wonderful! I think it’s to be applauded.

So this project will help people—no matter what their religious beliefs are—to get to know Mrs. Eddy?

Phyllis: Absolutely! Absolutely! I also think that the way these books will be presented here speaks as much as anything to the intellectual depth of Mary Baker Eddy. And to the rich store of what we all sitting here know is in that Mary Baker Library. And the windows it can open—not just on Christian Science, but on 19th century American religion.

I think what you’ve got here is a gem. Basically, it’s a reprint of an already-published autobiography and the release of one that had not been published. And obviously, anybody who truly wanted to read Retrospection and Introspection could do it, but that person couldn’t read Footprints Fadeless. And the introduction that Jana has written gives it context for the period and within the field of religious autobiography. And so it’s the positioning of it, the presentation of it that’s also very important here.

Is the interest in female religious figures just a fad? Or is it part of a larger trend?

Jana: Well, first of all, I would say that Mary Baker Eddy is much more interesting because she wasn’t purely a feminist.

Phyllis: Exactly!

Jana: She was so complex and, to me, that is where—in the nuances—that’s where the interesting stuff lies. We can’t pigeonhole Mary Baker Eddy. She transcends that, and as much as we would like to put her in a box, she will fight her way out every time.

I find it really interesting that she was on board with some of the issues of the women’s movement in her time, but not on board with others. She was very much her own thinker.

Phyllis: I’d like to lay the gender thing aside. My sense of it is that it’s not the gender that matters so much as the time period. That the 19th century religious movements that had origin in this country are now coming front and center. You can even stretch it over into Pentecostalism, if you want to nibble away a little bit of the first part of the 20th century.

I think there has been a shaking out, if you will, of those parts of religion in America that had their origins in the 19th century—Mormonism, New Thought, Seventh Day Adventists—into what it is they’re going to become now that they’ve been established as institutions, so to speak.

What you’ve got is 100 to 125 to 150 years of survival, of refinement, of progression, of revelation, of change, of establishment, and you’ve got a kind of settling of the gifts that these groups have brought to the overall picture of American religion, or religion in America.

If I didn’t see four or five of the American religion movements founded in the 19th century all doing the same thing in modern times within a period of about 18 months of each other, then I would think maybe gender is a factor. But I do see those responses happening. They are happening all at the same time, and I think there’s a pattern. And I think it’s a pattern of moving toward acceptance with the religious community and a recognition within those movements that this is happening.

A lot of what’s happening now—a lot of the reason that those 19th century religions are merging back in and are moving into the acceptance level, into the general conversation—is that we now are dealing with the issues that they were dealing with and we recognize them as historic forbears of the thoughts and of the issues we wrestle with.

Is there any particular reason in society why we would be coming back to those questions?

Jana: Let’s think about Genesis, for example. Genesis is supposed to be the beginnings of humankind, possibly the beginnings of creation in the first place. And I think in any time of seeking, of questioning, particularly after September 11, as people are searching for meaning, they’re going to keep going back to the age-old questions. They want primordial origins.

I did an interview a couple of weeks ago with Bruce Feiler, who wrote Walking the Bible. After September 11, he decided to do a book on Abraham, and the idea that Abraham is the father of these three faiths that want to kill each other. He’s asking, Is there a possibility that there can be reconciliation in the present, when you go back and look at the past? What he found is that in the original Abraham story, there is so much there that could forge a path to reconciliation and to healing, but that all of the traditions these religions have about Abraham get in the way. And these traditions are not ones in the Bible. I think, certainly, in any time of spiritual seeking, people are going to be looking back to origins.

Phyllis: And there are other things that have been flowing around in the culture for 40 or 50 years that lead right to these questions Mary Baker Eddy asked. Specifically, What is mind? We’ve been Cartesian for 400 years almost: “I think, therefore I am.” And suddenly, in about 1965–70, that doesn’t hold water anymore. “I cannot say I am because I think.” The machine thinks. IBM’s Big Blue beat the guy at chess.

What is the nature of ‘me’?

Also, we’re not sure because we can change personality by the drugs we choose to take. When Prozac came along, if you remember in the early ’90s, there were two or three major bestsellers—Prozac Nation, for example—that raised questions of identity. What is the nature of “me,” if it can be changed? Which one is the real me?

All of those questions. The nature of the computer. The fact that we now recognize that there is both a reality and a virtual reality. If we didn’t regard both as real, we would call one reality and the other virtuality. The very fact that we call it virtual reality is a way in which we tell ourselves that we recognize that there is non-locative space on the other side of that screen and non-locative community on the other side.

Those types of questions are ones that Mary Baker Eddy, Ellen White of the Seventh Day Adventists, and other 19th century religionists articulated. And they’ve become kind of the mothers of America’s current religious interest, if you will. Or the grandmothers. I prefer to think of them as the mothers.

With Mary Baker Eddy’s autobiographical writings available for the first time in one volume, Mary Baker Eddy, Speaking for Herself, the public will have the opportunity, as never before, to explore what Mary Baker Eddy chose to say about herself. With that in mind is there anything else you would like to add?

Jana: I guess I would just say that Mary Baker Eddy has a lot to offer to people today, and I’m excited to see that she is not going to be as overlooked as I think she has been in the past.

As an autobiographical manuscript, Footprints Fadeless furnishes a glimpse of what Mary Baker Eddy faced as a reformer and as a woman who introduced bold new concepts to 19th-century society and beyond. Of these challenges, she writes in Footprints Fadeless, “I have faced the destiny of a discoverer and founder from first to last.”

Phyllis: Also this book is the first in a new series being released by The Writings of Mary Baker Eddy that will include many of Mary Baker Eddy’s writings that have never been in print before. There’s no question that this new autobiography is going to be a significant step forward in every way and that the Mary Baker Eddy Library can look with pride at it and say, “See, this is just some of what we’ve got in here. Come look!”