God's Perfect Child

Living and Dying in the Christian Science Church

Caroline Fraser

• Publisher: Picador
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781250207272
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Denominations

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.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Notice
• Dedication
• Epigraph
• Preface: God’s Perfect Child
• Part I: Mary Baker Eddy: “Mere Historic Incidents”
• Part II: “You Will Have to Learn to Love Me More”: Mrs. Eddy Builds Her Empire
• Part III: “Nothing Has Gone Right Since 1910”: Christian Science After Death
• Part IV: “God’s Law”: Christian Science Goes to Court
• Part V: “God’s Requirement”: Christian Science on the Air
• Part VI: “God Will Do the Rest”: Resurrecting Christian Science
• Afterword: The Church That Can’t Heal Itself
• Photographs
• Acknowledgments
• Glossary
• Notes
• Selected and Annotated Bibliography
• Index
• Also by Caroline Fraser
• Praise for God’s Perfect Child
• About the Author
• Newsletter Sign-up
• Contents
• Copyright