"With Bleeding Footsteps" : Mary Baker Eddy's Path to Religious Leadership

Rating:
Summary: Thomas is simply a genius
Review: I am one of relatively few people who have had the enormous privelige of being taught by Robert Thomas - "Doc Thomas", as he was universally known. He is a man with an extraordinary and profound intellect, and an unparalleled ability to illuminate complex and intricate issues. If you desire an intellectual thrill, buy the book. Better still would be to take a class from him, an experience which in the course of nine months taught me how to think and write. He could sell tickets to his dissection of Dr. Strangelove. It was truly that fascinating.

Doc, if you read this, I want to say now that you are unequivocally the most brilliant, effective and entertaining teacher I have ever had the privelige of learning from. You have taught me more than any person ever has, and given to me the art of analysis. Thank you, thank you, thank you. My only regret is that you didn't stay one more year. I know dozens of us would have been lining up for Am Cult, myself included.

-David (no, not Big Hands who forgot his notes for the final)

Rating:
Summary: An apology indeed
Review: I was raised in Christian Science, but the historical Mrs. Eddy only became fascinating to me when I finally discovered that the glowing image portrayed in church literature was largely mythological. Her life story is particularly interesting now that the Christian Science Church is once again attempting to widen its appeal.
A friend recommended this book to me as exposing some of the Eddy mythology using heretofor "classified" material from church archives. What I found instead was a sometimes interesting attempt to analyse Mrs. Eddy's persona and life in psychological, but often apologetic terms. While he obviously wants to be seen as an impartial biographer, he often left me feeling that he wasn't telling the whole story. Indeed, what I found most troubling in his narrative were the many gaping holes, not only in terms of chronology, but of historical criticism. For example, we never really learn how Mrs. Eddy and her organization developed rapidly in the 1880's from a small group into a national organization, and how this related to a fundamental criticism of her character: that Christian Science evolved into a money-making enterprise that was frequently at odds with her purported metaphysical world-view. Thomas often leaves the reader unaware of some very controversial aspects of her career by making the situation seem innocuous. For example, her establishment of the "Massachusetts Metaphysical College", he says, was "to give her teachings a firmer structure and more respectability in the community" and "her graduates took away a diploma from a state-chartered school". He doesn't mention that this "charter" was under an ill-conceived state law that allowed virtually any diploma mill to exist, and that the school primarily existed to make money and create more demand, with her as the only faculty member. He glosses over the contributions of Rev. James Wiggin in virtually re-writing Science and Health by referring to his work as merely smoothing over "rough edges", and dismisses Wiggin's criticism of her educational and literary shortcomings by accusing him of of being a "lapsed Unitarian minister" who had "gender anxieties" in his capacity as a nineteenth century man in a woman's employ. Mrs. Eddy's at times paranoid obsession with "malicious animal magnetism" is rather benignly explained as due to her being "acutely sensitive to a form of interpersonal interaction that is largely unconscious..." and stemming from an "intricate web of relationships" going back to childhood.
I would still recommend this book as having valuable material, and as worth reading for some interesting insights into aspects of Mrs. Eddy's psychological make-up. However, any reader who stops here is likely to come away with a very incomplete and even fuzzy picture of the woman, her psychological motives, her many questionable claims, as well as the many vagaries of her early movement. I would therefore recommend that you get your hands on other, more critical histories, particularly Edwin Franden Dakin's "Mrs. Eddy, the Biography of a Virginal Mind" - out of print, but available. While Dakin's book has it's own shortcomings, including occasional use of a not well-documented "omniscient narration", the historical narrative and especially the motives for many of the more sensational events of Mrs. Eddy's life, are, overall, presented much more coherently. Thomas would have done well, if he had issues with this much more critical view of Mrs. Eddy, to refute in detail the charges made by Dakin and others, instead of, to a large extent, dismissing them.

Rating:
Summary: Not a critique, but an apology.
Review: This book is supposed to be a psychoanalytic study of Mary Baker Eddy. It is anything but that.

The authors appear to be non-Christian Scientists have looked into Christian Science and decided that it is the correct explanation of Jesus's works and teachings. Although this book offers some wonderful intellectual insights into Mrs. Eddy's life and career, it is far more praiseworthy than antagonistic.

Strongly recommended, whether or not you're a Christian Scientist.