SOURCE: "The Ambiguous Feminism of Mary Baker Eddy," in The Journal of Religion, Vol. 64, No. 3, July, 1984, pp. 318-31.

In the following essay, Lindley discusses Eddy's feminist principles.

Among women who have achieved recognition in the field of religion, Mary Baker Eddy frequently appears as a pioneer, a woman who founded and led a major religious movement and who used feminine imagery for the divine. During and since her lifetime, biographers and historians have presented portraits of the founder of Christian Science of an almost dizzying variety, from unadulterated adulation to devastating attack.

More recently, Mary Baker Eddy as woman has been the focus of scholarly analysis, with mixed conclusions as to her place in the women's movement of nineteenth-century America and her heritage for contemporary feminism. Gail Parker's study stresses psychological analysis, seeing in Eddy's denial of the material an attempt "to avoid any confrontation between the two...