Christian Science

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I'm reading this wonderful new book which daddy bought me as a present in the Big City last Friday. It's set in London in 1947, and there's a scene in it with a special kind of therapist who's helping an old man healing at that moment. A young man, by the name of Duncan, has come on the weekly appointment to accompany his 'uncle', Mr Mundy, who's suffering from arthritis. The therapist will, by talking to him, make Mr Mundy conquer his disease. The practice he's performing is called Christian Science. He has a picture of the founder, Mary Baker Eddy, in his treatment room, at which he's given to stare.

So I've looked up Christian Science in my magnificently useful encyclopedia. Mary Baker Eddy (1821-1910) was healed from her chronic 'neuralgia in the spine and stomach' by Phineas Pankhurst Quimby, who sort of started the whole New Thought movement, in 1862. Both of them were Americans. Mme Eddy, after being cured, proceeded to found her own version of New Thought, like many others did. All these variations of New Thought have the same 'blame-the-victim' attitude, where any negative condition is the victim's own fault, and can be conquered by the power of mind/spirit.

Mary Baker Eddy's version, wherein she developed her own religious worldview, is closer to traditional Christianity then Quimby's New Thought. She believed that the universe, created by God (aka the 'divine Mind'), is entirely spiritual and good, whereas the human (mortal) mind is bad, as it tends to create the illusion of a material world. Illness is the result of the incorrect believe that a material world actually exists. Fortunately, we mortals can be saved by recognizing our 'divine within' and acknowledging an entirely spiritual reality.
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Mary Baker Eddy wrote all her views down in 'Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures' (1875). She was a proper visionary leader as well, having a feud and a consequent movement-split with one of her students, who said she had met God, a privilege that Mme Eddy claimed for herself alone. Most of the New Thought movements were created in the latter half of the nineteenth century and the first few decades of the twentieth, and that which still existed in and after WW II was based on the theories created half a century before.
Ms Waters used esoteric subculture before, with the wonderful world of Spiritualism in Affinity. I hope this one's going to be easier.