The Eddy Autocracy.
Money and power are the explanations of Mrs. Eddy’s life. We have seen how greedily she has accumulated wealth. Let us, for a moment, consider the way in which she has extended her power.
Nearly twenty years ago, Mrs. Eddy established the First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, which is called the “Mother Church” and stands in the relation to the other churches, as she says, of the vine to the branches. It has been Mrs. Eddy’s repeatedly expressed wish that all Christian Scientists everywhere should belong to the Mother Church, and Mr. Hanna, then her chief representative in the organization, argued at length that this expressed wish of Mrs. Eddy’s was the revealed will of God; and no real Christian Scientist hesitates to do God’s will, as revealed through Mrs. Eddy.
Of course, membership in anything or connection with anything in Christian Science costs money, and every member, resident or non-resident, of the First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, is required to pay an annual tax of at least one dollar. The present total membership of this church, resident and non-resident, in which Mrs. Eddy’s arbitrary will is absolute law, is upwards of fifty thousand, and embraces all of the really devout and loyal Eddyites everywhere in the world. Here is, in itself, an income of some fifty thousand dollars annually of the First Church in Boston. If to this be added pew rents, church collections, the voluntary offerings of the faithful and the profits on the official periodicals, the aggregate will doubtless reach a total of considerably over one hundred and fifty thousand dollars per annum. Can any other church in the country show such revenues? Truly, the Church of St. Bunco, as Mr. Gordon Clark has happily named it, is a paying institution!
Mrs. Eddy is the head of this church. She constituted and calls herself pastor emeritus; but her relation to the organization is the reverse of what her title implies. Instead of being honorary merely, it is most positive and active. She has been the final authority on all matters in the church, dictated all its actions and ceremonies and formulated its rules and by-laws. By these rules and by-laws, which Mrs. Eddy has made, she has conferred upon herself the power to remove from office any officer of her church in Boston, without cause, and to excommunicate forever, without assigned cause, any of the fifty thousand members. By these rules, which Mrs. Eddy has made, she has conferred upon herself the power to remove the readers—the first and second readers, who take the place of ministers—of all Christian Science churches in the United States and foreign nations. No member excommunicated from the First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, may hold a membership in any other Christian Science church anywhere in the world and is cut off from fellowship with the faithful, and cast into outer darkness forever.
By these rules and by-laws, which Mrs. Eddy has made, she has provided that the president and directors of the church may only be appointed subject to her approval; that no board of trustees of the church may ever be constituted except by her, and that the first members, or governing body, of the church may be appointed only with her approval. Indeed, only recently, with one stroke of her pen and without a word of explanation, she swept this governing body, the first or executive members, completely out of existence. No sermons shall ever be read in the churches, no original work of any first reader or minister is permitted (it would detract somewhat from Mrs. Eddy’s own writings) and the service is limited, by Mrs. Eddy’s rules, to the Bible and Mrs. Eddy’s published and copyrighted and profit-yielding works, announcements of the name of the author of the latter always being required while publicly read. Hypnotists, so called, must be excluded upon her complaint; and the editors and publishers of the Christian Science Journal and the other organs of the sect and the president of the Massachusetts Metaphysical College may be only persons of whom she expressly approves. Any teacher who dares to take a student of Mrs. Eddy’s into her class without Mrs. Eddy’s written consent “shall be” (not may be) “shall be excommunicated from the church.”
Mrs. Eddy’s rule, conferring upon Mrs. Eddy the power to remove officers of all Christian Science churches, is as follows:
“The pastor emeritus of the Mother Church (Mrs. Eddy) shall have the right, through a letter addressed to the individual and the church of which he is a reader, to remove a reader from this office in any Church of Christ, Scientist, both in America and foreign nations, or to appoint the reader to fill any office belonging to the Christian Scientists denomination.”
This by-law is followed by the further provision that it can neither be amended nor annulled except by Mrs. Eddy’s consent.
Mrs. Eddy’s rules provide that membership of the church is only possible to those familiar with Mrs. Eddy’s copyrighted, five hundred per cent profit earning publications; that the Bible and her book shall be the pastor—the impersonal pastor—of the Mother Church; that every member of the church, when publicly reading or quoting from the books of Mrs. Eddy, must first announce the name of the author; that teachers shall instruct their students how to defend themselves against mental malpractice, the witchcraft of Christian Science; that a degree of the Massachusetts Metaphysical College is a necessary preliminary to the teaching of Christian Science (and these degrees cost money); that any member of the church, working against what Mrs. Eddy believes advantageous to the church and the cause of Christian Science, shall, upon her complaint, be dropped forever from membership; that a member of the church who shall use written formulas, or permit his patients or his students to use them, shall be excommunicated; that any member daring to give advice on church matters, outside of the meetings, shall be dropped from membership, and so on, as Mark Twain says, “more ways to get out than to stay in”—the autocrat, the egotist, and the tradesman in every line.