Rolling Away the Stone: Mary Baker Eddy's Challenge to Materialism (Religion in North America) - Tapa dura

"...Gottschalk's account is well told and enriched by fresh material now available from the Mary Baker Eddy Library for the Betterment of Humanity..." Christian Science Monitor "Gottschalk has provided readers with a masterful account of Christian Science in its heyday. The book is a first-rate read for students of American religion and provides a look into how one of the country's more complex religious figures dealt with materialism in the late nineteenth-century America." Religious Studies Review "Gottschalk does a superb job of providing historical context for the chaotic events of Eddy's final decades. He analyzes frequently oversimplified disagreements between Eddy and Mark Twain, deftly highlighting the many points of agreement and parallel thinking that led Eddy and Twain to very different conclusions. Finally, Gottschalk makes accessible Eddy's mature theology, the product of controversy as well as deep reflection: a thoroughgoing rejection of all materialisms affirmed by her contemporaries (scientific, medical, ecclesiastical, spiritual) in order to seek 'something higher and better than matter, and apart from it.'" Choice

"Rolling Away the Stone" is a richly detailed account of the last two decades of the life of Mary Baker Eddy, a major religious thinker whose character and achievement are just beginning to be understood. This is the first book-length discussion of Eddy to make full use of the resources of the Mary Baker Eddy Collection in Boston. It focuses on her long-range legacy as a Christian thinker, specifically her challenge to the materialism that continues to threaten religious belief and practice in our time.Hoping to retire in 1889 after seven turbulent years founding the Christian Science movement, Eddy believed the demands upon her would ease. Instead, during the 1890s and 1900s, she entered into the most active and fruitful period of her long life, becoming a nationally and even internationally known figure. The radical character of Eddy's teaching, together with her position as a woman religious leader in a male-dominated society, aroused storm clouds of controversy that have continued to swirl around her memory today.The book opens with an account of the critical point in this controversy when her very sanity was challenged in a litigation that became one of the first media events of the 20th century. Stephen Gottschalk also traces the fascinating relation between Eddy's encounter with the problem of evil in the first half of her life and how Mark Twain, her best-known adversary, faced the same issue during his later years. Gottschalk then explores how Eddy's challenge to materialism shaped her response to a series of crises that arose as she brought her life's work to completion. This is a sensitive and serious biography of an important figure in American religious history. Stephen Gottschalk is an independent scholar, an authority on Christian Science, and a former member of the Church's Committee on Publication. He is author of The Emergence of Christian Science in American Religious Life.