Christian Science Church

The Christian Science Church is mentioned as an institution founded by Mary Baker Eddy in Simone de Beauvoir’s survey of women’s position in the United States. The reference places a woman’s religious leadership alongside evidence of women’s growing economic activity, while emphasizing that such advances coexisted with limited political rights.

Founding and Context

In recounting American women’s circumstances around 1900, de Beauvoir notes that women worked in business, industry, and the professions, and identifies Mary Baker Eddy as the founder of the Christian Science Church. The brief reference establishes Eddy’s role as a religious founder but supplies no further account of the church’s beliefs, organization, or activities.

Place in the Historical Account

The church appears within a wider contrast between women’s expanding public presence and their continued exclusion from political power. By 1900, de Beauvoir reports, five million women in the United States were working, including in professional occupations; women also formed clubs with roughly two million members. Yet only nine states had granted women the vote. Eddy’s institution therefore serves as one example of women’s public and organizational activity during a period when economic and religious participation had not brought national political equality.