SOURCE: "Mormonism, Christian Science, and Spiritualism," in The Occult in America: New Historical Perspectives, edited by Howard Kerr and Charles L. Crow, University of Illinois Press, 1983, pp. 135-61.

In the following essay, Moore examines the connection between Christian Science and the occult.

Mary Baker Eddy's first husband happened to be a Mason. Briefly but happily married to George Glover, she remained forever grateful for the help she received from his brother Masons when Glover died. Later, membership in a Masonic lodge was the single organizational affiliation that was not ruled incompatible with membership in the Christian Science mother church. However, Eddy's gratitude toward the Masons never prompted her to imitate their ritual. Although some links to occult sciences were strikingly present in the church she founded, those links had nothing to do with Masonry. Rather, it was the peculiarities of her extreme version of philosophical idealism that allowed...