SOURCE: "Protest in Piety: Christian Science Revisited," in International Journal of Women's Studies, Vol. 1, No. 4, July/August, 1978, pp. 401-16.

In the following essay, Fox offers an interdisciplinary interpretation of Christian Science, concluding that many Victorian women found social and intellectual freedom in the religion.

Introduction

This paper reexamines Christian Science, a 19th century American religious sect, in its sociohistorical setting using interdisciplinary sources and methods to develop a new interpretation of the movement's original social function. In giving historiography an anthropological reading, this work underscores the complementary relationship of anthropology and history that prompted Claude Levi-Strauss to assert in The Savage Mind that the study of history over time and the study of anthropology in space are alternative ways of doing the same thing. Beyond its relation to history, this kind of inter-disciplinary effort reveals the synthesizing potential of anthropology.

Christian Science was founded in New England c...