Bliss Knapp - Destiny of The Mother Church Controversy

Destiny of The Mother Church Controversy

In the early 1920s, Bliss Knapp authored a biography of his parents, Ira and Flavia Stickney Knapp. In 1948 he wrote a book called "The Destiny of the Mother Church," incorporating the biographical information on his parents from the earlier work as well as some of his beliefs about Mrs. Eddy. These beliefs were at the heart of a controversy that continues to this day. Knapp held that Eddy represented a personal fulfilment of biblical prophecy as the woman referred to in the twelfth chapter of the Book of Revelation. While Knapp's father, Ira Knapp, had subscribed to that belief himself, and had been selected by Eddy to be the first person to serve as chairman of the Christian Science Board of Directors, during a libel suit by Josephine Custis Woodbury in 1892, Ira was forced, under oath in court, to concede Eddy had never taught this interpretation herself. While this concession in court was made by Knapp, others felt that Knapp meant that Mrs. Eddy, as a mortal, could not be that Woman, but as an idea of God, she, in fact could be related to that woman. It was felt by supporters of Mrs. Eddy as "the Woman," that any attempt to paint Mrs. Eddy in this light would meet with universal condemnation of her and her church for deifying her and so, this line of thought went, this notion should never be put forth as any official view of the Church but might be privately taught. But even at that time, students of Mrs. Eddy such as the highly successful lecturer, Edward Kimball, CSD, were of the opinion that Mrs. Eddy discovered Christian Science because she simply climbed the mountain of spiritual inspiration until, like someone ascending a mountain during the night, she was the first to glimpse the sun from that elevated point.

Eddy herself did not hesitate to identify with the impersonal spiritual type the woman represented and apparently tolerated ambiguities on the subject. Her relationship to Biblical prophecy is not an essential theological point in Christian Science and is not included in its tenets. However, opponents of Knapp's view argued Eddy disavowed individual, personal interpretations specifically. She had written in her final edition of Science and Health, "The woman in the Apocalypse symbolizes generic man, the spiritual idea of God; she illustrates the coincidence of God and man as the divine Principle and divine idea" (p. 561). In comments elsewhere she expanded the distinction, writing, "What St. John saw in prophetic vision and depicted as 'a woman clothed with the sun and the moon under her feet' prefigured no speciality or individuality. His vision foretold a type, and this type applied to man as well as to woman...." (Peel, Years of Authority, p. 165).

Knapp incorporated his teachings into an early book draft, The Destiny of The Mother Church, following which the Christian Science Board of Directors wrote a six-page letter in February 1948 politely rebuking numerous points they regarded as at variance from Eddy's teaching. Knapp then withdrew the book, but instead of revising it as they proposed, he disregarded their comments and expanded it for private issue instead, leaving it in trust with approximately $100 million in 1990s dollars, acquired by way of his marriage to Eloise Mabury (m. March 27, 1918), to revert to the Church of Christ, Scientist if it ever published his work as "authorized literature".

The Board of Directors voted in 1990 to print The Destiny of The Mother Church, to the surprise of many of its members, arguing that the book did not have to bear the burden of theological correctness. Other members however argued that this was in violation of the Church Manual bylaw "No Incorrect Literature". The church proceeded to issue the book unannotated as required, as part of a series of biographies of the church's founder. In 1991, Archivist Lee Johnson retired. An unknown number of Christian Science branch churches voted not to carry the book or simply declined to order it, though precise figures are difficult to establish. The financial disbursement was contested by the alternate beneficiaries, Stanford University and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, ultimately resulting in a settlement splitting the funds, with half going to the Church and a quarter each going to the other two organizations – ironically itself a violation of Knapp's own will's provisions.

The book's publication attracted a fair deal of unwelcome media attention and continued to be held by some members, in spite of the Church's defense, to violate the church's basic teachings and its equivalent of constitutional law.

A vocal group of critics of Christian Science church managerial policy including Lee Johnson, and Stephen Gottschalk, a protégé of historian and author, Robert Peel, came together after the publication of the Knapp book to petition the Church management to withdraw the book from publication and to inform the Church membership of their belief that this book contradicted Eddy's teachings, thereby violating her Church Manual.