ι

JFSR 24.1 (2008) 75-89

"YOU ARE BRAVE BUT YOU ARE A WOMAN IN THE EYES OF MEN"

Augusta E. Stetsons Rise and Fall in the Church of Christ, Scientist

RolfSwensen

Newly empowered public women were the mainstay of Christian Science at the turn of the twentieth century, but some of them became an obstacle to its founder Mary Baker Eddy's plan to eliminate excessive "personality" and place her movement under successful men more acceptable to patriarchal culture. One of the most remarkable and controversial of these female leaders was Augusta E. Stetson (1842-1928), guiding genius of First Church of Christ, Scientist, New York, which was the largest branch (local) Christian Science church in the world. Enthusi­astic about the potential metaphysics provided, Stetson moved steadily forward, seemingly unaware of growing male and female opposition. This essay opens new views into the modi operandi of Stetson and Eddy and demonstrates that Stetson's actions con­tributed to her dramatic ouster from a largely female movement.

Newly empowered public women were the moving force behind the rapid spread of Christian Science at the turn of the twentieth century, but some of them became an obstacle to Mary Baker Eddys plan to eliminate excessive "personality" and place her movement under successful men acceptable to pa­triarchal culture. One of the most remarkable of these female leaders was Au­gusta E. Stetson (1842-1928), bold and controversial leader of First Church of Christ, Scientist, New York, which was the largest branch (local) Christian

The author is grateful to Judy Huenneke; Drew Kadel; Thomas Bird; Seth Kasten; Cathy Gluck;

the Mary Baker Eddy Collection; Burke Library, Union Theological Seminary; and the Hunting­

ton Library. A fellowship from the Mary Baker Eddy Library for the Betterment of Humanity

facilitated research. Opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and not necessarily

approved or endorsed by the Mary Baker Eddy Collection or the Mary Baker Eddy Library.

76 Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 24.1

Science church in the world. Scholars have called her everything from "brilliant, volatile," and "complicated, charismatic character" to a "fungoid growth," her­etic, power-grabber, worshipper of Mammon, and latter-day apostle.1 In short, Stetson was a bundle of contradictions, endowed with boundless energy and executive capacity, audacious, abrasive, unbending, and ruthless, yet adored by hundreds of students and church members. Eddy repeatedly warned Stet­son to pull her punches, abjure political power and wealth, and concentrate on healing. However, Stetson was irrepressibly enthusiastic about the potential metaphysics provided, and she moved steadily forward, seemingly unaware of growing opposition from both men and women. This essay offers new insights into Stetson s and Eddys modi operandi, delves into Stetson s accomplishments and liabilities, and demonstrates that her actions contributed to her dramatic ouster from a largely female movement that had by that time come under the leadership of a top echelon of men.

Christian Science, one of Americas most distinctive indigenous religions, opened new vistas for women.2 New Englander Mary Baker Eddy (1821-1910) founded the religion, which she codified in her book Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (1875). Affirming that all women and men were the per­fect children of God, Christian Science held that all humans should look beyond the unreality of the material, imperfect, and sinful world to a spiritual realm that Eddy termed "boundless bliss."3 Religious scholar David L. Weddle has noted that Eddy "considered her book to be the . . . same Word that was with God." Eddy proclaimed, "We have not as much authority for considering God mas­culine, as we have for considering Him feminine." Since, according to Elaine Pagels, the Holy Ghost was originally a "feminine spirit" or the Motherly side of

1 Robert Peel, Mary Baker Eddy: The Years of Authority (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1977), 330; Sarah Gardner Cunningham, "A New Order: Augusta Emma Stetson and the Origins of Christian Science in New York City, 1886-1910" (Ph.D. diss., Union Theological Semi­nary, 1994), 6; and Ernest Sutherland Bates and John V. Dittemore, Mary Baker Eddy: The Truth and the Tradition (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1932), 441.

2 On the Christian Science movement, see Stephen Gottschalk, The Emergence of Chris­tian Science in American Religious Life (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1973); Stuart E. Knee, Christian Science in the Age of Mary Baker Eddy (Westport, CT: Green­wood Press, 1994); Rolf Swensen, "Pilgrims at the Golden Gate: Christian Scientists on the Pacific Coast, 1880-1915," Pacific Historical Review 72 (May 2003): 229-62; and Penny Hansen, "Wom­an's Hour: Feminist Implications of Mary Baker Eddy's Christian Science Movement, 1885-1910" (Ph.D. diss., University of California, 1981). See also Sydney E. Ahlstrom, A Religious History of the American People (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004).

3 Mary Baker Eddy, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (Boston: Christian Sci­ence Publishing Society, 1934), 481. On Eddy, see Stephen Gottschalk, Rolling Away the Stone: Mary Baker Eddy's Challenge to Materialism (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006); Gil­lian Gill, Mary Baker Eddy (Reading, MA: Perseus Books, 1998); Robert Peel, Mary Baker Eddy: The Years of Discovery (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1966), Robert Peel, Mary Baker Eddy: The Years of Trial (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1971), Peel, Mary Baker Eddy The Years of Authority; and Bates and Dittemore, Mary Baker Eddy.

Swensen: "You Are Brave . . 77

the divinity, Eddy had made a remarkable conclusion. Aided by the deplorable state of medicine, Christian Science drew an increasing following in the 1880s and 1890s, especially among women, through its practice of spiritual healing through prayer. By challenging "static idealizations of gender," Rosemary R. Hicks writes, Eddy offered women the "chance to assume previously unavail­able roles in health care, religion, and religious education." No one grasped this opportunity with more enthusiasm than Augusta E. Stetson.4

Born in Maine in 1842 to humble parents, Augusta Emma Simmons had "few educational advantages." At twenty-two years old, she married Captain Frederick J. Stetson, a ship broker many years her senior, and lived with him in England, India, and Burma. Augusta Stetson was introduced to Christian Sci­ence while she was in Boston in 1884, training as an elocutionist to support her husband, who had by that time become an invalid. Immediately, she established a close relationship with Boston resident Mary Baker Eddy, who was seeking assertive, loyal disciples to supplant followers who had deserted or disappointed her. Eddy quickly saw the charismatic Stetson as a valuable addition to her small flock, admitted her to religious classes, and tested the enthusiastic student for endeavors in larger fields. Stetson s combativeness quickly earned her the sobri­quet Fighting Gus. Just as the priesthood had provided avenues of opportunity for poor men in Europe, so Christian Science offered to empower women as professionals and religious reformers in a man s world.5

In 1886, Eddy sent Stetson to New York to aid in the establishment there of the fledgling faith. "I shuddered at the thought of leaving all," Stetson wrote to

4 David L Weddle, "The Christian Science Textbook An Analysis of the Religious Author­

ity of Science and Health by Mary Baker Eddy," Harvard Theological Review 83 (July 1991) 273-97, quotation on 284, Eddy, Science and Health, 517, Elaine Pagels, in Secrets of Mary Magda­

lene, ed Dan Burstein and Arne J De Keijzer (New York CDS Books, 2006), 8, and Rosemary R

Hicks, "Religion and Remedies Reunited Rethinking Christian Science," Journal of Feminist

Studies m Religion 20 (Fall 2004) 25-58, esp 47, 56 See also Susan Hill Lindley, "You Have

Stept Out of Your Place" A History of Women and Religion in America (Louisville, KY Westmin­ster John Knox Press, 1996), 267, Ann Braude, Radical Spirits Spiritualism and Women s Rights in Nineteenth-Century America (1989, reprint, Boston Beacon Press, 2001), 189, Mary Farrell

Bednarowski, "Outside the Mainstream Women's Religion and Religious Leaders in Nineteenth-

Century America, Journal of the American Academy of Religion 48 (June 1980) 207-32, esp

221 On healing, see Hansen, "Woman's Hour," chap 6, Robert Peel, Health and Medicine in the

Christian Science Tradition (New York Crossroad, 1988), chap 8, Gottschalk, Rolling Away the

Stone, 331-37, and R W England, "Some Aspects of Christian Science as Reflected in Letters of

Testimony," American Journal of Sociology 59 (1953/1954) 448-53 5 Virgil O Strickler Diary, January 3, June 21, 1909, Subject File, Mary Baker Eddy Col­

lection, Boston, Massachusetts All sources from the Mary Baker Eddy Collection and The First

Church of Christ, Scientist, Boston, are used courtesy of the Mary Baker Eddy Collection, One

Norway Street, Boston, MA 02115 On Stetson, see Altman Κ Swihart, Since Mrs Eddy (New

York Henry Holt & Co , 1931), Cunningham, "New Order", Gottschalk, Rolling Away the Stone,

365-79, Gill, Mary Baker Eddy, 534-42, Peel, Mary Baker Eddy The Years of Authority, chap 10, and Bates and Dittemore, Mary Baker Eddy, chap 22

78 Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 24.1

Eddy in 1895, "to go into a city—where I knew not a street, nor a person." Stet­son s work of spreading the new gospel of healing began slowly. "As here and there an individual member of a family embraced the healing truth," she later recalled, "households were gradually drawn into the fellowship of the new joy of spiritual dominion." Healing of physical ailments was the main reason for the rise of Christian Science and most of the healers, or practitioners, were women venturing into the world and shouldering great responsibility for the first time. According to Penny Hansen, "Most striking of all [the aspects of Christian Sci­ence] was women's more assertive health-seeking behavior." Stetson therefore drew "converts through her preaching and the attractive power of her personal­ity," wrote Sarah Gardner Cunningham, "working instantaneous cures." Stet­sons healings, magnetism, and organizational ability bore mounting results. As she informed Eddy in 1894, she wanted to "heal the sick[,] cast out evils[,] and bring our blessed Science to the world as you desire."6 At work in the nation s largest metropolis, the "most material and active of cities," and pleased with the growth, Stetson exclaimed to Eddy, "The healing is astounding."7

Stetson surrounded herself with growing numbers of grateful students and patients, including such well-connected people as Alice Beecher Hooker Day, who was descended from both Lyman Beecher and Thomas Hooker. According to Cunningham, "Mrs. Stetsons students were deeply attracted to her," while Altman K. Swihart concluded that "Mrs. Stetsons loyal students held her in affectionate, reverential esteem." One of these followers was Stella Hadden Al­exander. "A new and beautiful view of life. life—has been opened to me in these last few weeks, of which I never had any conception," Alexander wrote to her mother, "and I have with difficulty refrained from writing you all of it, for I am so anxious for you to share the joy, the happiness, the health, that it gives." Alexander exulted to her parents, "Oh! How great Christian Science is! How it unites people! The church seems like one great family." Unswervingly loyal to Stetson, she referred to her "dear teacher who so earnestly and lovingly is teach­ing and guiding and helping us to understand the Science of Being." Illustrative of the lasting bond between Stetson and her students is the following comment from Stetson to a pupil: "You can never know my deep and increasing love for you until you have suffered as far out of the flesh as I have."8

6 Stetson to Eddy, December 11,1895, L16638, February 1,1894, CH92 (ci), Eddy Collec­tion; Augusta E. Stetson, Vital Issues in Christian Science (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1917), 105; Hansen, "Woman's Hour," 316; and Cunningham, "New Order," 72.

7 Stetson to Mrs. L., in Augusta E. Stetson, Reminiscences, Sermons, and Correspondence Proving Adherence to the Principle of Christian Science as Taught by Mary Baker Eddy (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1914), 645; and Stetson to Eddy, June 22,1894, CH92 (ci), Eddy Col­lection. On the religious climate in New York, see Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace, Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 1177-78.

8 Cunningham, "New Order," 72, 111; Swihart, Since Mrs. Eddy, 70; Stella Hadden Alex­ander to her mother, September 19,1900, Alexander to her mother and father, May 12,1901, "II-

Swensen: "You Are Brave . . . : 79

Despite such strong support, Stetson did not, however, win great favor with all Christian Scientists. From the beginning, Fighting Gus experienced "fre­quent unpleasant experiences" with other Christian Scientists, caused in large part by her claim to be the designated leader of Eddys flock in New York. Eddy student Laura Lathrop, whose work had predated Stetsons by one year, im­mediately protested to Stetson that she was "overzealous" and characterized as "very ridiculous" Stetson s suggestion that she take a class with her. "Do not claim," Eddy warned Stetson, "that you are my chosen one for you are not Γ Yet Eddy cherished Stetson as her "best beloved." After organizing First Church of Christ, Scientist in 1887, Stetson exercised close personal control over her students, edged out Lathrop, and dealt harshly with perceived or real com­petitors. As Stetson interpreted Eddy, "branch churches originating in qualities other than unity and love cannot properly be regarded in the spiritual sense as legitimate Christian Science churches." That is, Stetson would not accept other Christian Science churches in the Empire City—including Lathrops future Second Church—as "legitimate."9

First Church of Christ, Scientist, New York, was Stetson s proud creation and grew from humble beginnings to stardom, influence, controversy, and front­page news. Crucial to her building of the organization was the active support of a group of students who "sat at the feet of our spiritual teachers," Stetson and Eddy. This was a very personal relationship, solidified by the fact that Stetson had healed every member of her inner circle of nervous ailments and other debilitating maladies. Chief among this coterie was Edwin F. Hatfield, son of a prominent Presbyterian minister, former railroad executive, and chair of her executive board for almost twenty years, who had been "quickly healed of ner­vous prostration, which physicians had failed to relieve."10 Another member of the inner set was George F. De Laño, a successful New York lawyer, who served as clerk and attorney for the church and who exulted that Stetson and Christian Science had brought "my wife and myself from a state of chronic invalidism to perfect health." Other male officers included prominent dry goods commission merchant Joseph B. Whitney, treasurer; wealthy silk merchant Adolph Rusch; and teenager Carol Norton (nephew of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow), who

luming Light Glimpses of Home and of Records," 3 vols , typescript, 1923,1 96,104, all at Burke Library, Union Theological Seminary, New York, and Stetson to My Precious Student, June 28, 1908, Augusta E Stetson Collection, Huntington Library, San Marmo, California

9 Stetson, Reminiscences, 21, Laura Lathrop to Stetson, October 10,1887, CH161 (a), Eddy to Stetson and Carol Norton, December 28,1893, V01279, and Eddy to Stetson, May 25, 1905, H00094, all in Eddy Collection, and Stetson, Vital Issues in Christian Science, 307 Christian Sci­entists take two weeks of religious education, called "Class Instruction," from a teacher of Chris­tian Science

10 Minutes of the Board of Trustees, First Church, New York, June 19,1897, Box 535163, Re­cords of Disbanded Churches [RDC], Office of Records Management [ORM], The First Church of Christ, Scientist, Boston [TFCCS], and Stetson, Reminiscences, 21

80 Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 24.1

was assistant pastor. As Stetson beamed to Eddy, she had enlisted the "finest men in the City of NY [sic] among the trustees." Despite the fact that early leaders of the Christian Science faith were preponderantly women, Stetson, like Eddy, mainly chose men as surrogates to run her church According to Swi­hart, Stetson s "organization became a marvel of efficiency and of attachment to the dominating figure who controlled all its activities/'11 She could not have achieved this result without her industrious and ever-faithful male lieutenants.

Stetson venerated Eddy as God s prophet to the age and variously referred to her as "our royal leader," "His anointed," "God s interpreter," "His holy One [sic], our precious Mother," "Holy Mother," and the "ideal woman." For Stet­son, Eddy was the equal of any prophet, including Moses and Samuel. Swihart wrote that Stetson considered Christian Science "the manifestation of the Christ in Mary Baker Eddy." Stetson herself was more explicit: "I feel that you should recognize her as the Messiah." Eddy remonstrated, "But darling you injure the cause and disobey me in thinking that I am Christ or saying such a thing." How­ever she characterized Eddy, Stetson evidenced a very personal adulation and public veneration of her teacher, something that Eddy tried to stamp out in all her students and followers. Stetson also repeatedly tried to link herself with Eddy in a common cause that excluded others. To those who scoffed that a woman could be Gods messenger to this age, Stetson noted in an address that Eddy stood "on the mount of spiritual illumination, up whose rugged sides no feet but those of the blessed Master have so direcdy toiled."12

According to Hansen, the Christian Science approach to gender roles was unique, since Eddy "wanted her women stronger and her men gentler; and she did not want either sex dominating the other." Stetson only partially grasped Eddys "unique" proposition. For Stetson, "Man is to be redeemed through the woman thought, and that visibly expressed, else we have no proof of Science." As one local journalist noted, Stetson felt that "woman is better fitted than man to fill the pulpit, because she possesses the highest order of humanity." After two or three thousand years of male-centric conceptions of God, Stetson was convinced that women were best equipped to spread the new gospel. Evidenc­ing an imprudent attitude toward men that both Eddy and her male adminis­trators did not share, she exclaimed in one of her many poems, "I saw strong manhood yield to fears." Stetson saw men, except the "finest men" among her

11 Minutes of the Board of Trustees, First Church, New York, October 17,1902, Box 535163, RDC, ORM, TFCCS; Stetson to Eddy, December 19,1897, CH92 (c2), Eddy Collection; and Swi­hart, Since Mrs. Eddy, 57.

12 Stetson, "Christ-Mind Healing," in Reminiscences, 86,87; Stetson to Mr. Robinson, [1907], Stetson Collection; Swihart, Since Mrs Eddy, 55; Stetson to My Beloved Student, August 7,1908, in Reminiscences, 754; and Eddy to Stetson, December 17,1900, H00069, Eddy Collection.

Swensen: "You Are Brave . . . " 81

church, as weak. Unlike Stetson, Eddy wanted a "partnership" between men and women, and shied away from Stetson s assertive behavior.13

One especially provocative facet of Stetson s teaching was her negative view of the male role in procreation and the sinfulness of human sexual relations. In the late 1880s, Eddy had given obstetrics classes in an effort to uplift women through something akin to "spiritual midwifery" and so lessen the pain involved in childbirth. Stetson carried this teaching much further. According to a stu­dents class notes, Stetson proclaimed that men, gripped by the "law of desire for possession," lusted after their wives as part of "man s tyranny," that "man has pleasure [and] women pain," and that "subtlety of desire for children [was an] outlet for manhood." Eddy did argue against "brute instinct" and urged women to "detach mortal thought from its material conceptions, [so] that the birth will be natural and safe." Stetson stretched this argument, however, teaching that there were "no male or female organs of generation, no foetal [sic] egg, no ma­terial sex, or race or gender." Virgil O. Strickler, who took a class with Stetson in 1903, subsequently decided that "her teachings upon this subject were indecent and shocking, in addition to being contrary to anything ever published by Mrs. Eddy"14

Stetsons personality, philosophy, and tactics exasperated Eddy, inflamed Lathrop, and contributed to unrest among New York congregations. "You and I seem to be held up to the world together," chirped Stetson to Eddy, "but all the fiery darts of the enemy fail to separate us." Genuinely hurt by the attacks of Lathrop and other adversaries, Stetson confided to Eddy, "I preferred any­thing to this continuing torture and denunciation from the students." Eddy had previously advised, "I took Mrs. Lathrop from your church to rescue her from oppression. You would not allow her to speak in your meetings nor allow your students to attend hers on penalty of leaving your church." Stetson disingenu­ously claimed, "I do not fear that any one will believe we [Lathrop and Stetson] have not been friendly all these years til now." As Lathrop complained to Eddy, "[Stetson s] envy and jealousy have dogged my steps," and she announced that Stetson was "either the biggest saint or the biggest devil I ever saw." According to a later magazine article, "Mrs. Lathrop attracts love, where Mrs. Stetson com­pels respect." Not only a decided difference in temperament separated Stetson and Lathrop but Stetson s alleged "special" relationship with Eddy also raised hackles with many workers. As Eddy explained to Lathrop and her son John,

13 Hansen, "Woman's Hour," 192,193; "Male and Female," 1900/1901, Stetson Collection; "Two Women Who Preach," unattributed newspaper clipping [1894], CH92 (ci), Eddy Collection; Augusta E. Stetson, "Love Watches over All," in Reminiscences, 40.

14 Peel, Mary Baker Eddy: The Years of Trial, 235-39; Eddy, Science, and Health, 63,463; "Obstetrics," AS 550, c. 1910, Stetson Collection; and Virgil O. Strickler, Testimony, "Church In­quiry of First Church of Christ, Scientist, New York City," 1909, v. 1, 71, Box 5351743, RDC, ORM,TFCCS.

82 Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 24.1

Stetson was a "worker capable of doing great good and that is why I have held onto her because I loved that in her and still love it/'15 Yet an exasperated Eddy chided Stetson for her "tiresome egotism" and for being the "most troublesome student I call loyal," and warned that unless she reformed, the "blow will at length fall and 'the stone that you reject will grind you to powder/"16

After struggling with a congregational Boston church run by ineffective male and female officers and sometimes undermined by female adherents, Eddy organized a federalized Mother Church in 1892, with an expanding net­work of branch churches (such as First Church, New York) and promulgated her new Church Manual mainly to hold her freewheeling students in check. Eddy gradually gave increasing authority to her new four-member (eventu­ally, five-member) Christian Science Board of Directors, trusted, steady men who she felt would loyally carry out her wishes, provide internal stability to her movement, and protect it from broadsides launched by the press, clergy, and legislators. In part, this move was aimed at gaining control over such irrepress­ible female disciples as Stetson. Yet Eddy made no effort to eliminate women leaders per se, just to rein them in. One of Eddys most important bylaws was her abolition early in 1895 of pastors—both male and female—whom she saw as tainted by uncontrolled "personality." Instead, she established two lay read­ers—one male and one female—for each branch church, who read alternate passages from the Bible and Science and Health. As Eddy wrote Lathrop in 1897, many bylaws in the Manual primarily targeted Stetson, including a later one that was designed to put a damper on any one person dominating a branch church, entitled "A Reader Not a Leader." When Eddy limited branch church readers to three-year terms in 1902, she had to prod Stetson to resign, although Lathrop and others had readily complied.17

If Stetson was shaken by Eddys words and bylaws, she must have felt be­trayed by the actions of Carol Norton, her closest associate. Norton had writ­ten a pamphlet in 1895 entitled Woman's Cause, in which he lavished praise on Eddy, whose "divine mission" had "given dignity to womanhood." However, Norton broke with Stetson in 1897 because of her tendency to manipulate and

15 Stetson to Eddy, July 11,1894, CH92 (cl), July 20,1896, CH92 (c2), June 8,1897, L16646, Eddy to Stetson, September 10,1895, L11229, Laura Lathrop to Eddy, October 26,1892, July 9, 1897, CH161 (e), Eddy to Laura Lathrop and John Lathrop, April 8, 1899, L02446, all in Eddy Collection; and William Allen Johnston, "Christian Science in New York," Broadway Magazine (May 1907): 154-66, quotation on 159, quoted in Cunningham, "New Order," 121.

16 Eddy to Stetson, December 13,1895, L09587, October 26,1897, V01549, and December 10,1897, V01554 [Eddy was quoting Matt. 21:44 and Luke 20:18], Eddy Collection.

17 Peel, Mary Baker Eddy: The Years of Trial, 198, 215-57, Peel, Mary Baker Eddy: The Years of Authority, 88-93; Cunningham, "New Order," 7-8; Mary Baker Eddy to Laura Lath­rop, [1897], L4373, Eddy Collection; Mary Baker Eddy, Manual of the Mother Church (Boston: Christian Science Publishing Society, 1936), Art. 13, Sec. 10. Eddy added two Stetson-restraining bylaws in 1909: Article 8, Section 30: "No Monopoly," and Article 13, Section 10: "No Interfer­ence." See Peel, Mary Baker Eddy: The Years of Authority, 344-45.

Swensen: "You Are Brave . . . " 83

dominate. "Justice to my manhood and individuality/' he advised Eddy, "will not allow me to surrender the rights to self-government to another/' Stetson real­ized the seriousness of the defection of ¿lis "pure-faced boy," who had served as her assistant pastor and second reader, but whom she had recently maligned to Eddy. Therefore she sagely urged her students and church members, "God bless him!!" One Stetson confidant advised, "You got along with him very well until he was favored by a power higher than you are—Mrs. Eddy." Steadily more impressed with Norton, Eddy wrote to influential Chicago Christian Sci­entist Edward A. Kimball regretting the "despotism of Mrs. S." Other disillu­sioned Stetson students, including Blanche Hersey Hogue in Portland, Oregon, broke with their teacher, prompting Kimball to exclaim, "Mrs. Stetsons [sic] fellow scientists [sic] are getting thoroughly disgusted with her. and [sic] if she does not begin to reform soon, she will find herself rather lonesome."18

Stung by Lathrop, Norton, and other Christian Scientists, Stetson uttered one of her common refrains to Eddy: "I am brave when danger threatens the Cause in this City." Eddy remonstrated, "You are brave but you are a woman in the eyes of men." Eddy knew what she was saying, since she had experienced longstanding challenges from Mark Twain, whose humorous writings on Chris­tian Science were aimed at least in part at her gender. Jean A. McDonald has shown that Eddy and Christian Scientist women were stereotyped as pushy, greedy, and irrational by a patriarchal society threatened by the "upstart" faith. In 1907, Eddy was to be pilloried by Joseph Pulitzers New York World in the sensational Next Friends suit, in which both her natural son and her adopted son lent their names to an unsuccessful campaign to unmask her as incom­petent. Even the New York Times characterized Eddy as the "High Priest­ess" of a jpestilent cult" of "Eddyots," while the "Christian Science type" was a "mushy-brained" but "imperious female." Hicks wrote that Eddy answered the contemptuous attitude of the press toward Christian Science by her "rapid promotion of men in proportions incongruent with their organizational repre­sentation." Stetson rejected this strategy, aimed at moderating the personae of female leaders.19

18 Carol Norton, Woman's Cause (Boston: Dana Estes Co., 1895), 41,51, and Carol Norton to Eddy, October 21,1897, L16786, Eddy Collection; Stetson to Beloved Students and Brethren, October 29,1897, AS451, and Matthew Griffin to Stetson, August 30,1897, AS296, both in Stet­son Collection; Eddy to Edward A. Kimball, June 9,1898, L07467, and Kimball to Eddy, June 13, 1898, file CH155 (b), both in Eddy Collection. See Rolf Swensen, '"A State of Unrest and Division': Christian Science in Oregon, 1890-1910," Pacific Northwest Quarterly 97 (Winter 2005/2006): 11-18.

19 Stetson to Eddy, March 23,1899, file CH92 (d2), and Eddy to Stetson, March 21,1900, V01708, both in Eddy Collection; Cynthia D. Schräger, "Mark Twain and Mary Baker Eddy: Gen­dering the Transpersonal Subject," American Literature 70 (March 1998): 29-62; Jean A McDon­ald, "Mary Baker Eddy and the Nineteenth-Century 'Public' Woman: A Feminist Reappraisal," Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 2 (1986): 89-111; "Topics of the Times," New York Times, January 15,1899; "Our Hats Are All Alike," New York Times, June 2,1904; and Hicks, "Religion

84 Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 24.1

Instead, the rich records of First Church show a committed Stetson very effectively organizing her coterie of wealthy congregants to plan and build an impressive 2,200-seat Beaux Arts edifice. Stetson s rapidly growing church of more than 1,200 members was made up, according to Cunningham, "substan­tially of merchants, industrialists, stockbrokers and heiresses, who gave gen­erously of their resources to the church." The church's roll books also show many members in the arts and other professions, as well as in the clerical and working classes. During many years of board meetings, Stetson, Hatfield, De Laño, Whitney, Rusch, and others only occasionally cut corners. The opening of the debt-free $1,200,000 sanctuary for First Church on New York City's Cen­tral Park West at 96th Street in 1903 was "proof of her extraordinary leadership qualities and the devotion of her congregants and students." Designed by noted architectural firm Carrere & Hastings, this granite-clad structure, whose dis­tinctive pyramidal steeple is visible across Central Park, is capable of accommo­dating 2,200 worshippers on walnut pews and boasts other elegant features such as marble floors and a large stained-glass window by noted American artist John La Farge. During inaugural services on November 29,1903, Stetson reminded the congregation that the church "has been built entirely by those who have been healed of all manner of diseases." By contrast, Lathrop's Second Church had opened its classical 1,500 seat, $500,000 edifice almost thirty blocks south on Central Park West in 1901, but failed to pay off its mortgage until receiving $72,000 from Eddy's will in 1911.20

Glowing from her architectural and financial accomplishment, yet strangely ignoring the storm intensifying around her, Stetson received the following re­buke from Eddy: "Your material church is another danger in your path[;] it oc­cupies too much of your attention[;] it savors of the goodness of the Ephesians, the great Diana. O turn ye to one God." Stetson was unaware that Eddy was pouring out even stronger feelings to Anne Dodge, CSB, a member of Stetson's church: "A society [First Church] that can pay over a million of dollars for a fashionable church edifice ought to drop the name of CS. Or be ready to help in our cause in other directions in the . . . City—that need it much more than it needs aught else but good healers." Eddy was referring in part to Stetson's galling refusal to cooperate with other branches to establish the first Christian Science central reading room in New York, as well as Stetson's high esteem of material success. As she showed Eddy, she still had time for effective but some-

and Remedies Reunited," 52. On the Next Friends suit, see Peel, Mary Baker Eddy: The Years of Discovery, 280-91.

20 Cunningham, "New Order," 6; Membership Roll, First Church, 1893-1902 [Ancestry, com], Box 535157, RDC, ORM, TFCCS; Paul Eli Ivey, Prayers in Stone: Christian Science Archi­tecture in the United States (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999), 24-25, 64-68; Swensen, "'State of Unrest and Division/" 16; Minutes of the Board of Trustees, First Church, November 29,1903, Box 535164; and Swihart, Since Mrs. Eddy, 27-28. See also "Built from Plans Divinely Revealed," New York Times, November 29,1903. First Church sold its edifice in 2004.

Swensen: "You Are Brave . . . 85

times controversial healing. According to the New York World, she disputed a claim by the parents of a little girl that medicine, rather than Christian Science, had healed their daughter. 'What I need for help in my life-labor more than all else on earth," Eddy pleaded, "is a—healer such as I were when practising [sic]. I beg and pray that you become that." Yet an exacting Eddy had also used Stetson for years to purchase her elegant clothes in New York.21

Overflowing crowds at First Church induced Stetson in 1908 to try to spawn her own branch church on fashionable Riverside Drive, but this action violated the guidelines Eddy and her Boston hierarchy had promulgated and set the stage for her downfall. Archibald McLellan, editor of the church periodicals and member of Eddys board, publicly reprimanded Stetson. The steps leading to the dissolution of her leadership in the church intensified when she invited first reader Virgil O. Strickler, a lawyer, former Populist leader from Nebraska, and devoted Stetson pupil, into daily meetings with her inner circle of twenty-four mainly female practitioners. Concerned with what he heard in these emotional, extended sessions, Strickler began to keep a diary the following January. The most dramatic entries concern Stetson s efforts to defend herself against Lath­rop and McLellan. For Stetson, Lathrop was the "bondwoman" who must "go out," First Church, New York, was the "only true Christian Science Church in the world," all other Christian Scientists were "false brethren," and The Mother Church was "in the hands of the devil." Stetson now equated Eddy with God and herself with Jesus Christ, the "First Born," and proclaimed that all Christian Scientists needed her instruction. Stetson soon asserted that she had willed the evil in adversaries to die, not the individual, but she made no effort to alter her other statements.22

In late July 1909, Stetson, who had unwisely sent Eddy a "composite letter" containing worshipful comments by Stetson s inner circle, was called to testify in Boston. When she returned to New York in a "perfect whirlwind of fear," Stetson tried to induce her practitioners, including Strickler, to sign affidavits that she had never made the remarks about Lathrop, and so on, but he refused. This was not the first instance of falsehood. Earlier, in 1901, Stetson had given false evidence in the Brush Will case, in which relatives of a deceased woman tried unsuccessfully to stop a legacy from going to First Church. Stetson justi­fied this perjury by saying that she was speaking in the "absolute" (spiritual

21 Eddy to Stetson, August 4,1903, L02565, May 25,1905, H00094, Eddy to Anne Dodge, October 17, 1903, V00452, and "Christian Science Saved her Life," New York World, March 28, 1901, CH92 (e), all in Eddy Collection; and Stetson to Eddy, October 19,1904, in Reminiscences, 171-76 (healing of cancer in last stages). On clothes, see Eddy to Stetson, November 5, 1899, H00193, and July 3,1906, H00104, both in Eddy Collection.

22 Minutes of the Board of Trustees, First Church, December 7,1908, Box 535163, RDC, ORM, TFCCS; Archibald McLellan, "One Mother Church in Christian Science," Christian Sci­ence Sentinel, December 5,1908, 270; and Strickler Diary, January 11, July 2,4, 6, 7,1909, Eddy Collection.

86 Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 24.1

realm), instead of the "relative" (human existence). She soon recalled that Carol Norton had allowed that she was "not conscious that [she] is lying, and that she would not lie if she knew that it was a lie." Following Stetson s efforts to obfuscate, Strickler showed portions of his diary to the Boston Board on August 30. "Overjoyed and speechless," the directors were "wholly unprepared for the wholesale and awful denunciations which even these few pages disclosed." The board conveyed this information to Eddy, who requested that the investigation be reopened into Stetson s "impious conduct."23

Stetson and her practitioners were summoned to Boston and on September 25,1909, she was stripped of her right to teach and practice Christian Science. This led to a dilemma for her hundreds of students: find a new teacher, tread water as a fifth column, or follow their now discredited teacher out of the fold. Thus Margaret Beecher White, granddaughter of Henry Ward Beecher, wrote, "I love Mrs. Stetson, as she knows, for all the good she has ever given me, and it is much—but I do love my leader [Eddy] and the Cause more." On Octo­ber 9, Eddy wrote to Stetson, "You are so dark in your perception of me and my thoughts." Three days later, Eddy requested the board to excommunicate Stetson, if it could be done "safely." A lengthy report of a First Church examin­ing committee exonerating Stetson and condemning "Judas" Strickler was rati­fied during an emotional six-hour meeting on November 4. Eddy was appalled by this "disgraceful revolt." In mid-November, after several days of renewed grilling by the directors in Boston, Stetson and sixteen overwhelmingly female practitioners were excommunicated from The Mother Church. To avoid plac­ing her male trustees in an "embarrassing position," Stetson resigned from First Church and urged that members "constandy listen for our beloved Leaders voice." Amid scenes of "great confusion" during the extended annual meeting of the church on January 18, 1910, members decisively elected officers loyal to The Mother Church, including Margaret Beecher White. "Personality" and "disloyalty" in the guise of Stetson were vanquished.24

With Stetson no longer in the movement, the Christian Science Churches and Societies of New York City informed Eddy that they were "for the first time

23 Strickler Diary, July 31 ["perfect whirlwind"], August 1, 30, 1909; Stetson, Testimony, "Church Inquiry of First Church of Christ, Scientist, New York City," 19; and Eddy to Christian Science Board of Directors, September 9,1909, L00622, Eddy Collection. See Archibald McLel­lan, "Deceive Not Thy Lips," Christian Science Sentinel, September 18,1909,50.

24 Margaret Beecher, quoted in Cunningham, "New Order," 162; Eddy to Stetson, October 9,1909, L6643, and Eddy to Archibald McLellan, October [?], 1909, L08770, Eddy Collection; "First Church Now Defies Mrs. Eddy," New York Times, November 5, 1909; Eddy to Virgil O. Strickler, November 9,1909 ["disgraceful revolt"], L08974, Eddy Collection; Swihart, Since Mrs. Eddy, 82-88; and Stetson to Board of Trustees, First Church, November 22, 1909, in Minutes of the Board of Trustees, November 24,1909, "Report of Annual Meting [sic] of First Church of Christ, Scientist, N.Y. City, Jan. 18th 1910," Minutes of the Board of Trustees, Box 535157, RDC, ORM,TFCCS.

Swensen: "You Are Brave . . . : 87

gathered in one place and with one accord, to confer harmoniously and unit­edly in promoting and enlarging the activities of the Cause of Christian Science in this community." Eddy replied, "This proof that sanity and Science govern the Christian Science churches in Greater New York is soul inspiring." On the facing page of the weekly Christian Science Sentinel in which this telegram was reprinted, was a statement from Eddy entitled "Men in Our Ranks." Yet Eddy had written Stetson, "I hereby say I look daily in our papers hoping to find that Mrs [sic] Stetson has returned to this field as Christian Science practitioner and teacher." Eddy did not mail the letter, which indicates the depth of her feelings for her student and her pain at the ouster. There was no further communication between the two women. A church that boasted a greater percentage (70 per­cent) of women than any other American religion had ejected a powerful and unbending woman and now sought more men for the purposes of stability.25

Emerging from her ordeal, Stetson retained her dignity, her self-righteous­ness, and perhaps one-half of her 800 students. Convinced that Eddy had set her up for a fall only to free her from the constricting organization of The Mother Church and so serve as protector of Eddys discovery, Stetson remained a very visible figure on the New York scene. She lavishly praised Eddy—even proph­esying that Eddy would rise from the grave after her passing late in 1910—while Stetsons loyal students fervently supported both women. For Stetson, Eddy was the "spiritual ultimate of the second coming of Christ in the appearance of the ideal woman" and the "compound idea, the male and female of Gods creat­ing, the impersonal Christ-man." Stetson student Arnold Blome characterized Eddy as "Christ Mary." Yet Stetson, whose students financially supported her, expressed resentment at Eddy s "constant demands" over the years and noted in 1913 that Eddy "had millions." Besides holding court in her federal-style town house behind First Church, publishing books and music, and broadcasting in the 1920s from her radio station, Stetson was the inspiration for the successful New York City Christian Science Institute Oratorio Society, which was made up of her musically inclined students. Stetson died in Rochester, New York, in 1928.26

25 Christian Science Churches and Societies of New York to Eddy, telegram, February 5, 1910, in Christian Science Sentinel, February 12,1910, 471; and Eddy to Stetson, December 12, 1909 [not mailed], L11230, Eddy Collection. See also Gail Bederman, '"The Women Have Had Charge of the Church Work Long Enough': The Men and Religion Forward Movement of 1911-1912 and the Masculinization of Middle-Class Protestantism," American Quarterly 61 (1989): 432-65; and Rolf Swensen, "Our Cause . . . Does Not Need Advertising, But Protection': The Christian Science Movement Regroups, 1908-1910," Journal of the Society for the Study of Meta­physical Religion 10 (Spring 2004): 29-79.

26 Stetson, untitled interview, Stetson Collection; Stetson to Dear Mr. B, June 12,1912, in Stetson, Reminiscences, 1163; Arnold Blome to Stetson, December 11,1918, Subject File: Stetson, Eddy Collection; and Stetson to My Precious Student, May 21,1913, Stetson Collection. See also Swihart, Since Mrs. Eddy, chap. 3.

88 Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 24.1

Bednarowski observed that the shift to "male leadership" is "something which is bound to happen as a religion becomes more assimilated into a pa­triarchal culture." Strickler worried that Eddy watched Stetson with "anxiety" because she "might lead a faction that would, in time, overshadow the parent organization [The Mother Church]." Therefore, with some truth, Lindley ar­gued, "any potential female rivals who arose, most notably [Eddys] disciple Augusta Stetson, were ruthlessly cut off." Although McDonald stated that many Christian Science women were not primarily motivated by "status and power," but instead by a "theological hunger," Stetson belied this characterization. Hicks saw the directors as "male figureheads" who "endeavored to sustain the egalitar­ian system" Eddy had established, in an "entirely new performance of gender." The directors may have begun as figureheads, but they rapidly evolved into authoritarian officials. Ironically, what began as a "woman's church," founded by Eddy and largely built by exuberant women, was forced to restrain or expel some of those very women to increase public acceptance and ensure theologi­cal conformity for itself. Despite the conservative turn, however, women (such as the properly self-effacing Lathrop) still played a uniquely important role as writers, branch church readers, practitioners, teachers, lecturers, and, begin­ning in 1919, one seat on the Christian Science Board of Directors. Eddy was enshrined as Discoverer and Founder, as well as Pastor Emeritus.27

Augusta E. Stetson was an energetic pioneer who neither listened to Mary Baker Eddy nor heeded the perils of unrestrained female ambition in a pa­triarchal society. According to Cunningham, "She refused to abandon the . . . feminine frame of reference that characterized her original understanding of Science." Giddy with the potential of metaphysics and blessed with natural or­ganization skills and personal charisma, Stetson blazed a dizzyingly successful path for women in New York and elsewhere. Her powerful church organization, exemplified by the magnificent structure on Central Park West—now regarded as the finest example of Beaux Arts religious architecture in New York City— her hundreds of grateful pupils spread across the country, and her books and published music testify to her accomplishments. One male reporter wrote that she was "shrewd in working the goddess's [Eddys] game." Apparently, Stetson was not astute enough, though, for she gave ammunition to her enemies, both within and without the movement. Her vision of Christian Science differed markedly from that of Eddy, including her effrontery, her worship of "personal­ity," her denigration of men—except those loyal to her—her unorthodox views on obstetrics, her devotion to materialism, her penchant for lying, her lack of

27 Bednarowski, "Outside the Mainstream," 226n6; Strickler Diary, January 16,1909; Lind­ley, "You Have Stept Out of Your Place" 270; Hicks, "Religion and Remedies Reunited," 57,53; and McDonald, "Mary Baker Eddy and the Nineteenth-Century 'Public' Woman," 89, 109. See also Weddle, "Christian Science Textbook," 297; Braude, Radical Spirits, 189; and Burton J. Hen-drick, "Christian Science since Mrs. Eddy," McClures Magazine 39 (September 1912): 481-94.

Swensen: "You Are Brave . . ." 89

self-awareness, her deification of Eddy, and her attacks on The Mother Church. Stetson was a controversial and immensely complex "public" woman who broke down gender barriers by tirelessly clearing new fields for women, but she tragi­cally overstepped the boundaries of acceptable behavior in the ranks of a new American religion that was seeking security and acceptance through male lead­ership. In spite of her rough edges and kaleidoscopic character, Stetson de­serves a place in the pantheon of American religious women.28

Cunningham, "New Order," 9; and "Topics of the Times," New York Times, July 6,1904.

^ s

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