The Origins of The Christian Science Monitor

Mary Baker Eddy Had a Vision for an International Newspaper

Aug 30, 2009

From its very first issue in 1908, The Christian Science Monitor has set a high standard for newspapers all over the world. Mary Baker Eddy envisioned just such a paper.

The Monitor was founded as one of the official organs of the Christian Science church, which also publishes a weekly Sentinel, a monthly Journal and several other periodicals that are intended to offer support and healing for its members.

For more than one hundred years, ordinary everyday news has been reported to the world without the sensationalism, vulgarity, inaccuracy and bias found elsewhere in journalism. Mary Baker Eddy felt that the world needed a sane voice that would leaven thought and arouse a consideration of higher values in every aspect of human experience. Jesus said in Matthew 13:23 “he that received seed into the good ground is he that heareth the word and understandeth it.” Eddy’s intent was to establish a “good ground” on which her followers could receive blessings from newsworthy events.

According to the Monitor’s website, Mary Baker Eddy wrote, "Looking over the newspapers of the day, one naturally reflects that it is dangerous to live, so loaded with disease seems the very air. These descriptions carry fears to many minds, to be depicted in some future time upon the body. A periodical of our own will counteract to some extent this public nuisance; for through our paper we shall be able to reach many homes with healing, purifying thought."

Church members are under no obligation to read the newspaper or to agree with its articles or editorials. The only non-secular element in the publication is a “Home Forum” page, which offers a short religious message presenting a Christian Science viewpoint. Through occasional articles and editorials in its other periodicals, church members are encouraged to support the newspaper prayerfully and financially.

One such article appeared in the December, 1975 issue of the Christian Science Journal and reads in part “Christian Scientists can never afford to be dissatisfied with what Mrs. Eddy founded, because all too easily this dissatisfaction could be an entering wedge to their becoming dissatisfied with what underlies that founding – namely, the Science of Christianity.”

At the Christian Science Publishing House in Boston, Massachusetts, above the windows that look in on the newsroom of the Monitor, the following words are engraved: The Lord gave the word: great was the company of those that published it.” (Psalms 68:11)

The copyright of the article The Origins of The Christian Science Monitor in Metaphysics is owned by Marie Brannon. Permission to republish The Origins of The Christian Science Monitor in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.