User:Ath271/Christian Science article/Critiques

Criticisms can become changes. All changes are "proposed" on the talk page so that practice makes perfect.

1. User:Ath271/Christian Science article/Background
2. User:Ath271/Christian Science article/Critiques (loose, opinion, research)
3. User:Ath271/Christian Science article/Proposals (tight, solid, concise, lucid)
4. User:Ath271/Christian Science theology (per SV)

Layed out, as usual, by priority theoretically, but there are no rules. The goal is to create content in the main space.

We're working from a current outline.

Overview

This empty section should not be empty.

• Rename Theology

Metaphysical family

Off-topic: Religious studies stuff belongs in NRM

• Move to NRM, history section.

Poor wording: "The liberal section of the movement was known as New Thought, in part to distinguish it from the more authoritarian Christian Science." CS is neither authoritarian nor "more authoritarian". CS churches are independent. CS has no creed. Poor comparison: CS is one sect, and NT is many cults and denominations. It describes CS as "authoritarian" compared to NT. If Divine Science, the Unity School of Christianity or the United Church of Religious Science are more "liberal", where is the religious disciple's discipline? Sloppy: forces reader to imagine a metaphysical family of NRMs having an attribute "authoritarianism" that does not exist except by specific comparisons outside of the context. Authoritarian VS liberal as compared to what, doctrine, practices, board members? Cults are "authoritarian", but "cult" is derogatory.

• Rephrase along the lines of McGuire 1988 "Quimby and later spokespersons for NT were adamantly against establishing a fixed, orthodox creed. As a result, NT groups have remained relatively nonauthoritarian and loosely affiliated -- essentially cults or denominations, rather than sects... "
• Replace "authoritarian" with "disciplined".

Questionable revert: MBE's statement saying how and why she distanced CS from NT.. We could help readers understand CS by such comparisons.

• "Ursula Gestefeld, along with Emma Curtis Hopkins, were once trusted lieutenants in Mary Baker Eddy's Christian Science movement, but reacted against her authoritarian possessiveness and broke with her to became teachers of men and women who later founded movements of considerable extent and influence that have collectively been considered as New Thought groups. Ursula Newell Gestefeld... established the Science of Being, a New Thought religious system that gained her national prominence". -- http://ursulagestefeld.wwwhubs.com/
  • So to MBE, CS is not amongst NT groups because S&H is (new, Quimby-like, thoughts) adamantly about the Bible. (Q was all about Jesus too.) And so to Twain who says her intentions were to bind forever CS and the Bible in the minds of Christians. Gestefeld's church, Science of Being, is also Q-like, but not adamantly Biblical.

A fun experiment to format critique. I hope the humor offsets the bias.

hot air	vent	Muffler
New Thought and Christian Science adherents	NT has no Adherents	Muffler
saw themselves as	and now?	Muffler
representatives of	presenting	Muffler
progress and modernity.[21]	scientific progress back to the future, curing modernity by re-enchantment.	Muffler
They differed in that,	"Oh, I gotta hear this"	Muffler
where New Thought was inclusive,	why not market?	Muffler
Eddy's philosophy was dogmatic and sectarian;	not CS? How many philosophies do people normally have? How many hats do busy people wear? Was she one?	Muffler
Eddy saw her views	sounds a bit redundant and out of all possible bounds, but hear goes	Muffler
as a final revelation.[16]	which one, the initial notebooks, the 400th edit of the book, every minute of board meetings?	Muffler
She also differed with her	"Oh, historical Eddy can differ more from the people in The New Thought Movement? How much more?" (A lot!)	Muffler
idea of malicious animal magnetism	an NT person has yet to be found to Cite? No problem!	Muffler
(that people can be harmed by the bad thoughts of others),	yeah yeah yeah from Latin to What does "malicious" mean?	Muffler
introducing an element of fear	into MBE? CS? If its CS, its unlike her: she healed her daddy's fearfuls?	muffler
that was absent from the New Thought literature.[22]	No kidding? It really was?	Muffler
Most significantly,	of all? All?	Muffler
unlike New Thought,	When was this? Has NT changed?	Muffler
Eddy dismissed the material world as an illusion,	crazy Eddy? Its "the illusion" when God is One isn't it? Well CS definitely "dismisses an illusion" from patients and students and church-members. Redundant: is there any other kind of world?	Muffler
rather than as merely subordinate to Mind,	compares "illusion" in the minds of people (Eddy's followers) to "subordination" in the mind of God.	Muffler
leading her	the illusion led her	Muffler
to reject the use of medicine	but that just blew the "primitive medicine" protection we gave Ms. MBE	Muffler
or materia medica,	material medicine... "Oh, a CSist is not allowed to touch or feel an illusion.	Muffler
and making Christian Science the most controversial of the metaphysical groups.	Last 40 years, what is phenomenal is, the growth rate of the metaphysical groups.	Muffler
Reality for Eddy was purely spiritual.[23]	Well it might be Now, but it wasn't then. The theology of CS is purely spiritual.	Muffler

Christian Science theology

Theology is at least as important as History, these should be at the same heading level.

• Cut two sections below and replace with major theological topics: Xty, Science, Metaphysics, etc.

Speaking neutrally does not mean disinterestedly. It is written in a historical tone of a disinterested research scientists.

• Make it present tense.

"redefines Christian vocabulary" is harsh, and then later fails to employ it, resulting in misrepresentations like "principle" instead of "Principle".

"Eddy saw God not as a person, but as a principle ..."

• Say divine Principle.

Last paragraph has a lack of citations.

Last paragraph is emblematic of too much focus on Eddy:

Eddy's philosophy was dogmatic and sectarian; Eddy saw her views as a final revelation, whereas New Thoughters believed revelation to be unfolding.[18] She also differed with her idea of malicious animal magnetism (that people can be harmed by the bad thoughts of others), introducing an element of fear that was absent from the New Thought literature. Most significantly, unlike New Thought, Eddy dismissed the material world as an illusion, rather than as merely subordinate to Mind, leading her to reject the use of medicine, or materia medica, and making Christian Science the most controversial of the metaphysical groups. Reality for Eddy was purely spiritual.

• Impersonalize it.
  • Yes. This reads like it was taken almost entirely from Charles Braden, UMC minister with strong NTh sympathies and historian of NTh. (NTh, I think, has evolved in some quarters to be more friendly towards CS (and prob vice-versa), but NTh still doesn't accept special revelation or MBE as revelator.) And no citations! Can be seriously improved.

History and development

This empty section should not be empty.

2/3 of the content is in the sub-sections. That's too much.

Birth of the religion

This empty section should not be empty.

Birth sounds like it's going to be about the birth of MBE (and/or PPQ).

• Rename: Origins or Beginnings.
  • It was just renamed.

• Include here a section called "Scriptures" or "Sacred Texts."

Too many controversies in this section.

• mv all material to a Controversies section, to also receive new material balancing representation, all the while keeping it all basic
• or mv some material, leaving a brief sketch of the controversy
• or keep 'em separated. Move 'em out to MBE or down to Criticisms.

Mary Baker Eddy

Too wordy. Overemphasizes MBE bio.

• Link out information
• mv to MBE article.
• condense to what can focus on CS. Emphasis here should be specifically on religious/church development and not her biography.

• • Yes, but when I think of it as head and body, her bio has places. But balance in favor of body. 1) Twain attacked the rationality of the head (Eddy), but accepted overall the CS spirit; so to him, an irrational body of practitioners employing the resulting CS spirit, he was neutral about it. Twain say it happened that MBE's metaphysics reigned down from what Quimby put in heaven, yeah? Well that healed MBE's inner world first, and then, through her own metaphysical development in her writings, her practitioner "body" might similarly heal her outer world. The CS spirit is more a result of the practice, and although it does come from MBE's person, Twain seems to conclude CS is ultimately about her person edited as by practitioners and lecturers, and as edited as her final draft of S&H and other final writings. Twain studied "interestedly" Eddy's writing, but he was not so fond of her or the money and politics. He liked the idea of Christian Scientists and liked the "The Edited Eddy".

• • Did Twain and Eddy ever meet?

Phineas Parkhurst Quimby

Section PPQ is stale history, although important historiography.

Writing and teaching

THis empty section should not be empty.

Overall Implies "of MBE."

• Rename to "...of CS" and stay on topic.

Overall Poor sourcing and NPOV

• cite more frequently in and around sentences
• add cites to achieve a full range of views, and provide SS link here.
• Mv Teaching sections to Theology.

The Science of Man manuscript

Rudimentary presentation of the head-rubbing thing. Poor sourcing on the head-rubbing thing.

• mv to S&H where it's reworked, expanded.

Moral Science practice in Lynn

This entire section makes MBE sound odd and unbalanced. Other statements about MBE and money, plus the one here in the opening sentence here portray her as a pecuniary leech.

Neutrality and sourcing need improvement. There are two sources in the article that are not balanced; one is quoted at the bios material.

• Add citations from among the many easily available sources contesting this characterization.

Off-topic: overempasizing MBE, it's not CS per se.

• Mv to MBE page.

Mary B. Glover's Christian Scientists' Home

• rename Homepages. Rename As Belows So Aboves. Rename God Bless this Home!

This part of the outline, like the "Metaphysical family" part, uses a deep, mysterious term before it is explained. And its not likely to be what the reader was probably thinking: she started a commune. But no. Content is mainly MBE's homes' strifes. Too negative.

"The college lived wherever Eddy did" is a stretch of counter-weirdness at best.

Good that the last para includes a Peel quote.

• Peel should balance every para.

Off-topic: MBE biographical focus in an article ostensibly about a religion and less possibly, its organization.

• vantage several, trusted perspectives. Currently it's "Christian Right".

• The Church: the business of religion, naturally sectarian politically.
• The CSists: that they are good overall is "scientifically proven" by the way their thriving positive influence convinced "home", America, Twain not to judge CS. Twain considered it unstoppable in his time. He was right. The "home" would grow.
• The Founder is human and therefore problematic and imperfect, but the edited Founder made good CSism seed for CSists, and the Goodyear S&H has a tireless 432 editions (unto its author's death). The last edit was a final edit, a most acceptable "Eddy" that is not Eddy herself. Also, each and every CSist "edits" CS.

The three are targets and a target of critical perspectives whose objects are in comparatively different social categories. Our representation of the criticisms in each cases should be facts, and with the size of the article in mind. There are so many criticisms (how many? "MBE was among the most controversial figures in the U.S." min 0:40), only the scholarly consensus, the adjudicated indictments, and the strictly explanatory-of-CS the system might exist in a "tight and rational" article. Need Criticisms be named Christian Science Criticisms?

• Find if Twain criticizes the influence "MBE->CS" directly, or indirectly via S&H->CS. See also if he criticizes her Other Works, as presented in the CSJ. Twain criticized a sample of CS Journal anecdotal healings in his CS, and he paternally criticized all MBE's works, largely on grammar and logic. Twain said "[The disappearance of her book knowledge] accounts for much in her miscellaneous writings." Whether he criticizes MBE or CS by doing so is determined by whether Other Works are in the CS "cannon". Is there such? Probably no cannon! (There is no clergy, creed, ritual--see below cite.) Too slick to lick?

The CSJ was "designed to bear aloft the standard of genuine Christian Science" -- MBE. I'm sure it had notable contributors who forthwith encountered notorious lives.

• bash CSJ contributors that were not Pulitzer prized? You know the fallacious theory of the "omniscient consumer"? The article, by over-weighting Eddy seems to engender the same type of supposition: CSists followed MBE ideology whatever they did. (Ha!). But no -ist was ever all -ism (No CSist ever grokked CS.) Note how hard it is to criticize CS from the perspective of of the scoundrels (largely esteemed editors) of the CS journal? It should thus not be this much easier to -- We're rational, right? -- allow anyone or any group to 'use Eddy in some way like that.

Twain's most influential criticisms of Eddy's influence on CS could only be through S&H, right? Yet where criticisms were warranted by Twain, it seems only Founder (Eddy) and Church (money) found his red marks.

• Add more of Twain's remarks on CS Church in View of Mark Twain.

CS is a system that overarchingly (retrospectively) subsumes said Home for reasons "caught in a trap of institutional structure" (min. 3:15 -- Noam Chompsky https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJUA4cm0Rck) from which it sprang (c.f. many The Wire plots in its 5th season. Political Realities. Truth.) Some small part of religious chores are sectarian. If such a job became a notable event, then it was, of course, from on high, from head Eddy. In Durkheim's sociology, no one makes or breaks any social organization. See Sui generis#Politics and society (last pgraph). CS, being such, is underrepresented.

• Fill all lead sections with CS citing recommendations here.

The religion of Scientology has systemic problems. The systemic problems could be: Religious if scholars comparing religions say so, Practice if judges say so, and Membership criticisms. Are the readers of the religious system at Scientology#Criticisms affected with dishonorability? The world's Legislative and Judicial branches level do Scientology dishonor with indictments and gov't-warning pamphlets. Aren't those systemic issues? Or do facts point to political motivations against the Founder?

Those who create institutions must become rational, but followers can be irrational. Can our CS content include much of the irrational side? The -ist is not quite near its -ism because the ism is too big to remember. CSists are influenced by their irrational nows, so that's what we could criticize. Could we make the case that Criticizing Eddy's exoteric roles as sectarianist, financier, plaintiff, (anything not CS-CSJ or CS-Membership roles) is really off-topic? A soldier's role is incompatible with their civilian role. Eddy took on various roles that might be a category error to try and compare them with CS itself. For example, if the event in question had not happened, would CS itself be better, or just Eddy? If so, why report it unless its just a bad overall character we're after, that also is assumed to leach (to muddy flocklings).

• Can we write about a CS body that has not the heads' sight? No, but we can balance. The truth is MBE and other successful religions have heads that excommunicate, Founders that at some point begin fervently to seek money via taxes and lawsuits, like L. Ron Hubbard, and market like the Crowley who acted to keep himself in newspaper. Gurdjieff was observed in the lit. to change roles in an instant, as a matter of his not too-subtle-teaching. Why echo "the most critical remarks"? Is it that the rationale of soldier-followers have no rights? It remains problematic that ya gotta do what soldiers gotta do. Can the WP:pillars uncover CSists that proclaim, say, freedom, or fulfillment?

• At least compare MBE's moves favorably to Hubbard's or the LDS?

• "Each congregation would direct its own affairs as a branch of the Mother Church in Boston. Mother Church would be governed not by charismatic leaders, but by rules" published in "Church Manual". There is no clergy, no ritual, no creed. min 46:10

• also, mv to Criticisms, relegate to subsections the CS-intra-system-workings topics such as the "MBE-CS" stuff that started this commentary; CS as a whole does have more influence on society than its construction events. The higher levels of the outline structure should represent this greater influence. Perhaps A == top-level ==Criticism section with three ===sub-sections===. (TOCs too the =s do.)

Science and Health

Off-topic: the development of S&H

• mv Writing to S&H stub and rework/expand.

Here is evidence of a weighting problem: one uncited sentence on healing claims, three robustly cited sentences that also parade authors, said authors denouncing healing claims. One para at least cites inline several authors who disagree with one another and takes a stab at saying why.

Version?

The Wiggin material is sloppy and incomplete. It is incomplete on the Wiggin situation in stating that Wiggin "removed some contradictions" (rather than claiming to do this, which is what Wiggin's posthumous primary source says (this source is also discussion in secondary lit, but that's not reflected here) --

Huh?

Unfortunately, the healing claims para is much more symptomatic of the entire article.

Huh? Version?

Sickness as error

Why do we have this belief but not "God is love" or "God is all".

• Mv to Theology, clarify, and contextualize in the entire theological system.

Malicious animal magnetism

• rename Animal magnetism
• What is the topic at Handling Animal Magnetism in Healing By E. VERA GORRINGE PLIMMER From the October 1969 issue of The Christian Science Journal?

Too much weight on the negative aspects of the theology. Why do we have this belief but not "God is love" or "God is all".

• Mv to Theology, clarify, and contextualize in the entire theological system.

• (Was eddy a vitalist? Logic was one of MBE's favorite studies as a child. Would it not be logical for a vitalist to believe in some sort of animal magnetism? She waffled on mesmerism. Was it over logic?)

• Difference between CS and NT: Quimby pioneered "suggestive therapeutics", which uses hypnotism. Quimby "believed diseases were caused by the mind and could be made subservient to the will." min 17:26 Eddy believed the same, but her definition of "will" was God's Will, and God included the outer world, whereas Quimby's students titled a book of his teachings "Health and the Inner Life". And Braden's book is "Spirits in Rebellion: The Rise and Development of New Thought". Both Quimby and Eddy believed in Jesus as a scientist.

• add "Magick is getting into communication... Mysticism is the raising of oneself to their level." Crowley saw Magick as a third way between religion and science ...", "The Method of Science; the Aim of Religion". "Crowely... did not accept the Christian world view in which Satan was believed to exist". (See Aliester Crowely#Personal life).

Witchcraft trial, conspiracy charge

This is not a key point in the history of CS. The fact that it's here is emblematic of inconsistency in this article as a whole. What are actually the key points in the historical record? Tidbits that were perhaps big news during their day, and emphasized in the early biographies so heavily cited on this page, are given weight here as though it were 1910 all over again.

• Balance all sections with recent bios.

Of all the history of MBE, this is a really minor piece. Thrown in randomly? Kind of interesting but not a big deal in the lit.; something sensationalist but relatively unimportant;

• Add a paragraph on Josephine Woodbury's son "The Prince of Peace" ?

This is technically the last witchcraft trial tried in US court!

• Wikilink to it on the Witchcraft page from a footnote or Further Reading

Growth

This empty section should not be empty.

• Rename Early Church

There is no lead material.

Establishing the church, move to Boston

Off-topic: MBE.

• Make it about CS

Third husband's death

• topic here is MBE.
  • Make it about CS

First journal, first church

• implied topic is “Eddy’s first journal, Eddy’s first church” – needs perspective change.

Eddy's debt to Quimby

This wording ("debt to Q") is taken from Dresser and repeated in New Thought lit throughout 20th c. It's significantly challenged and complicated in bios and, actually, in more recent New Thought lit too.

• Quote it, as in Eddy's "debt" to Quimby.

Off-topic: MBE.

• rename

EDQ is over 1000 words and two images. While I can appreciate that the judgment of the character of these mind-cure (via agape love) religions might depend on theories of failed ethics on behalf of the founders, the overall judicial analysis of Eddy (and CS practice) is "innocent". CS itself is as innocent of debt as the Bible. The sectarian struggles between them are dilemma-ridden political power moves by members, but not about the religions themselves.

• Move the photos and words to Eddy's article, but explain the evolved difference between C-S and Quimby-Mind-cure. She devoted months learning his system of thought, over the course of 4 yrs.

• Compare Einstein. There are 32 words in that about the debate that Einstein's wife Meliva did the physics. It's 667 words in the Meliva article.

Yes. Move to MBE-PPQ entirely to MBE and mention in passing at CS.

• Compare Scientology (less dignified than Christian Science). It has criticisms (1611 words) in one section (with one exception), and the body of that article is consistently respectful and relevant information about Hubbard and Scientology. Imagine that.

• In the cases where "What she said and wrote about Quimby was certainly biased and shaped by polemic, but so was all the testimony of her New Thought critics." it is mere sectarianism. The current tone in the is that Eddy does owe a debt, but since that was already proven false, the tone merely exacerbates the political and dramatic struggle of individuals, not religions.

• The debt to Quimby is depicted in two, conflicting ways. One is plagiarism, where the relevant detail about dates of the Wentworth papers and of Quimby's publications is left out. It was ruled "not plagiarism", yet some select evidence is portrayed that leaves a sense of doubt. The other is a loving intuition based in experience. And this applies to both Quimby (an autodidact, ie learned from direct experiences) and Eddy's statement that it was an experiential intuition derived from Quimby, but the caption under a nearby image claims, against the ruling, that she did plagiarize. It's tabloid, not encyclopedic, and certainly not about the religion of Christian Science.
  • The term "debt" is loaded (created by Dresser) and problematic. Yes on tabloid. This is an important and long-running chapter in the historiography, but it's a little stale at this point and can certainly be discussed more neutrally.

First prosecutions

Important topic, but why "first" when the section stretches from 1888-1990s? Overly critical in sourcing and tone.

• Move to Controversies.

Building the Mother Church

Basic sourcing issues. As with most history here, scholars disagree on nearly every point made that is not mere fact.

• Use inline cites.

Odd emphasis on details that do not seem to have a point or to be important in a concise article, such as the furnishings in Mother's Room. The existence of Mother's Room is important, but why do we need to know about the pincushion in it?

• Condense.

View of Mark Twain

Almost all primary sources, only two secondary sources.

It lacks his approval and defense of CS itself. This Important topic, Twain, the "Father of North American Literature" concludes about the CS-o'sphere after almost a decade of pondering greatly upon mental healing.

• cite Twain "Meantime, [Christian Science] will kill a man every now and then. But no matter, it will still be ahead on the credit side."

Off-topic: MBE

• replace "He believed she was using Christian Science to accrue wealth"

• Secondary source: Shelly Fisher Fishkin about Twain's struggles with "mental science" in general, CS in particular, but trying for something from Fishkin that is one step removed from MBE, at the CS-NT-Metaphysical level. He says he was intrigued, but on on MBE, (and most all politics and money antics), he was decidedly against.

• See http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=947013747 Find the Macdonell source? More like this (book reviewer), as a methodology? "Contrary to his popular image Twain was actually intrigued by the possibilities of 'mental sciences.' He wrote a number of manuscripts that explored the concept of reality existing only in the mind, but left them unfinished. In this book he primarily attacks Mary Baker Eddy, disputing her authorship of Science and Health, and questioning her motives" (Macdonnell, The Primary First Editions of Mark Twain in Firsts, Volume 8, Nos. 7/8) Which Twain scholar is Macdonnell?

MBE is putative subject. Also only negative quotes from Twain are included, when his views on her were actually complex.

• Cite more recent sources on Twain and Eddy, like Hamlin Hill (Twain scholar) and Gottschalk 2006, the positive view (and negative).

Mixes vagaries where it says "Science and Health he called 'strange and frantic and incomprehensible and uninterpretable,' and argued that Eddy had not written it herself."

• Remove the sentence because Twain "gained a fair acquaintanceship with Science and Health technicalities, I no longer find the bulk of that work hard to understand."
• Remove the sentence because Twain did say she'd written herself: "Whether she took it or invented it, it was--materially--a sawdust mine when she got it, and she has turned it into a Klondike... [No one in the Christian Era has yet] reach up to Mrs. Eddy's waistbelt. (CS by Twain)

WHere the cite note says "see the same quote in "Mark Twain & Mary Baker Eddy a film by Val Kilmer", I don't think what a movie star says is a reliable source.

The first vagueness sounds bad, but could be made to sound neutral. The second Quotes out of context Twain 1907. THe context is a genre.

Full Quote of Twain 1907:

For of all the strange and frantic and incomprehensible and uninterpretable books which the imagination of man has created, surely this one is the prize sample.

• Example: "Of all the strange and frantic and incomprehensible and uninterpretable books Twain read from the imagination of man, he prized S&H mostly." http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/3187/pg3187.txt

McClure's articles

"History of CS"? No. Muckraking in a blatant anti-Eddy campaign. min 54:35

• "What drew people to CS was not Ms. Eddy's personality." min 51:20 So it is also that what turns people off about CS should not be Ms. Eddy's debatable techniques.

• "Ms. Eddy is something more than complex. I think we're all complex. Ms. Eddy is illusive. At the moment you think you understand her, another facet of her character comes in, and it doesn't jive with what the previous one was. I don't think Ms. Eddy can be reduced by anybody's theory, whether its coming from anthropology, psychoanalysis, psychology, sociology..." <ibid>

• "It was not her life she wanted examined by the world, but her books, her teaching, and her church." min 53:50

Off-topic: MBE seems the subject of the article, not the church per se.

• Move to MBE article.

Imbalanced. Powell-1932 is never mentioned in our Wiki article, despite being at least as major a source as the oft-quoted (and negative) Bates-Dittemore - Peel, Thomas 1992, Gottschalk 1973 and 2006. We only have one quote from Gill 1996 to show this, while all the rest are in a very negative voice and do not indicate author controversies by citing authors inline.

• Renamed "Early bios"
• Include Powell's very critical 1907 bio and Sibyl Wilbur's sympathetic bio, which was a direct response to Milmine/McClure's.
• Include the several sympathetic bios that interrogate and question the McClure's/ Milmine conclusions

---

Comments

The main author was Willa Cather:

By the 1930s, however, critics began to dismiss her as a "romantic, nostalgic writer who could not cope with the present."[11] Critics such as Granville Hicks charged Cather with failing to confront "contemporary life as it is"[12] and escaping into an idealized past. During the hardships of the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression, her work was seen as lacking social relevance.[12] Cather's conservative politics and the same subject matter that appealed to Mencken, Randolph Bourne, and Carl Van Doren soured her reputation with younger, often left-leaning critics such as Hicks and Edmund Wilson.[13] Discouraged by the negative criticism of her work, Cather became reclusive. She burned letters and forbade anyone to publish her letters.

Next Friends suit, Eddy's death

Why are these linked together like this?

• redo so emphasis is on implications of NF suit and MBE death for church

Off topic: MBE

• If moved to MBE article, needs to be improved:

Section introduces suit but does not report its conclusion. Says she was found "mentally competent" by examiners, but what of the suit? Was it thrown out, dismissed, appealed, say what happened.

The death of MBE passage includes a fringe view from one primary source media report that Christian Scientists thought MBE would rise from the grave, giving the impression that most Christian Scientists believed this.

• re-write with reference to accounts of MBE's death from recent biographies.

Decline

Events after early church can't be reduced to decline. Decline is one significant factor and should be mentioned but is not nec the dominant factor.

• Rename Contemporary Church

Practices and governance

This empty section should not be empty.

Christian Science prayer

This empty section should not be empty. None of the subsections actually describe CS prayer.

• Rename CS healing.

Practitioners

Just describes org structure.

• mv to Polity.

Prayer, testimonies

Too negative.

• add actual testimonials
• include more on the testimonial record and serious quotes re: healing claims as balance.
• mv to criticism;

Children's rights

This empty space should not be empty.

Equating "children's rights" with civil standard "medical rights" is what critics of CS do, but it should not be done here, where neutrality is paramount.

• mv to Criticism subsection like "care of minors"

Religious exemptions

This is a practice related to healing.

• mv to Practices: CS Healing

Child deaths, prosecutions

• mv to Criticism

Avoidance of vaccination

Not neutral since "avoidance" is a negative term, and "stance" also seems to be more factual since it's not clear from this text that this is "avoidance" (sounds sneaky and evasive); also there is compliance with laws, which this title obscures.

• rename "stance on vaccination"

Christian Science church

Heading violation; repeats main topic.

• Rename Organization or Polity

This empty section should not be empty.

Governance

• OK, neutral.

Notable members

• Move to already existing page titled List of Christian Scientists.

Publishing Society

• Keep first two paras in Polity.
• Mv two paras on Knapp to Controversies.

Works by Mary Baker Eddy

Lacks descriptive text to intro the bullet list.

• add a lead paragraph

Summary

1. Headings and content are largely off topic, having an abstract focus on MBE bio and religious studies, rather than what Christian Science is to the living.

2. History section proportionably too long; dominates at the expense of Theology, which is at least as important.

3. History section repeats/elaborates much of the history listed on the MBE page. This needs to be streamlined/condensed between the two articles. When appropriate, use SS here to refer to bio sections there (and vice-versa).

4. Some sections are not especially relevant here, focusing unduly on MBE bio, and as they already appear on the MBE page, they should be cut here.

5. Sourcing is bad in several sections. Most value judgments and analysis are put in the voice of negative/controversial/primary source biographies; sympathetic and recent biographies are either totally excluded (such as Wilbur 1908 and Powell 1932) or cited only as backup sources in footnotes, without reflecting their views in the text (such as Peel). Gill 1998 is the one occasional exception to this.

6. The text almost never uses inline cites to indicate disagreements between biographers and other authors. Such disagreements exist regarding nearly every event in MBE’s life and nearly every aspect of her church/theology/etc. This is a violation of basic Wiki standards for RS and is so pervasive in our article that it is more standard than the exception.

7. Primary sources are stated as “fact” when the events they cite have been interrogated, questioned, and analyzed by many secondary-source authors in the ensuing 100 years. This is sloppy and un-Wiki.

8. 25% of sources are from negative and controversial works, many primary sources, without any counter-balance.

9. 13% of footnotes cite Peel, but his conclusions are never reflected in the text.

10. It is part of the arc of religious biography that early, charismatic founders first see polarized works, and later balance begins to prevail. Also as critical methods in religious studies have advanced and religious pluralism has become accepted, explicitly critical works have been largely replaced by informed sympathy, a desire to know rather than judge. We this arc in MBE bios. The four most recent scholarly bios now in circulation are Peel, Gill, Gottschalk, and Thomas. The only one of these four our article consistently acknowledges in its text is Gill.

11. Bc the sourcing is so old, the article reads as arcane and stuck in 1910. It gives detailed importance to seemingly minor, uncontextualized events without clarifying why we should care about them.