Talk:Christian Science

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	Christian Science has been listed as one of the Philosophy and religion good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can reassess it.
Article milestones Date Process Result February 20, 2013 Good article nominee Listed

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The contentious topics procedure applies to this article. This article relates to pseudoscience and fringe science. Editors who repeatedly or seriously fail to adhere to the purpose of Wikipedia, any expected standards of behaviour, or any normal editorial process may be blocked or restricted by an administrator.

The content of Church_of_Christ,_Scientist was merged into Christian Science on 14 October 2012. The former page's history now serves to provide attribution for that content in the latter page, and it must not be deleted as long as the latter page exists. For the discussion at that location, see its talk page.

it feels EXTREMELY disingenuous and unbalanced to me that there isn't a section of this article specifically dedicated to the controversy and negative impacts of Christian Science -- the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Wikipedia page, for instance, has a whole "criticism and controversies" section, but Christian Science just gets passing mention in the overall summary of the past child cases, as if there aren't multiple continued, current documented Christian Science community deaths, illness outbreaks, etc, and extensive discussion of Christian Science as a cult by ex-members...this feels even more like an oversight when considering how detailed sections like the "prayer" part of the article are, or other detailed metaphysical explanations about the church's beliefs, with maybe interspersed nods to them being questionable. 72.249.242.210 (talk) 23:19, 8 November 2024 (UTC)Reply

Feel free to add this section if you have good sources and enough content; you can move much of the related content & sources from “healing” into your new section. Livin270 (talk) 14:23, 21 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

I'll pretend that you didn't do it, Wikipedia guest. Rdgscratch is back (talk) 04:32, 4 July 2025 (UTC)Reply

I'm having a hard time grasping the relation of this article to our other Wikipedia articles. It's very similar to Church of Christ, Scientist. Both contain history, beliefs, and practices. The only real distinguishing feature I see is § Metaphysical family which provides some more context for the early development of Christian science beliefs and practices. So what's the difference in scope? Even if such a difference can be established, are our articles better for being split or would they be better merged?

History of the Christian Science movement also exists, and is partially organized topically rather than chronologically, which seems unsuitable for such an article. Perhaps portions of that article and Christian Science § Metaphysical family should be merged into an article at Development of Christian Science beliefs? Daask (talk) 12:51, 25 December 2024 (UTC)Reply

This article is considerably biased towards the rhetoric that of the Church. It does not document the lack of formal medical training of Christian Science "nurses", nor does it document the numerous deaths resulting from parents not getting medical treatment for their children. This article is should in fact not even be a GA.— Your local Sink Cat (The Sink). 06:39, 1 June 2025 (UTC)Reply

There is a little mention under the section on CS theology of Eddy's similarity to Shakerism (which she may well have been softly influenced by in early life) but I feel it too closely implies a connection between Lee's version of a "Father-Mother God" with Eddy's. They are quite different theologies past the surface level, so the reference here seems pretty out of place. If nobody is opposed to me adding a little clarification in the section outlining a little further this point, I will. I would like to, in fact, make clear the distinction from Shakerism (which can be sourced pretty easily from Peel) since it seems a pressing enough misconception that it ought to be addressed, at least in brief. If it is too tangential for the article, however, I think the reference to Shakerism should be dropped entirely. As it lies, it is rather too vague and may lead to a misunderstanding, especially for the lay reader. Thanks all. ~2026-11646-24 (talk) 21:09, 21 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

Hello, I saw that the user @Soderstromverrier has been contributing a huge quantity of edits, many reverted, some multiple times, and I have some issues with the edits made after those reverts. I wanted to start this talk page to see if some issues can be worked out and reach a resolution. My current issue with the article is that there have been multiple either incorrect or seemingly heavily biased edits from Soder, such as this, where footnote 9 right after clearly refutes it, or here, which claims that Christian Science is more scripturally based than the New Thought movement, showing a clear bias. While I do appreciate the intention of some of Soder's contributions, such as this one, (I could see how it might be important to more clearly emphasize that Eddy's teachings weren't didn't come from Quimby), however it attributes factual claims to the book written by Gill that aren't there.

I think that given how widespread Soder's edits are, and the current low quality of some of those edits, that it might be best to revert to this past version, and keep editing from there. I would appreciate any thoughts on this.

Now speaking to Soder, I appreciate that you are passionate about this subject and seem to want to contribute. I hope that whatever happens to this page, that you can continue to contribute after, and harness your passion to better wikipedia. I do ask however that you read up a bit on the style and best practices used here on wikipedia, particularly WP:Primary. I know you were a bit confused as to why some of those on your talk page were saying you shouldn't use primary sources, so here is an example as to why the rules are the way they are. If I were to claim that Lincoln was not anti-slavery, and cite one of his speeches or letters, you could just as easily claim that he was, and cite a different speech. That is why reliable secondary sources are so important, because they can much more reliably look at all of the sources and figure out what is out of context or what opinions might have changed over his life, then we can swoop in and cite that secondary source and say something along the lines of, "While Lincoln was less vocal about his anti-slavery positions earlier in life, his private letters support that he was anti-slavery his whole life and only grew more vocal about the subject after being elected" (no clue how accurate this is, it's just an example). If anyone has any other suggestions as to things for you to look into, I suggest they suggest those.

I hope we can all work together to figure out a resolution for this- Therealdoomcat (talk) 23:23, 10 August 2026 (UTC)Reply

Agree with revert, the additions since then have been a mix of subtle and not-so-subtle POV pushing that have badly degraded the article. Bon courage (talk) 00:23, 11 August 2026 (UTC)Reply

I understand that primary sources are in general questioned by Wikipedia-- unless access to the primary sources is widespread, as it is in the case of Eddy's Science & Health. If one were to quote largely secondary sources, which may be biased, there is no gain in terms of scholarship.

I have not been able to learn how to cite individual pages in Science & Health despite studying the instructions.

My question remains how to improve the scholarship of this article.

Soderstromverrier Soderstromverrier (talk) 17:55, 16 August 2026 (UTC)Reply

The reference to Gill questioned above is accurate. Quimby left no manuscripts and did not publish articles or books. Gill writes (pp. 143-144) that Quimby left in his own handwriting "only a few pages of a single, highly contentious document.... The rest of the P.P. Quimby autographs are personal letters or drafts that eloquently testify to his incapacity to spell simple words or write a simple, declarative sentence." Soderstromverrier (talk) 18:10, 16 August 2026 (UTC)Reply

I apologize. You are correct on that point. I was only looking at pages 119-121, which were the ones cited. I should have done a more thorough check through the source, I appreciate you pointing me to the right pages. Perhaps for that section, instead of mentioning the manuscripts at all (which might be confusing for the reader, as it is referencing a whole argument and discussion that is unknown to the readers), it could reference the last paragraph of page 146? (I've spent about 10 minutes trying to figure out how to word it coherently but just kept failing, perhaps you can work something out?) Therealdoomcat (talk) 18:58, 16 August 2026 (UTC)Reply

I would like to ask if you have any defense of the first two edits I reverenced. Also, can I ask why you essentially added all of your reverted edits back? I waited 2 days after making this talk post, pointing you to it multiple times, and being in discussion with you about resources to learn about wikipedia best practices. After that time, I didn't see any reply from you and so decided to go ahead with it. Is there a reason you decided to re-add those reverted edits, including the ones I pointed out, without any discussion here first?

I think it would be best to get some third parties involved at this point. Both to help us figure this out and also perhaps to point you to resources that I am unaware of that might explain things better than I could. Therealdoomcat (talk) 19:12, 16 August 2026 (UTC)Reply

Hello, Therealldoomcat. While I am a donor to Wikipedia, I am not well-versed in the style or process. I come to this effort with a background in English writing and editing. And have spent the last 30 years editing articles (and finding references) in medical science for physicians and research scientists.

Accurate citation is really important to establish scholarship.

What is the best way to resume? From the reversion of the very first sentence, I take it that you deny that Christian Science is a religion. Yet, the law allows the use of "Church of Christ, Scientist."

Again, if I could understand how to cite different pages of sources, I could provide a well-referenced text.

I cannot understand why you want to cite Gill page 146 final paragraph, which contains her conclusions not her findings.

Soderstromverrier Soderstromverrier (talk) 19:58, 16 August 2026 (UTC)Reply

"I take it that you deny that Christian Science is a religion" I don't, perhaps I should have been more clear. When I suggested to revert all the way, it was because you had made over 100 edits at that point (though many had already been reverted), and they permeated the entire article. Given the clear bad quality of a few of your edits, (the ones I pointed out), it would have taken many many hours to scrutinize each and every edit you made. I was hoping that we could wipe the slate clean, perhaps you could read up on the different resources I provided you, and then we can all work together to better the article. The reversion was for everything, even good ones you made like this one https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Christian_Science&diff=prev&oldid=1349964976. I was hoping that we could add the good ones back afterwards. I don't think it is not a religion by any means.

As for different pages, again I point to Wikipedia:Citing sources#Citing multiple pages of the same source. I would suggest using {{rp}} as it suggests in there. To do so in visual edit, after inserting a citation to Science and Health for example, type a double bracket {{ and then a window should pop up that mentions templates. Search "rp" and a template for Reference Pages should pop up. Click that, then just insert the page numbers you want. That will make something that looks like ^[1]:25-28. Template:Reference page is the full documentation. Hopefully if you have issues, you might be able to find answers to them there.

As to my suggestion to use page 146, it is specifically because it is conclusions and not findings. The way you edited the section previously, a reader just randomly stumbles upon a reference to manuscripts that were fake without any context as to why that is at all important or relevant (they don't know for example that the controversy mentioned by Gill included fights about fake manuscripts produced by followers of quimby in order to bolster their claims about Eddy taking part or much of her ideas from Quimby (as an aside to this aside, Gill (at least in the parts I have had time to read so far, so feel free to disagree on this) doesn't seem to discredit that some of Eddy's ideas could have come from her time talking with Quimby, only that there weren't manuscripts she pulled from)). If we want to discuss all those things about the manuscripts and make them into another paragraph, that is an option, however, I don't think that would add much to the article as a whole, and if we want to clarify that that controversy didn't have very strong legs, it would be better to add and edit along the lines of: ...what biographer Gillian Gill would call the "single most controversial issue" of her life, though according to Gill, much of the evidence produced was "not only weak but largely rigged". and then add the page 146 citation.

Finally, I ask again about those two edits I brought up.

Cheers, and I hope the more detailed explanation of citing pages helps- Therealdoomcat (talk) 20:49, 16 August 2026 (UTC)Reply