The Destiny of The Mother Church
|
|
The Destiny of The Mother Church is the primary and theologically disputed work of Bliss Knapp, the son of Ira O. and Flavia S. Knapp, students of Mary Baker Eddy. The younger Knapp was a Christian Science lecturer and teacher who became infatuated with his father's conviction that Eddy represented a personal fulfillment of biblical prophecy such as the woman in the 12th chapter of the Book of Revelation. Eddy herself testified in court record and elsewhere that the apocalyptic woman represented a generic, universal type of the world's persecution of spiritual truth rather than a specific personality, though she did not hesitate to identify with the experience the woman represented.
Knapp incorporated his teachings into an early book draft of Destiny, subsequent to which the Christian Science Board of Directors wrote him a six-page letter in February 1948 politely explaining and rebuking numerous points they regarded as at erroneous variance from Eddy's teaching. Knapp then withdrew the book, but instead of revising it as they proposed, he expanded it for private issue instead and left it in trust with approximately $100 million in 1990s dollars, acquired by way of marriage to Eloise Mabury, to revert to the Christian Science church if it ever published his work as "authorized literature".
Pressed for funds by its 1990s media ventures through the Christian Science Publishing Society, and in spite of its historical rejection of such a course, the church now acquiesced, to the strong surprise of its membership, arguing that the book did not have to bear the burden of theological correctness members historically had understood the "No Incorrect Literature" bylaw in the Manual of The Mother Church to require. The church issued the book without annotation as Knapp's will demanded, ostensibly as part of a series of biographies of the church's founder. Oddly, the church indirectly acknowledged in a letter to Christian Science teachers, later amended, that it knew Knapp's views departed from Eddy's own; and Knapp, ironically, insistent on making theological arguments, had once emphasized the book was "in no sense the biography of anyone".
Advised in fall 1991 before the book's publication by a six-page letter from church Archivist Lee Johnson of the book's unusual history, a large number of Christian Science branch churches voted not to carry the book or simply declined to order it, though precise figures are difficult to establish. The financial disbursement was contested by alternate beneficiaries Stanford University and the Los Angeles County Art Museum, ultimating in an approximately 50-25-25 negotiated settlement split (in apparent violation of Knapp's original mandate that his terms not be in any way disputed).
The book's publication attracted a fair deal of unwelcome media attention and continued to be held by many members, in spite of the church's defense, to violate Eddy's basic teachings and the Church Manual, the church's equivalent of constitutional law.
- Church of Christ, Scientist (http://www.tfccs.com/index.jhtml;jsessionid=1UGOGU5R3JSRVKGL4L2SFEQ)