You’ve probably driven by the Longyear Museum, which is dedicated to the life of Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of Christian Science.

While the main museum building is in Brookline, she also lived at 400 Beacon St. in Newton. But who was she? Why was she in Chestnut Hill?

You can read all about her and the founding of the church in Amy B. Vorhees’s book, “A New Christian Identity: Christian Science Origins and Experience in American Culture.”

Closer to ‘Mother’

She moved into her Beacon Street house in 1908, at the tail end of a long career dedicated to the promotion of her church, known as the Church of Christ, Scientist. It offered a radical take on the Gospel: that healing was a spiritual science that anyone could learn how to practice.

She had lived in Concord, N.H., for 18 years, close to where she grew up in Bow. But she wanted to be closer to the Mother Church, which is in Boston’s Back Bay. This led her to relocate to Newton.

“The original house only had 15 rooms, but Mrs. Eddy had it enlarged before she moved in, because this was more than a house; it was the executive headquarters of the church,” said Sandy Houston, the executive director of the Longyear Museum.

There were 20 staff members, both male and female, who lived in the house. Some of them cooked or cared for the horses, but others were dedicated full-time to praying, including praying for Eddy during the middle of the night.

And even the groundskeeper was a long-time Christian Scientist.

“It was a house that was focused on prayer and God and living the teachings of Christ Jesus. Everybody in the house was a Christian Scientist,” said Houston.

The people who lived in the house were extremely devoted to Eddy and to the denomination that she had started. Eddy called them to work there, and even when they learned that their expected length of service was longer than they thought, they continued to serve. She rose early to read the Bible and pray and offer instruction in Christian Science to her staff members.

While living in Newton, she also finished Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, the textbook of Christian Science, as well as the Manual of the Mother Church, which guides the church’s organizational structure. This was also where Eddy would found the Christian Science Monitor, one of the few long-running American newspapers founded by a woman.

Eddy had been contemplating founding a newspaper for decades, and she finally did so in 1908. One of the reasons for this was unscrupulous newspapermen calling to ask about her death, despite her not being dead.

The Christian Science Monitor has won seven Pulitzer prizes and today is acclaimed for its in-depth reporting.

A way for women

In other ways, too, Eddy was an innovator.

Eddy talked about discovering this science after a fall on ice in Lynn in 1866. She said the physician told her she wouldn’t recover, but she did recover due to “Divine Science.”

In a world where conventional medicine was often ineffective at best and harmful at worst, this was appealing. It was especially appealing to women, whose health problems were often ignored or minimized by male physicians.

By 1926, 74% of Christian Scientists were women. Christian Science was a denomination founded by a woman, and allowed women to hold leadership roles at a time when that was rare in most American churches.

Eddy initially would use female pronouns for God, and she’d later refer to God as Father-Mother God. And she was a strong supporter of the woman suffrage movement. Calling her a feminist would perhaps be anachronistic, as she did not agree with the actions of many women’s activists, because she disliked their public activism. She was also frustrated by the way some women’s activists, like Elizabeth Cady Stanton, refuted traditional Christian beliefs.

Eddy was regularly criticized by men for being a woman engaged in Biblical interpretation, but her book and her ideas were incredibly popular, among both male and female readers.

There were clergymen of orthodox Protestant denominations who attended Christian Science courses, which Eddy hoped would lead to Christian Science becoming mainstream among existing Protestant churches, although it did not. There were practitioners of non-Christian new religious movements, like New Thought and Theosophy, who appreciated the teachings of Christian Science, although Eddy, being a devout Christian, did not appreciate them.

There were even enough Jews who converted that some Jewish leaders invented a ‘Jewish Science’ as an alternative. (Eddy did, however, ban Christian Scientists from trying to instruct Roman Catholics, unless the Catholic church gave permission).

Eddy’s beliefs were criticized for reasons other than her gender, particularly due to her disagreement with conventional medicine. This led to deaths among Christian Scientists during her lifetime and still does today. Her theory of ‘malicious animal magnetism,’ the idea that someone’s negative thoughts can truly harm another, led to one Christian Scientist suing another in what became known as the ‘Second Salem Witch Trial.’

Others disagreed with her fundraising methods, such as asking Christian Scientists to purchase souvenir spoons with her face on them. Nonetheless, she is an important figure in the annals of American women’s history and American religious history.

The Longyear Museum has many exhibits relating to the life of Mary Baker Eddy, including the house at 400 Beacon St. Guided tours require scheduling three days in advance.