Christian Science is a religious movement founded by Mary Baker Eddy (1821-1910), who organised the Church of Christ, Scientist in Boston in 1879 and set out its teaching in her textbook Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, first published in 1875. Eddy taught that God is wholly good and wholly spiritual, divine Mind, and that the material world, along with sickness, sin and death, is ultimately unreal, an error of mortal belief to be overcome. On this basis the movement holds that healing is achieved not through medicine but through prayer that corrects mistaken thought and realigns the individual with spiritual reality, understood as a recovery of the healing practised by Jesus and the early church.
The Bible and Science and Health together serve as the church's "pastor," and Sunday services consist largely of readings from the two, without a preaching minister. The church trained practitioners, who pray with those seeking healing, together with teachers and nurses within its own system. Eddy also founded, in 1908, The Christian Science Monitor, which became a respected international newspaper quite distinct in character from the church's religious mission.