About the Monitor

The Christian Science Monitor is an international daily newspaper published Monday through Friday. Founded in 1908 by Mary Baker Eddy, it's now also a multimedia website, an e-mail edition, a personal digital assistant (PDA) edition, and a downloadable PDF of the print version. Here's an FAQ about the Monitor:

Is the paper a religious periodical?

No, it's a real newspaper published by a church — The First Church of Christ, Scientist in Boston, Mass., USA. Everything in the Monitor is international and US news and features, except for one religious article that has appeared each day in The Home Forum section since 1908, at the request of the paper's founder, Mary Baker Eddy.

In an age of corporate conglomerates dominating news media, the Monitor combination of church ownership, a public-service mission, and commitment to covering the world (not to mention the fact that it was founded by a woman shortly after the turn of the century, when US women didn't yet have the vote!) gives the paper a uniquely independent voice in journalism.

How do you compare to other newspapers covering international news?

Unlike most US dailies, the Monitor does not rely primarily on wire services, like AP and Reuters, for its international coverage. We have writers based in 11 countries, including Russia, China, France, the UK, Kenya, Mexico, Israel and India, as well as throughout the US.

Why does the Christian Science church publish a newspaper?

One answer might be found in a story the Monitor's Washington bureau chief, David Cook, told in a talk he gave several years ago:

“Consider this case. It is 1907. An elderly New England woman finds herself being targeted by Joseph Pulitzer's New York World. She is 86 years old and holds some unconventional religious beliefs that she expounds in a book. The book becomes a bestseller, making her wealthy and a well-known public figure.

The New York World decides she is incapable of managing her own affairs and persuades some of her friends and her two sons to sue for control of her estate.

Although Boston and New Hampshire newspapers and major wire services interview this person and find her competent, the New York World is unrelenting. The lady in question finally is taken to court where the case against her is dropped.

And the next year this woman, Mary Baker Eddy, founds The Christian Science Monitor.

Given her experience with the press, it is not all that surprising that she sets as the Monitor's goal ‘to injure no man, but to bless all mankind.’ In one of life's little ironies, Joseph Pulitzer went on to endow the Pulitzer prizes for journalistic excellence. And Mrs. Eddy's newspaper went on to win five Pulitzers so far. [Since Dave gave this talk, the Monitor won a sixth Pulitzer — the 1996 prize for international reporting, and a seventh Pulitzer in 2002 for editorial cartooning.]

“Mrs. Eddy had been thinking about a newspaper for a long time before 1907. Way back in 1883 she wrote: ‘Looking over the newspapers of the day, one naturally reflects that it is dangerous to live, so loaded with disease seems the very air. These descriptions carry fears to many minds, to be depicted in some future time upon the body. A periodical of our own will counteract to some extent this public nuisance; for through our paper we shall be able to reach many homes with healing, purifying thought.’

There were many more letters and messages to church members from Eddy on the subject between then and the New York World case. Then an interesting coincidence occurred in March 1908, eight months before the paper's launch: Eddy received a long letter from a local journalist and Christian Scientist, John L. Wright. In it, he told her he felt there was a growing need for a daily newspaper that ‘will place principle before dividends, and that will be fair, frank and honest with the people on all subjects and under whatever pressure’ — a truly independent voice not controlled by ‘commercial and political monopolists.’

Wright certainly got the idea. (A few months later he left the Boston Globe to become the Monitor's first city editor.) His was among 1,000 job applications the Monitor's first editor, Archibald McLellan, received prior to launch.”

Is publishing the Monitor about spreading good values?

That's part of it, but let's be clear: The Christian Science church doesn't publish news to propagate denominational doctrine; it provides news purely as a public service. Here's why: If the basic theology of that church says that what reaches and affects thought shapes experience, it follows that a newspaper would have significant impact on the lives of those who read it.

A newspaper whose motive is “to injure no man, but to bless all mankind,” as its founder charged, would have a "leavening" effect on society, as well as on individual lives — to use a metaphor Eddy herself appreciated and used. The idea is that the unblemished truth is freeing (as a fundamental human right); with it, citizens can make informed decisions and take intelligent action, for themselves and for society.

Then if the paper's basically secular and for everybody, why is “Christian Science” in its name?

Eddy insisted, against strong opposition from some of her advisers and church officers, that the words “Christian Science” should be in the paper's name. According to one of her biographers, Robert Peel, to Eddy, "the designated title was an identification of the paper with the promise that no human situation was beyond healing or rectification if approached with sufficient understanding of man's God-given potentialities. Nor did the “good news” of Christianity involve the prettification of bad news, but rather, its confident confrontation" (witness Monitor correspondent David Rohde's Pulitzer Prize-winning reporting 1995 on alleged massacres by Bosnian Serb forces).

How would I find out more about the Monitor's founder and Christian Science?

Visit www.christianscience.com for information about Christian Science and our publisher, The First Church of Christ, Scientist. To learn more about our publisher you may also visit www.churchofchristscientist.org.

For more about Mary Baker Eddy, the pioneering woman who founded the Monitor, see The Mary Baker Eddy Library for the Betterment of Humanity at www.marybakereddylibrary.org.

At www.spirituality.com you can learn more about Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, the premier work by Monitor founder Mary Baker Eddy. You'll find articles, discussions, and events showing how people are using spiritual ideas in their daily lives.

For more information about The Christian Science Monitor, please e-mail us.

Some of the material for this FAQ was drawn from “Mary Baker Eddy: The Years of Authority”, by Robert Peel (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, New York: 1977), and “Commitment to Freedom: The Story of The Christian Science Monitor”, by Erwin D. Canham (Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston: 1958).