An opinion article in The Washington Post was re-published in the January 7, 2017 edition of the Antelope Valley Press, containing the following headline and statement:

Trump’s aim to mainstream heresy deeply troubling

… The headwater for both streams is New Thought, formulated especially by Phineas Quimby, a late 19th-century mesmerist whose mind-cures attracted Mary Baker Eddy, founder of Christian Science. The basic idea of his “gnostic medicine” was that we’re sick only because we think bad thoughts. Illness and death are an illusion.

Published response from Don Ingwerson in January 29, 2018 paper:

Misreading teachings of Mary Baker Eddy

Michael Horton, in his commentary, “Trump’s aim to mainstream heresy deeply troubling,” Jan. 7,  raises important moral issues in his recent article on the theology known as the “prosperity gospel.”  

The article, however, misreads the teaching of Mary Baker Eddy – the founder of the Church of Christ, Scientist – in connecting it with this theology.

Actually, Eddy’s teaching is rooted in very different values. She didn’t teach that “God dispenses material wealth and health,” or that material gains or selfish pursuits in any sense outweigh the true priorities of Christianity: love for God, love for humanity, honesty and integrity in all things, redemption from sin, following the example of Jesus, as far as we understand it, inwardly as well as outwardly.

Christian Scientists – the common name for members of our church – haven’t always lived up to these values, but they’re at the heart of who we are as a church and how, at least at our best, we are trying to live.

The same applies to our understanding of prayer. Like many Christians, we have a deep conviction that turning to God’s unchanging, impartial love in prayer can meet human needs in a practical sense, including healing of the body. 

But Jesus set the true priorities for prayer in his Sermon on the Mount: “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness.” This is a far cry from praying for riches, from positive thinking, and from the “mind cures” through suggestion attributed to the nineteenth century figure P.P. Quimby. Eddy’s encounter with Quimby largely helped her see how different the use of human mind power is from genuine Christian healing. 

“Are we benefited by praying?” she wrote. “Yes, the desire which goes forth hungering and thirsting after righteousness is blessed of our Father, and it does not return void.”