How Christian Science got started in Texas
Texas has a wonderfully rich history of Christian Science and its practice!
Around 1887, a woman from Austin, Texas visited her sister in Chicago, Illinois. Her sister had been healed in Christian Science, and this woman, while visiting her sister in Chicago, was also healed of a similar condition. Because of their healings, both sisters got together and took Christian Science Class Instruction from Mary W. Adams, C.S.D. Adams was a teacher of Christian Science living in Chicago, who had been taught by Mary Baker Eddy, the Founder of Christian Science.
After Class, the one sister returned to Austin, and for the next 10 years she evangelized by healing others through her understanding of Christian Science, the revelation prophesized by Christ Jesus.
Her efforts established the first organization of Christian Science in the state of Texas.[1] Although she later moved to Chicago, she left many who were interested in and practicing Christian Science. Those she left behind wrote to Mrs. Eddy requesting more information. And, boy, did Mrs. Eddy respond!
It has always been interesting to me that Mrs. Eddy didn’t send periodicals, lecturers, or encouraging epistles. No. She sent her pupil George Wickersham. George was an evangelist in the truest sense. He traveled frequently from Boston to Denver and everywhere in between, healing and teaching. So, when George arrived in Austin, he began teaching classes in Christian Science. One of his pupils would become an evangelist for the rights and liberties of Texans practicing Christian Science.
Healing is what started the Christian Science movement in Austin. And healing is what started the movement in Boston.
The sister from Austin, Mrs. M.A. Hazzard, had started something that would not be quieted – the public healing of Christian Science. She created a thirst for Christian Science which Wickersham would quench, but it would be his pupil, Robert Ziller, who defended the practice of Christian Science from medical impositions in Texas.
Ziller found Christian Science when he was sixteen. At 17 he was devoting much of his time to the practice of healing the sick. He was also enrolled as a student at the University of Texas. There, in a chemistry lab, he accidentally inhaled the fumes of prussic acid gas. This left him lying on the floor of the lab, unconscious for over an hour. He notes however, that during this time, while oblivious to his body, his thought was perfectly clear. So, he treated himself in Christian Science, which is prayer specifically directed toward one's thought (one's own or another's), that is based on the laws of God as found in the Bible. When Ziller awoke, he was deeply impressed with the experience and realized that had he not had a knowledge of Christian Science to pull him through he would have walked through the valley of the shadow of death instead. Ziller went on to devote all his efforts toward Christian Science, became a teacher, and worked in Texas for over 70 years as a modern-day evangelist, healing the sick and sinner.[2]
Stay tuned next week to learn about how Mrs. Anson Jones, the wife of the president of the Republic of Texas, and also the President of the Daughters of the Republic of Texas, defends Christian Science in court!
