Stephen Gottschalk Explained

Stephen Gottschalk
Birth Date:c. 1941
Birth Place:Beverley Hills, California
Death Place:Boston, Massachusetts
Education:Occidental College (BA)
University of California, Berkeley (MA, PhD)
Occupation:Historian
Discipline:American religion
Sub Discipline:Christian Science, New Thought, new religious movements
Thesis Title:The Emergence of Christian Science in American Religious Life, 1885–1910
Thesis Url:http://oskicat.berkeley.edu/record=b18539186~S53
Thesis Year:1969

Stephen Gottschalk (c. 1941 – 10 January 2005) was a historian of American religion focusing on the Christian Science church, also known as the Church of Christ, Scientist. A lifelong Christian Scientist, Gottschalk worked from 1978 until 1990 for the church's Committee on Publication in Boston, however, he became critical of the church organization in the 1990s.[1] [2] [3]

Gottschalk was best known as the author of The Emergence of Christian Science in American Religious Life (1973) and Rolling Away the Stone: Mary Baker Eddy's Challenge to Materialism (2005). __TOC__

Background

Born in Beverley Hills, California, Gottschalk graduated from Harvard School, a former military school in Los Angeles.[1] He obtained a BA in 1962 from Occidental College, an MA in 1963 from the University of California, Berkeley, and a PhD in history in 1969, also from UC Berkeley, for a thesis entitled The emergence of Christian science in American religious life, 1885–1910; the thesis became his first book, published in 1973.[4] From 1967 to 1975 he was an assistant, then associate, professor of history in the department of government and humanities at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California.[5]

From 1978 until 1990, Gottschalk worked for the Christian Science church's Committee on Publication in Boston, but left after a disagreement about the church's direction. In 1989 he gave an interview to U.S. News & World Report in which he said the church had become "worldly"; he was concerned about the amount of money it had spent during the 1980s on radio and television services. In March 1990, he told the church's board of directors that he believed it was suppressing internal dissent, and left his position shortly afterwards. From then until his death he worked as an independent scholar.[6] In the 1990s he led a group known as the Mailing Fund which published documents critical of the church.[3]

Selected works

Notes and References

  1. Anthony Flint, "Stephen Gottschalk, writer, historian of Christian Science", Boston Globe, 18 January 2005.
  2. Caroline Fraser, "Suffering Children and the Christian Science Church", The Atlantic, April 1995.
  3. Singelenberg . Richard . Comments on Rodney Stark's 'the rise and fall of Christian science' . Journal of Contemporary Religion . January 1999 . 14 . 1 . 127–132 . 10.1080/13537909908580856 . en . 1353-7903.
  4. For the MA thesis, see Stephen Gottschalk, Essays in American Naturalism, Occidental College, 1962.
  5. Naval Postgraduate School, Catalogue for 1970–1972, p. 89; and Catalogue for 1974–1976, pp. 40, 86.
  6. Caroline Fraser, God's Perfect Child, Metropolitan Books, 1999, pp. 373–374.