First Church of Christ, Scientist | Jackson, Michigan

This former Christian Science church in Michigan, designed by Leonard H. Field Jr., is a remnant of one of the stranger building booms in U.S. history—the Christian Scientists, once the fastest growing religious movement in the US, built more than a thousand churches across the country as the organization grew from a few dozen followers in 1879 to more than 200,000 adherents by 1925, when this church in Jackson opened. 

Two things stand out about that building boom: one, Christian Science was a disproportionately wealthy movement, which enabled even small congregations to build showy, temple-like churches. The movement also had a uniquely rigid ecclesiastical architectural style, so those Christian Science churches were virtually always classical revival. Built in 1925 in a classical revival style on the fashionable outskirts of the downtown of an ambitious, growing city—Jackson’s First Church of Christ Scientist could be the textbook Christian Science church.

So, what’s changed? The Christian Science congregation moved out in the 2010s, but the building they left still looks great. Some light fixtures have been removed and a shame about that stately tree, but I’m pleasantly surprised at how recognizable everything is, especially given the decline of Christian Science and the hollowing out of downtown Jackson. It appears someone did deface the "First Church of Christ Scientist" etched over the front entrance.

...it's now just "Chris".

Mary Baker Eddy organized the first Church of Christ, Scientist in 1879 in Massachusetts. Christian Science is a religious movement that feels like it could have only developed in the late 1800s—an outgrowth of popular education, growing mass literacy, and a male-dominated medical field that still hadn’t discovered basic sanitation or antibiotics and was still coming to grips with germ theory. For a while there, the Christian Scientists’ metaphysical approach to healing exclusively through prayer (basically a placebo) might actually have been a more successful method for some maladies than having a poorly trained surgeon who hadn’t washed his hands in months rooting around your insides. 

Homegrown in the US and theologically daring, Christian Science was disproportionately popular with educated, wealthy white people—especially women. Unlike mainline protestant denominations, there was no limit on how far a woman could advance in Christian Science (obviously, since it was led by a woman), and the movement was energetically suffragist. 

The First Church of Christ, Scientist in Jackson—organized in 1895—practiced for years in a former congregationalist church, but the growing congregation began thinking of expansion by the 1910s. They acquired this lot in 1914 and hired architect Leonard H. Field Jr. to design a new church in 1922. I can’t imagine there was a whole lot of debate when picking an architect—Field was a member of the congregation (and his wife, Helen, literally wrote the congregation's history). Construction started in January 1925 and the building was ready for a late November Thanksgiving service, a Christian Science tradition. 

Classical revival with Ionic columns and a bright, naturally lit auditorium, this fits right into the typical Christian Science style. The 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago inspired that classical style, and Chicago architect Solon Spencer Beman—who became sort of an unofficial house architect for the movement—would further define the neoclassical look of Christian Science churches.

Unlike that other homegrown 19th century American offshoot of Christianity– Mormonism—Christian Science theology staked itself to some pretty concrete empirical claims that scientific progress soon challenged. Vaccines, antibiotics, and modern medicine are all pretty great, and with advances in medical care and without the powerful leadership of Eddy, Christian Science started to decline in the 1950s. 

However, that initial wealth also endowed the movement with the resources—specifically, wildly valuable real estate—for what appears to be an almost managed decline. The movement continues to gradually sell off properties to provide funding to maintain churches and reading rooms for shrinking congregations. Here, the building sold for $200k in 2020, and the First Church of Christ, Scientist and their reading room moved to a much smaller storefront a few blocks away. 

No clue what the new owners intend to do with the building, which will celebrate its 100th birthday this year, but the Zillow listing from 2020 is worth a gander for the interior photos.

Further reading:

• Prayers in Stone: Christian Science Architecture in the United States, 1894-1930 by Paul Eli Ivey
• The Emergence of Christian Science in American Religious Life by Stephen Gottschalk
• "The Rise and Fall of Christian Science" by Rodney Stark

History - christiansciencejacksonmi.com

Our History Today First Church of Christ, Scientist, Jackson and its Reading Room are side-by-side at 145-147 East Michigan Avenue. This downtown area has seen a rejuvenation as it stands... Read more »

christiansciencejacksonmi.com

Thought this ad for a bricklayer and—later—this worker getting injured on the job were worth mentioning.

The architect, Leonard H. Field Jr., was the son of a local department store owner L.H. Field Sr. (..Leonard Senior's cousin, Marshall, had a department store in Chicago that you may have heard of). Family connections and early successes like the Cortland Street YMCA helped Field Jr. carve out a niche designing solid civic buildings in Jackson, particularly schools. Most of his body of work has been demolished–the YMCA, the Jackson YWCA, West Intermediate School, and the Austin Blair School have all been torn down. His Wildwood Apartments—very close to the First Church of Christ, Scientist—are still there, though.