oPARA gPAR@ ` ╧TEXT ` ┴Stetson, Augusta Emma Simmons
1842╨1928
religious leader
Born on October 12, 1842, in Waldoboro, Maine, Augusta Simmons grew up in nearby Damariscotta. She attended public schools and the Lincoln Academy in New Castle, Maine. In 1864 she married Captain Frederick J. Stetson, a member of a shipbuilding firm with whom she lived in London, in India, and in British Burma before his retirement for reasons of health. They settled in Boston, where in 1882 she enrolled in the Blish School of Oratory with the idea of becoming a professional lecturer and elocutionist.
In 1884 she attended a lecture by Mary Baker Eddy and was persuaded by Eddy herself to attend her Massachusetts Metaphysical College. On completing the three-week course in November she went to Maine to practice Christian Science. She reported a number of remarkable cures in her practice, and in 1885 she was called back to Boston as one of five preachers in Eddy╒s own church. In November 1886 she was sent to organize the church in New York City.
In February 1888 a Christian Science church was incorporated in New York with Stetson as preacher. Her formal ordination as pastor (a title later changed to First Reader) of the First Church of Christ, Scientist, New York City, occurred in October 1890. In 1891 she established the New York City Christian Science Institute to train practitioners. Her tall, stately figure, her elegant appearance, her rich speaking voice, and her magnetic personality attracted a large and rapidly growing following, a considerable portion of which was personally devoted to her. As the congregation grew it moved several times to larger quarters; in 1894 they met in the Scottish Rite Hall, in 1896 they bought the old Rutgers Presbyterian Church, and in 1899 work was begun on a new building, a huge granite edifice at 96th Street and Central Park West that cost more than a million dollars (it was completed without a mortgage) and that was larger than Eddy╒s Mother Church in Boston. It was dedicated in November 1903, and the next year Stetson moved into an adjoining home, an opulently furnished mansion built for her by her congregation.
These and other evidences of Stetson╒s success created anxieties in the Mother Church, where she was soon suspected of the ambition to supplant Eddy. In 1902 an edict limiting the terms of all Christian Science readers to three years was issued. Stetson duly resigned as First Reader in New York, but her influence was undiminished.
In 1909 an investigation of her was undertaken. In September her license as a Christian Science teacher and practitioner was revoked on grounds that she had taught various heresies, including that sex and procreation were evil, and had attempted to use mental means to cause harm to others. In November she was excommunicated, along with an inner circle of her followers. She continued to live in her home, however, and retained her post as principal of the New York Christian Science Institute. She continued also to proclaim her entire loyalty to Eddy. Gradually she came to interpret her trials as a call to lead the way to a higher form of Christian Science, the ╥Church Triumphant.╙ After Eddy╒s death in 1910 Stetson predicted her resurrection. (She later also announced her own immortality.) Supported by wealthy followers, she continued to preach her version of Christian Science until her death.
Between 1918 and 1926 she directed a choral society that gave highly successful annual concerts of ╥spiritual music.╙ She spent heavily on newspaper advertising and published Reminiscences, Sermons, and Correspondence, 1913, Vital Issues in Christian Science, 1915, My Spiritual Aeroplane, 1919, Poems, Written on the Journey from Sense to Soul, 1921, and Sermons Which Spiritually Interpret the Scriptures and Other Writings on Christian Science, 1924. In 1925 one of her students bought her a radio station, over which she spoke and read five times weekly. She died in Rochester, New York, on October 12, 1928.
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