Why did Mary Baker Eddy, who founded the Christian Science Church, establish a secular international newspaper, The Christian Science Monitor? Why would a religious leader also have a purpose for news and information? As a staff editor for the Monitor, it’s a question I have thought about a lot.
Today’s news environment is constant and aggressive. In addition to 24/7 cable news and analysis on television, the Internet churns out information from news sites, blogs, and social media networks. When news happens, such as the democratic protests sweeping the Arab world, information is broadcast with startling speed and magnitude.
This steady stream from different media outlets can be as invigorating as it is overwhelming. Sometimes it’s hard to distinguish what is news and what is opinion or reaction. But I’ve come to see that the Monitor has a unique role in this media environment in the way that it presents news that is at once helpful and progressive. And it’s these words—helpful and progressive—that show the Monitor’s relationship to the Christian religious movement called Christian Science.
