Mary Baker Eddy Betrayed: Articles on Appeal

The director's bloodless coup in 1910 began an unjust war of aggression against the status quo established by Mrs. Eddy for her Movement prior to her demise. Within weeks of Mrs. Eddy's passing the five-member ecclesiastical Board of Directors put forth a revised church Manual of their own -- the doctored, 89 the Manual -- and falsely announced themselves to be Mrs. Eddy?s successor, and gradually assumed the papal, kingly position of "The highest ecclesiastical court in the land," in continuing the government of The Mother Church after the Annual Meeting of June, 1911, when this could only be done by breaching the restrictive covenants in the Manual that required that the by-laws of the church Manual be neither amended or annulled. The Directors? refusal to obey the restrictive covenants in the real estate Deeds of Trust and the estoppel covenants in the Manual of the Church led to a number of lawsuits, the most notorious being The Great Literature Litigation of 1919, by which the Publishing Society was seized.