REPRINTED WITH PERMISSION FROM THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR
As the Monitor begins our 118th year of publication, our new leadership team is going back to our founding documents.
Delivery vehicles for the Monitor line a street near The Christian Science Publishing Society in 1908. The Christian Science Publishing Society
At a time when shifting corporate interests, market forces, and demographic trends are buffeting many news organizations, The Christian Science Monitor is different. We are published by a church. And that means our work is based on unshakable ideals that aren’t swayed by the latest algorithm.
As we begin our 118th year of publication, our new leadership team is working to both articulate these ideals and enable the sort of journalism that best encapsulates our mission in today’s news ecosystem. To do this, we’ve been going back to our founding documents from 1908, when Mary Baker Eddy established The Christian Science Monitor.
Our founder wrote that she established The Christian Science Monitor “to spread undivided the Science that operates unspent.” What does that mean? Many of us over the years have grappled with this.
We know that she used that term, “Science,” to refer to the operation of divine law in human thought and action. The rest of the phrasing – “spread undivided” and “operates unspent” – echoes the 18th-century British poet Alexander Pope, who used those words in his masterwork “An Essay on Man: Epistle I” to say that God’s creative and benevolent force is everywhere at once, neither diminishing nor separated.
So, what does this have to do with journalism? Prior editors have interpreted this as a charge to focus on “the good that men do, and not the evil,” as Archibald McLellan wrote in 1908; to raise the standard of thought among readers; to focus on progress rather than problems; to investigate the deep values underlying news events.
Here are our five new operational guidelines that we’ve drawn from this history. We have committed to:
•Bring a healing, purifying thought to many homes. We counteract cynicism about news and humanity by upholding a higher standard of both.
•Get above the fray. We are free from corporate and political interests – and our journalism will reflect this.
•Cover the day’s vital global news. We provide a trustworthy and concise compilation for our thoughtful, busy readers.
•Investigate ideals and endeavors, not just events. We keep abreast of the times by recognizing key currents of thought and their impact.
•Be clean, family-friendly, and nonsensational. We are “a newspaper for the home.”
In this season of gratitude and rejoicing, and indeed throughout the year, we see our mission as our daily charge. We see it as our founder’s gift to all of humanity.
Page created on 1/28/2026 7:17:14 PM
Last edited 1/28/2026 7:31:13 PM
