In Honor of the Opening of an Exhibit Honoring Mary Baker Eddy at Pace University

In Honor of the Opening of an Exhibit Honoring Mary Baker Eddy at Pace University

HON. JERROLD NADLER

OF NEW YORK IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

Tuesday, January 28, 2003

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to commemorate the opening of an exhibit honoring Mary Baker Eddy at Pace University in downtown New York City. Today, Pace University will host a reception honoring "This is Woman's Hour . . .," a nationally acclaimed exhibit that has traveled around the country educating Americans about the extraordinary life of Mary Baker Eddy, one of the 19th century's greatest women pioneers. I am pleased to welcome this exhibit to my Congressional district. Mary Baker Eddy may not be as widely known as Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, but she was well known to them. As an author, religious leader, and health reformer, Mary Baker Eddy was one of the first American women to live the life envisioned by the leaders who gathered at Seneca Falls in 1848 for the First Woman's Rights Convention. Commenting on Eddy's success as a spiritual leader, Susan B. Anthony said, "for nineteen hundred years . . . man has been much occupied establishing faiths and formulating creeds for woman to follow . . . . When woman does write her creed, it will be one of right actions, not of theological theories." Eddy's major work, published in 1875, was honored over a hundred years later by the Women's National Book Association as "one of 75 books by women whose words have changed the world." In 1908, at the age of 87, Eddy founded The Christian Science Monitor, which is known today around the world for its commitment to excellence and journalistic integrity. Mary Baker Eddy has been honored by the National Women's Hall of Fame and the National Foundation for Women Legislators, and the exhibit now open at Pace University has received the praise of leaders in every city and state it has visited. It is now my pleasure to welcome this exhibit to Manhattan. It is fitting that this exhibit opens just a few blocks away from where the World Trade Center once stood; as we come together to envision the kind of future we hope to create, in our city, our country, and around the world, it is wise to remember Mary Baker Eddy's words: "The right of woman to fill the highest measure of enlightened understanding and the highest places in government is inalienable . . . This is woman's hour."