Malinda Cramer

Malinda Elliott Cramer (June 12, 1844 – August 2, 1906) was a founder of the Church of Divine Science, a healer, and an important figure in the early New Thought movement.

Biography
Cramer was born in Greensboro, Indiana, the daughter of Obediah and Mary Hinshaw Elliott. Hoping to alleviate a persistent health problem, she moved to San Francisco in 1872, where she met Charles Lake Cramer, a photographer, whom she married in 1872. Despite the move, health problems continued to plague her, making her an effective invalid.

In 1885, perhaps under the impetus of Christian Scientist Miranda Rice, Cramer had what she described as a divine revelation after an "hour of earnest mediation and prayerful seeking" and "that hour was the beginning of my realization of the oneness of Life, [and] a gleam of its Truth flashed across my mental vision". Within two years she was healed.

Divine Science
In 1887, she began to practice faith-healing herself. In October 1888, Cramer inaugurated Harmony, a monthly journal. In May 1888, she and her husband opened what would become the Home College of Divine Science. The term "Divine Science", however, was not coined by Cramer, but had been used earlier by Mary Baker Eddy, founder of Christian Science, as well as by Wilberforce Juvenal Colville, who had published a book by that title that year.

In 1892, Cramer founded the International Divine Science Association, a forerunner of the International New Thought Alliance, which would interconnect the various New Thought centers. In 1893, she helped open the second Divine Science College, in Oakland, and undertook several cross-country missionary trips.

Between 1893 and 1898, Cramer trained Nona L. Brooks, ordaining her as a minister in the Church of Divine Science on December 1, 1898. Brooks returned to Denver and, with sisters Fannie Brooks James and Alethea Brooks Small, formed a church there, one which would eventually become the home church of the denomination.

Cramer died August 2, 1906, in San Francisco, due to a recurrence of her tuberculosis as a result of the aftermath of the great San Francisco earthquake.