Robert Arthur Peel (May 6, 1909 – January 8, 1992)[1] was a Christian Science historian and writer on religious and ecumenical topics.
[1] His undergraduate honors thesis, The Creed of a Victorian Pagan, a study of English novelist and poet George Meredith, was published by the university that year.
[1] In the article, he argued for the Christian Science view of humanity as "spiritual rather than material, incapable of corruption and error, no more subject to annihilation than his Maker".
[12] Theologian Cornelius J. Dyck described Peel's approach in Christian Science: Its Encounter with American Culture (1958) as "partisan but gentle, the intention is apologetic but without either alienating the reader or making a wild-eyed convert out of him".
"[14] According to historian James Findlay, Peel was "highly sympathetic" to Eddy; the result was a "flat, one or two-dimensional image that remains unreal".
[15] In the New York Times Book Review in 1978, Martin E. Marty wrote that Peel's work had "begun to break the barriers between apologists and critics".
"But Peel was also dedicated to historical truth and serious scholarship, and his text is supplemented by references, quotations, and copious notes which form a treasure trove for scholars.