Jeremy Rapport

Unity School of Christianity

UNITY SCHOOL OF CHRISTIANITY TIMELINE   

1845 (August 6):  Myrtle Fillmore was born Mary Caroline Page in Pagetown, Ohio.

1854 (August 22):  Charles Fillmore was born in St. Cloud, Minnesota.

1881 (March 29):  Myrtle and Charles Fillmore were married.

1886 (Spring):  Myrtle Fillmore heard a lecture on New Thought affirmation healing technique.

1887 (July): The Fillmores received certification as Christian Science healers.

1889 (Spring):  The Fillmores began a healing practice in Kansas City, Missouri.

1889 (April):  The first issue of Modern Thought, the first Unity magazine, was published.

1889 (April):  The Society of Silent Unity was founded.

1903:  The Kansas City Society of Practical Christianity, a nonprofit church, was founded.

1909:  Unity began correspondence courses.

1914 (April 14):  The Unity School of Christianity was formally incorporated.

1920:  The Fillmores acquired the land that would become Unity Village.

1921 (April 12):  The first Statement of Faith was published.

1931:  Myrtle Fillmore died.

1948:  Charles Fillmore died.

1925:  The Unity Ministers’ Association, precursor to the Association of Unity Churches, was formed.

1989 (January):  The first Statement of Principles was issued under the leadership of Connie Fillmore Bazzy, great granddaughter of Myrtle and Charles Fillmore.

2001:  Connie Fillmore Bazzy led a reorganization of the School under a non-profit management and Board structure, ending exclusive leadership of the Fillmore family.

FOUNDER/GROUP HISTORY

The Unity School of Christianity, the largest and arguably most important of the contemporary, American New Thought movements, was founded in the late 1880s by a couple from Kansas City, Missouri, Myrtle and Charles Fillmore. New Thought is a style of religiosity developed beginning around the middle of the nineteenth century on the East coast of the United States. It posits that human beings create reality through our modes of thought and that God is an all-good, all-encompassing force that humans can access and use through prayer and meditation. Historically, physical healing has been a central concern of most New Thought groups, and many people are primarily familiar with New Thought because of claims about the power of the mind to heal. The movement spread fairly quickly in the second half of the nineteenth century, with major centers emerging in Chicago, Kansas City, Denver, and in several cities on the West coast. New Thought has  also been extremely culturally influential, with New Thought teachings and practices working their way into more mainstream religious groups and the messages of mainstream media figures. Such well-known people as Norman Vincent Peale, Oprah Winfrey, and Joel Osteen all have clear New Thought influences. Unity was born and raised in this New Thought environment.

Myrtle Fillmore, born Mary Caroline Page on August 6, 1845, was raised in the Methodist Church. [Image at right]  She was reasonably well educated for a woman born in nineteenth-century America, finishing high school and enrolling for a time at Oberlin College, where she participated in “The Literary Course for Ladies”(Vahle 1996; Witherspoon 1977:5-10). She eventually took a job as a teacher in Clinton, Missouri, in 1868. Myrtle complained of health problems throughout her childhood and young adult years, and after a particularly difficult period of adjustment to the Missouri climate, doctors advised her to relocate to a warmer and drier area. She moved to a resort for the treatment of consumptive patients near Denison, Texas, sometime in the mid-1870s (Vahle 1996; Witherspoon 1977).

Charles Fillmore was born on August 22, 1854, on an Indian reservation near St. Cloud, Minnesota. Fillmore’s father abandoned the family when Charles was seven, and he was raised by his mother, Mary Fillmore. [Image at right] According to James Dillet Freeman, a poet, author, and historian of the Unity movement, the defining event of Charles Fillmore’s childhood was an ice-skating accident at age ten during which he dislocated his hip. The injury was never adequately treated, and it took Fillmore two years to recover, by which time he had been left with a malformed leg and a serious limp. He also fell behind in school, and although he returned for a brief time after his recovery, he left school permanently a short time later to help support his mother. In 1874, at age nineteen, Fillmore left Minnesota, and he ended up working in a railroad office in Denison, Texas, where he joined a literature and philosophy discussion group. It was in this group that he met Myrtle. Charles and Myrtle married on March 29, 1881 (D’Andrade 1974; Vahle 2008; Freeman 2000:23-25). They eventually settled in Kansas City, Missouri, where Charles entered the real estate business. They had three sons, Lowell Page (1882-1975), Waldo Rickert (1884-1965), known as Rick, and John Royal, known as Royal (1889-1923), all three of whom played important roles in the leadership and later development of Unity.

Like many new and alternative religious movements, Unity does not have clear founding moment. Rather, the Fillmores undertook a series of activities that eventually led them to become leaders of a new group. This is a story of healing practices, publishing enterprises, and denominational-style growth and development, leading to a movement that in the early twenty-first century, is best understood as type of alternative American Protestantism.

When the Fillmores began the healing practice that would lead to Unity, by their own account they did not intend to found a religious movement. Myrtle Fillmore became interested in and used New Thought-inspired healing techniques. Charles then used Myrtle’s healing techniques, and he believed he was able to relieve his constant hip pain and cause his withered leg to grow to its proper length. The experience, combined with Charles’ growing difficulties in the challenging Kansas City real estate market, led him to think much more seriously not only about healing but also about publishing. In April of 1889, Charles published the first issue of Modern Thought, a magazine dedicated to propagating the ideas he and Myrtle had learned and begun to practice (Freeman 2000:54-55). That was the first of several periodicals, as well as pamphlets and books, Unity would publish. Most of the periodicals were aimed at specific audiences, such as mothers and children, or businessmen, while the books tended to be compilations of previous writings edited in new ways and intended for more New Thought- and Christian Science-oriented audiences. It is reasonable to understand much of the Fillmores’ early work as being editors and compilers of the various New Thought ideas and practices that were circulating in the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century American world (Freeman 2000:55). Publishing is central to Unity’s development. The movement has published several different versions of the magazine that is today simply titled Unity Magazine, as well as a children’s magazine (Wee Wisdom), a magazine for businessmen (The Christian Business Man), a popular monthly prayer guidebook (Daily Word) and a newsletter for the organization (Weekly Unity), to name only the more prominent serial publications. Unity has also published a large number of books and tracts. Thus a major part of Unity’s significance comes from the work of the Fillmores editing and codifying the ideas and practices of the diverse early American New Thought world and then making those ideas widely available in published form.

As the twentieth century progressed, Unity continued to grow and to formalize itself as a religious movement. The group began to issue a “Statement of Faith,” developed a correspondence course that eventually became a formal ministerial training program, established a denominational structure, called the Association of Unity Churches for most of the twentieth century, that helped local Unity churches expand, and grew to include Unity churches in every American state as well several in Europe and Asia. The movement also has produced a very informative web site (Unity website n.d.) that includes lots of easily accessible information about both the history of the movement and its current practices and beliefs.

DOCTRINES/ BELIEFS                  

The Fillmores took organizational steps to formalize their teachings by using their publishing work to codify and spread their message. In addition to considerable work by Myrtle and Charles Fillmore, by the early 1890s, Unity had also begun publishing the work of other authors, most importantly that of H. Emilie Cady (1848-1941). Cady was a homeopathic physician in New York who had studied with Emma Curtis Hopkins, an important early New Thought leader who also worked with the Fillmores. Myrtle Fillmore had read a pamphlet written by Cady entitled “Finding Christ in Ourselves” (Freeman 2000:75-76). The short work impressed both of the Fillmores enough that they requested Cady to write a series for their magazine, which subsequently was republished as Lessons in Truth, a work that Unity calls its textbook and that is considered a defining work for modern New Thought (Braden 1963:244-45; Satter 1993:239).

Lessons in Truth is organized into twelve short chapters, each of which addresses a basic concept for Unity. According to Cady, God is an omnipresent, benevolent force that is the basis of all that exists. Humans must understand that force and learn to work with it, and when they do God becomes the source for all that is good in human life. Lessons in Truth also describes the nature of humanity, the nature of the problems confronting humanity, and the way to solve those problems. It is thus a basic theological book for Unity (Cady 1999).

The Fillmores were clearly doing what today many people would consider religious or spiritual seeking. They experimented with various ideas in the New Thought milieu as well as exploring the beliefs and practices of other world religions during the first few decades of Unity’s existence. However, an important step in the development of Unity was its creation of the “Statement of Faith.” The first “Statement of Faith” was published in the February 12, 1921, issue of Weekly Unity. The “Statement of Faith” went through some revision in the first few years, starting at twenty-seven points, then going to thirty-two points in the April 1921 edition of Unity magazine, and finally settling at thirty points in 1939. The document remained unchanged until 1982 when Unity apparently stopped issuing the “Statement of Faith.” The Statements are unsigned, although a note on the box containing the collection at the Unity archives states that Charles Fillmore is the presumed author of all the versions of the “Statement of Faith.”

The “Statement of Faith” marks a pivotal point in Unity’s development as a religious movement.  Primarily, it shows what ideas among the many that the Fillmores learned during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries they considered important enough to include as basic principles for their religious movement. It also marks a formalization of religious ideas as normative for Unity, indicating the point at which Unity might be clearly considered an autonomous religious group, rather than a New Thought movement.

However, Unity now operates under a radically different creedal statement than it did during the time of Myrtle and Charles Fillmore. In the January 1989 edition of Daily Word, Connie Fillmore, then the new president of the Unity, published an article entitled, “An Idea Whose Time Has Come.” In that article Connie Fillmore described Unity’s “Five Principles,” five interpretive statements that she argued represented the core of Unity’s identity. The article was Connie Fillmore’s first major, published statement as president of Unity, and in it she reconceived Unity’s “Statement of Faith.” Prior to that publication, no “Statement of Faith” had been issued since 1982, when the movement was still publishing the 1939 “Statement of Faith.”  The “Five Principles” remain Unity’s basic statement of its identity:

God is the source and creator of all. There is no other enduring power. God is good and present everywhere.

We are spiritual beings, created in God’s image.

The spirit of God lives within each person; therefore, all people are inherently good.

We create our life experiences through our way of thinking.

There is power in affirmative prayer, which we believe increases our connection to God.
Knowledge of these spiritual principles is not enough. We must live them(About Unity).

The revision of Unity’s core identity took place at a time when the organization had begun to recognize the great diversity encompassed within the Unity movement. Unlike the previous “Statement of Faith,” the “Five Principles” lack definitive Christian language and suggest that Unity may be again shifting its identity toward alignment with the more inclusive American religious culture that has developed since the mid-1960s. The “Five Principles” are now widely agreed upon by member ministries and the Unity School, being reprinted in numerous Unity pamphlets and included on the Unity School’s web site, and many of the individual congregations’ websites.

RITUALS/PRACTICES

The formation of actual Unity Churches started in the June 1891 issue of Unity, in which the Fillmores advocated the formation of local branches of an organization they had started called the Society of Silent Unity. The practices and tenets of the Society of Silent Unity linked New Thought messages and practices to conventional Protestant forms. The descriptions in the magazine of the practice lay out a general ritual structure similar in some of its liturgical elements to those found in many Protestant church services. There are recommendations for a lay minister to lead group silent meditation, followed by music and hymns, an individual focus on the thought for the month, then group repetition of the thought, and finally healing practice.

The central of role of illness and injury in both the Fillmores’ lives clearly shaped the development of subsequent Unity rituals and practices. Myrtle continued to experience health problems of various types in her adult life. The Fillmores tried several varieties of healing techniques and attended several lectures on healing in an attempt to help Myrtle recover. Finally, at the suggestion of a friend, they attended a lecture by Eugene B. Weeks of the Illinois Metaphysical College. At that lecture, Myrtle learned a prayer technique known in New Thought circles as affirmation. Affirmations are assertions about reality that, when repeated, bring about that state of reality. In this case, “I am a child of God and therefore I do not inherit sickness,” was the affirmation Myrtle Fillmore used to heal herself.

The Fillmores began a formal healing practice in the spring of 1889. They had both received certification as practitioners of Christian Science in July 1887 (Vahle 2008:207-80). “Local healing,” as Myrtle and Charles referred to their practice of seeing clients in offices for the purpose of healing, was a major part of the Fillmores’ lives. While no records of Myrtle’s healing practices survive, Charles claimed to have seen on average twenty cases a day for twenty years. Healing also began to play a larger role in Unity’s emerging publications, with discussions of various healing techniques as well as accounts of healing frequently appearing in early Unity publications. However, the Fillmores’ local healing practice was never prominently featured in Unity publications (Vahle 2002:208). Much more critical for Unity’s ritual development was the Fillmores’ particular take on another New Thought healing practice called absent or remote healing, the practice of praying for healing for anyone, from anywhere, who requested healing prayer.

Based on these practices of remote healing, in 1890 the Fillmores founded “The Society of Silent Help,” a prayer request organization now known as Silent Unity, which has come to represent Unity to millions of people who every year request prayer from the group. The announcement for the Society appeared in the April 1890 edition of Thought. Written by Myrtle Fillmore, the short piece described a plan to ask people to pray at the same time every day, as well as describing the attributes of God and the human relationship with God.

Whoever will may join this society, the only requirement being that members shall sit in a quiet, retired place, if possible, at the hour of 10 o’clock every night, and hold in silent thought, for not less than fifteen minutes, the words that shall be given each month by the editor of this department.…God is all goodness and everywhere present. He is the loving Father, and I am His child and have all His attributes of life, love, truth, and intelligence. In Him is all health, strength, wisdom, and harmony, and as His child all these become mine by a recognition of the truth that God is all (Freeman 2000:81-82).

Myrtle Fillmore clearly understood the role of absent healing in early New Thought, acknowledging that the practice went back at least to the New Thought pioneer Phineas Quimby. But Fillmore also saw the practice as a traditional part of the Christian healing world, and she cited Matthew 18:19, “I truly tell you that if two of you on earth agree about anything they ask for, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven,” as part of her justification for the practice. Moreover, these early pieces on the practices that would become the basis for Silent Unity demonstrate that Myrtle Fillmore had begun to link all forms of healing ritual practiced in Unity with the work of salvation. She wrote that the Society is “to open a way for those [desiring to come into harmony with the divine Spirit] and to help them overcome their sins, ills, and troubles” (Freeman 2000:81). Myrtle Fillmore was claiming that a practice espoused by Unity teachers could, in addition to facilitating physical healing, have real effects on the state of the practitioner’s relationship with the divine. Silent Unity shows how the Fillmores developed a method for claiming a salvific relationship with the divine by using healing through affirmation and prayer.

According to Neal Vahle, a researcher and former Unity Magazine editor who has published several books on Unity, the purpose of Silent Unity was to facilitate the expansion of the Fillmore’s healing work beyond Kansas City. Clearly, Silent Unity was, and remains, an important part of Unity’s expansion and outreach work. As the part of the work of the Society, which was renamed the Society of Silent Unity in June 1891, Unity published in Unity magazine affirmations to be repeated at certain times of the day. Appearing under the heading “A Daily Word,” these affirmations were expressions of New Thought principles and ideas that the Fillmores taught would help the practitioner connect with “the Spirit of God within” (Vahle 2002:212-13). That column was the nascent form of Daily Word, Unity’s most popular publication today. Vahle also argues that the Society of Silent Unity is the place where the movement’s emphasis on meditation began. The Fillmores saw silent meditation for fifteen minutes a day, a practice they promoted as part of the Society of Silent Unity, as a complement to the use of affirmations in connecting with the divine within (Vahle 2002:213-14). Today, Unity members typically refer to that practice as “going into the silence” or “entering the silence,” and it is an important part of Unity’s prayer practices.

Over the course of its early development, Unity advocated several other practices, most prominently celibacy and vegetarianism, as aids to purifying and healing the body and realigning oneself in a proper relationship with God. Vegetarianism in particular became central to the early Unity identity, and the movement published cookbooks and magazine columns and operated a vegetarian restaurant in downtown Kansas City in the early twentieth century. Such practices demonstrate some of the key ways that Unity was different from Christian Science, a movement that clearly influenced the Fillmores and Unity and to which Unity bore a strong resemblance in many facets of its teaching and practice. Unlike Christian Science, the Fillmores and early Unity practitioners accepted the material reality of the body and that acceptance shaped the types of practices that Unity advocated during its early history.

Despite the central place of those bodily-centered practices in the early movement, after Myrtle Fillmore died the movement began to transition away from advocating physical practices such as vegetarianism toward a more abstract focus on prayer, mediation, and affirmation as the central expressions of Unity’s principles. Neither celibacy nor vegetarianism are part of official Unity teachings today.

ORGANIZATION/LEADERSHIP

For much of its history, Unity was a family-led operation. When Myrtle and Charles Fillmore had passed on, their sons, followed by their grandchildren, took over leadership of the movement. The Fillmores also clearly had Protestant denominational models in mind as the movement grew and developed. In the wake of the development of Silent Unity, the first local Unity Churches outside of the Kansas City area emerged. At the same time, Unity’s publishing work played an increasingly important role in spreading a consistent Unity message to the growing movement.

The development of the Unity movement beginning in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century involved a series of organizational moves by the Fillmores that consolidated the group and provided specific locations for their work. Neal Vahle is certainly correct when he argues that much of Unity’s success and longevity, especially in comparison with other metaphysical movements of that time, must be attributed to Charles Fillmore’s organizational abilities (Vahle 2002:145). Charles’s experiences in the business world clearly played an important role in how he conceived of organizing and leading a religious movement. For example, the Fillmores leased a series of ever-larger offices in typical business-dominated neighborhoods in Kansas City to provide room for the printing operations and the healing work. Unity’s religious messages were issued by publishing companies, the Thought Publishing Company, the Unity Book Company, and the Unity Tract Society. Charles established these and originally ran them as unincorporated private businesses, allowing him to print material from any source he saw fit and facilitating the funding of the movement. Charles also organized the first Unity church, the Kansas City Society of Practical Christianity, as a nonprofit church organization in 1903 (Vahle 2002:145-206). Charles was instrumental in developing the correspondence courses, the first of which began in 1909, which both helped spread the Unity message throughout the United States and were the precursors to the Unity School for Religious Studies, the organization that trains Unity teachers and ministers. Charles also organized and incorporated, on April 14, 1914, of “the Unity School of Christianity” (Vahle 2002:147). [Image at right]

That decision, apparently based on the belief that in order to operate a publishing house the School had to be organized under a business charter as a commercial enterprise, had a profound effect on the subsequent leadership and organization of Unity. Under the original incorporation, fifty shares of stock were issued to the Fillmore family, which maintained control of the School using this stock until 2001, when Connie Fillmore Bazzy, the great granddaughter of Myrtle and Charles, reorganized the School under a non-profit management and Board structure (Vahle 2002:147-52). Several important activities related to Unity’s subsequent development can be understood as manifestations of that small business model.

One of the most important examples of the small business model of operation is the Prosperity Bank. Unity has long emphasized that all of its services are available for “free will offerings” only. However, Unity has also succeeded because of its effective use of fundraising. One of the most important fund-raisers for the movement was based on a combination of New Thought principles and business models for magazine subscriptions. The Unity Prosperity Bank was a method of paying for subscriptions to Unity magazine. The Prosperity Bank was a cardboard box with affirmations for prosperity printed on one side and a slot for inserting dimes.  The individual user of the Prosperity Bank deposited a dime each week to pay the one dollar subscription fee. The subscription began when the Bank was requested. Each individual also received Silent Unity prayer services as part of the request for the Bank. When the grand total of one dollar had been saved, the money was sent to Unity. Vahle describes the Prosperity bank program in great detail and argues, correctly, that is was one of the most important factors in the growth of Unity during the early to mid-twentieth century (Vahle 2002:153-76).

Another key development in the early twentieth century was the acquisition of Unity Farm, known today as Unity Village. The Fillmores bought land south of Kansas City, near Lee’s Summit, in 1920 in order to construct a school for Unity and to expand the space for their burgeoning religious group. Myrtle and Charles assigned responsibility for the development of Unity Village to their second son, Rick. The land, eventually totaling 1,400 acres and housing the headquarters of the Unity School of Christianity, Silent Unity, the Unity Archives and Library, as well as providing a hotel and resort space for Unity retreats, and housing for some key Unity members and the Fillmore family, became the focal point for the Unity movement. Unity Village is the headquarters of the Unity movement as well as its symbolic heart. The buildings on the grounds, notably the Silent Unity tower and the central courtyard fountains, are well known symbols of Unity. This small village, incorporated in 1953, provides a physical location for Unity activities and records. Much like the Vatican in Rome or the Mormon Square in Salt Lake City, Unity Village is the geographic center of the Unity world. [Image at right] The land, the buildings, and the materials at Unity Village, in addition to providing a physical location to house records and serve adherents, symbolize Unity. Pictures of the buildings on publications and on the web site support the notion that Unity has a geographic home and is more than a set of teachings, beliefs, and practices.

Early Unity’s organizational moves and its establishment of a system for training Unity teachers and ministers meant that when Myrtle Fillmore died in 1931 and Charles Fillmore died in 1948 the organization did not face a leadership crisis. A bureaucratic organization was already in place with systems set up to handle the day-to-day operation of Unity when the charismatic founders of the movement were gone. The primary stock owner, in this case Lowell Fillmore, Charles and Myrtle’s eldest son, became the leader of the organization by taking control of the majority of the Unity stock. The administrative system in place to run the various operations of Unity kept functioning as intended when the Fillmores were gone, thus preventing disputes and difficulties that might have arisen had the Fillmores been the more stereotypical charismatic leaders of a New Religious Movement.

The Fillmores taught locally in the Kansas City area from the early twentieth century until their deaths. Charles devised a series of twelve lessons he regularly taught in 1897, and they had begun offering correspondence courses as early as 1909. That procedure helped Unity to maintain and replenish a supply of people trained in the same ways with the same ideas. The correspondence courses were very popular, enrolling, by Unity’s accounts, 2,000 people in the first two years. The correspondence courses were also the first requirement to be ordained as a Unity minister (Braden 1963:252). The correspondence courses developed into summer classes taught at Unity Village, which developed into the Unity Institute for Continuing Education. This became the Unity School for Religious Studies (USRS) and finally was reorganized and named the Unity Worldwide Spiritual Institute (UWSI).

The movement administers a two-part educational program for Unity teachers and ministers.  The first is the Continuing Education Program (CEP) for Unity teachers. That program requires classes in Biblical, Metaphysical, and Prayer studies and skills, classes in both Unity’s and New Thought’s history, and a number of elective classes in the school (Unity School 2001:7-27). The second part of the educational program is the Ministerial Education Program. Here, candidates must have first completed CEP training and then undertake an additional two-year program of study that includes classes, a practicum, tests and interviews culminating in licensing and ordination by the Board of Trustees of the Association of Unity Churches (Unity School 2002). That training produced “Unity people” to spread the message and fill the positions in the churches, thus assuring a consistent identity for the movement.

A closely related development was the formation of the Association of Unity Churches (AUC), known today as the Unity Worldwide Churches (UWC). The origin of the AUC is in the annual summer meetings of Unity ministers in Kansas City. The AUC began in 1925 as the Unity Ministers’ Association. As Unity ministers discussed material of which the ministers disapproved, such as spiritualism, astrology, and numerology, being taught in Unity churches, they decided to form the Unity Ministers’ Association to counter such tendencies. The group was active for twenty years before adopting the name “Unity Ministers Association” [sic] (Freeman 2000:186). As the organization developed, it has had several names and several changes in its relationship with the Unity School. However, today the UWC has two major responsibilities in the Unity world: it acts as a support organization for individual Unity congregations, and it is the body responsible for licensing and ordaining Unity ministers.

That support and development takes many practical forms, such as tax advice, suggestions for promoting the church, workshops dealing with church operations, youth services and fund raising, and vending products such as stoles, table runners, pamphlets, pew cards, and pencils embossed with Unity messages (Freeman 2000:186). The AUC organized ministries into four general categories:  “member ministries (full status churches that have regular Sunday Services); Expansion Ministries (new or revitalizing ministries); Study Groups (small groups meeting in members’ homes or community buildings, often during the week); Alternative Ministries (these ministries are generally speakers, workshop, counseling or writing ministries.)” based upon their size, mission and the level of training of the people leading the individual ministry. Policies and actions such as these mean that the AUC provided the Unity movement with a degree of homogeneity among the various Unity churches.

Unity’s extensive educational program, organizational structure, and its well-developed bureaucratic structure all show another way that the movement adopted mainstream principles. Rather than relying on the appearance of inspired leaders or on a master-disciple model for the transmission of leadership, Unity, and the people associated with it, created and implemented an impersonal educational system to train and license its leaders.  In effect, Unity developed a divinity school system and a denominational institution analogous to those institutions that train many mainstream Protestant leaders and provide the day-to-day materials for the operation of those churches.

ISSUES/CHALLENGES

One of the more interesting aspects of Unity, at least as it relates to rest of the world of new religions, is that it has been basically free of scandal throughout its history. Certainly, the movement has come under its fair share of criticism from conservative Christians, the majority of whom find Unity’s teachings about the nature of God and Jesus to be problematic. However, the movement has not experienced the type of high profile, public criticism and scandal that even a movement such as Christian Science, to which Unity bears a strong resemblance, has experienced. Most of the challenges Unity has faced relate to operating a large, complex publishing house and denominational movement with the limited resources available to a small, alternative religious movement. These facts point both to what is significant about Unity and to the reasons it tends to be overlooked by many scholars of new religions in the United States. Unity illustrates how a movement with unconventional, Christian-themed teachings can avoid conflict with the surrounding culture by conducting themselves as though they were members of the Protestant mainstream. By adopting the forms and practices of the mainstream religious culture, Unity has been able to espouse its alternative teachings without attracting conflict and controversy.

As such, the Unity example also points to some of the more difficult definitional and theoretical issues in the study of new religions. To the extent that scholars agree on the basic elements that define new religions, controversy with the surrounding religions and cultural environments is the primary characteristic most new religions scholars would agree new religions possess. Unity, which combines unconventional theology and has a history of alternative practices, but has no history of high profile conflicts with the surrounding culture, challenges that consensus. The Fillmores did things differently, but not so differently that they aroused the ire of their neighbors. It is for those reasons that Unity should be understood as an alternative American Protestantism, rather than as a new religious movement.

IMAGES
Image #1: Photograph of Myrtle Fillmore.
Image #2: Photograph of Charles Fillmore.
Image #3: Photograph of the Unity School of Christianity.
Image #4: Photograph of Unity Village.

REFERENCES

Association of Unity Churches website. n.d. “Directory Section.” Accessed from  http://www.unity.org/directoryfinder.html on 29 June 2007.

Braden, Charles. 1963. Spirits in Rebellion. Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press.

 Cady, H. Emilie. [1903]1999. Lessons in Truth. Unity Village, MO: Unity Books.

D’Andrade, Hugh. 1974. Charles Fillmore:  Herald of the New Age. New York: Harper & Row Publishers.

James Dillet, Freeman. 2000. The Story of Unity, Fourth Edition. Unity Village, MO: Unity Books.

Judah, J. Stillson. 1962. Spirits in Rebellion: The History and Philosophy of the Metaphysical Movements in America. Philadelphia: The Westminster Press.

Quimby, Phineas P. 1921. The Quimby Manuscripts, edited by H. W. Dresser. New York:  Thomas Y. Crowell Company.

Rapport, Jeremy. 2010. “Becoming Unity: The Making of an American Religion.” Ph.D. Dissertation, Indiana University.

Satter, Beryl. 1999. Each Mind a Kingdom. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.

Unity School for Religious Studies. n.d., “Continuing Education Program, 2001 Catalog,”

Unity School for Religious Studies. n.d. “Ministerial Education Program, 2002 Catalog.”

Unity website. n.d. Accessed from www.unity.org on 29 November 2017.

Unity website. n.d. “About Unity.” Accessed from http://www.unityonline.org/aboutunity/whoWeAre/faq.html#teachings, accessed 18 February 2008.

Vahle,  Neal. 2008. The Spiritual Journey of Charles Fillmore: Discovering the Power Within. West Conshoshocken, PA: Templeton Foundation Press.

Neal Vahle. 2002. The Unity Movement:  Its Evolution and Spiritual Teachings. Philadelphia & London: Templeton Foundation Press.

Vahle, Neal. 1996. Torch-Bearer to Light the Way: The Life of Myrtle Fillmore. Mill Valley, CA: Open View Press.

Witherspoon, Thomas E. 1977. Myrtle Fillmore:  Mother of Unity. Unity Village, MO:  Unity Books.

SUPPLEMENTARY RESOURCES

Albanese, Catherine L. 2007. A Republic of Mind and Spirit:  A Cultural History of American Metaphysical Religion. New Haven & London: Yale University Press.

Gaither, James. 1999. The Essential Charles Fillmore: Collected Writings of a Missouri Mystic. Unity Village, MO: Unity Books.

Haller, John S., Jr. 2012. The History of New Thought: From Mind Cure to Positive Thinking and the Prosperity Gospel. West Chester, PA:  Swedenborg Foundation Press.

Schmidt, Leigh Eric. 2005. Restless Souls:  The Making of American Spirituality from Emerson to Oprah. San Francisco: Harper Collins.

Post Date:
1 December 2017

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