John S. Haller

New Thought

NEW THOUGHT TIMELINE

1838:  Phineas Parkhurst Quimby embarked on a healing method he called psychotherapy.

1859:  Quimby moved to Portland, Maine, where he developed a theory and practice of spiritual healing and where his patients included Emma and Sarah Ware, Julius and Annetta Dresser, Mary Baker Patterson, and Warren Felt Evans.

1863:  Quimby first used the term Christian Science.

1869:  Warren Felt Evans wrote The Mental Cure.

1874:  Mary Baker Eddy wrote Science and Health.

1875:  The Theosophical Society was formed in New York City by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky and Henry Steel Olcott.

1886:  Luther M. Marston, M.D. broke from Mary Baker Eddy and established the Mental Science and Christian Healing Association.

1886:  Emma Curtis Hopkins broke from Mary Baker Eddy and charted a new course in Metaphysical healing with her Christian Science Theological Seminary.

1888:  Malinda Elliot Cramer founded the Home College of Divine Science and the magazine Harmony.

1889:  Homeopath and Swedenborgian William Holcombe, M.D., referred to the term “New Thought” in his Condensed Thoughts about Christian Science.

1889:  Charles and Myrtle Fillmore founded the Unity School of Christianity and began publication of the magazine Modern Thought.

1892:  The International Divine Science Association was founded.

1893:  The World’s Parliament of Religions was held.

1894:  The Procopeia Society in Boston was founded.

1894:  New Thought was the title of a magazine published in Melrose, Massachusetts.

1895:  The Metaphysical Club of Boston was founded and adopted the term New Thought.

1899:  The Metaphysical Club merged with the International Metaphysical League.

1899:  Charles Brodie Patterson wrote New Thought Essays.

1900:  Elizabeth Towne, published numerous New Thought books as well as the popular New Thought magazine Nautilus.

1900:  William Walker Atkinson wrote Thought-Fore in Business and Everyday Life.

1901:  Charles Brodie Patterson wrote What is the New Thought?

1901:  Sidney Flowers organized the New Thought Publishing Company and began publication of New Thought Magazine.

1902:  Ella Wheeler Wilcox wrote The Heart of the New Thought.

1902:  William James wrote The Varieties of Religious Experience and gave the name “mind-cure” to the New Thought movement.

1903:  Henry Wood wrote New Thought Simplified.

1905:  Annie Rix Militz, founder of Home of Truth, wrote All Things are Possible to Them that Believe.

1905:  William Walker Atkinson opened the Atkinson School of Mental Science.

1905:  Elwood Worcester organized the Emmanuel Movement to address the needs of the city’s poor.

1906:  The International Metaphysical League transformed into a federation of New Thought centers.

1908:  The International Metaphysical League became the National New Thought Alliance.

1913:  The Church of Truth was founded by Dr. Albert C. Grier.

1914:  The National New Thought Alliance changed its name to the International New Thought Alliance.

1917:  The Society for Silent Unity became the Unity School of Christianity.

1917:  The Declaration of Principles was adopted by the International New Thought Alliance.

1919:  Horatio Dresser wrote A History of the New Thought Movement.

1922:  Nona Lovell Brooks, co-founder of Divine Science, aligned the Church of Divine Science with the International New Thought Alliance.

1922:  The Center for Awakening Consciousness was formed by Dr. Albert C. Grier.

1925:  The Metropolitan Spiritual Churches of Christ was formed.

1927:  Ernest Shurtleff Holmes established the Institute of Religious Science and Philosophy.

1930:  Seicho-No-Ie, a hybrid of Japanese spirituality and New Thought was formed by Rev. Masaharu Taniguchi.

1957:  The Declaration of Principles was amended by the International New Thought Alliance.

1980:  The Word of Faith Movement was founded

1990:  The Foundation for Conscious Evolution was founded.

1992:  The Affiliated New Thought Network, an outgrowth of Religious Science, was founded.

1996:  The Association for Global New Thought was founded.

2002:  The International New Thought Alliance amended its Declaration of Principles.

2006:  Rhonda Byrne released her film The Secret.

FOUNDER/GROUP HISTORY

Harvard psychologist William James, the author of The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902), traced the sources of the movement known as New Thought to Scripture, Transcendentalism, Berkeleyan idealism, spiritualism, Hinduism, and evolutionism. He described it as “an optimistic scheme of life, with both a speculative and a practical side [which] must now be reckoned with as a genuine religious power” (James 1902:92-93). The origin of the term, “New Thought” has been variously attributed to America’s poet/priest Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), [Image at right] journalist and transcendentalist Margaret Fuller (1810-1850), Unitarian William Ellery Channing (1790-1842), and the Swedenborgian and homeopathic physician William Holcombe, M.D. (1825-1893), all of whom used it as an expression of a commonly held creed or set of principles connecting self-fulfillment and transcendence. By the turn of the century, the term had been incorporated into books and magazines such as Charles Brodie Patterson’s New Thought Essays (1899) and What is New Thought? (1901), Sidney Flower’s New Thought Magazine (1901), Ella Wheeler Wilcox’s The Heart of the New Thought (1902), and Henry Wood’s New Thought Simplified (1903).  A weather vane of middle-class values, it began as a religiously grounded mind-cure healing technique before evolving into a religious and secular movement advocating positive-thinking and a prosperity gospel as the antidote to personal health, moral, and economic issues.

New Thought might not have existed without Emerson, whose message of individualism and self-reliance was simple and direct, namely, that every person could reach fulfillment in his or her own special way. Each person had an obligation to be oneself and to celebrate one’s own worth.  This construct of Yankee sobriety and poetic imagination was repeatedly referenced by the early proponents of New Thought who advocated the fusion of feeling with personal and collective growth, self-sufficiency, the practical over the theoretical, and instant gratification. “If one could read Emerson thoroughly and deeply,” wrote minister and author Horatio W. Dresser (1866-1954), one of the originators of the New Thought movement, “asking again and again how his wisdom is to be applied to actual life, one might easily dispense with a greater part of the literature of the New Thought, and be the gainer thereby, for many writers have simply restated clumsily what he had already put gracefully” (Dresser 1899:25-26).  In effect, Emerson provided the inspiration for New Thought’s conception of the soul as invisible, immortal, spiritual, self-reliant, and free.

The metaphysical elements of New Thought came from two principal sources. One was the emerging “science” of animal magnetism or mesmerism whose originator, the Swabian physician Franz Anton Mesmer (1734-1815), [Image at right] taught that the universe contained an invisible spirit or fluid which filled the space of the solar system connecting all living and non-living bodies and which, under certain circumstances, could be manipulated to treat both functional and organic disorders. The other derived from the cosmographic writings of Swedish scientist, philosopher and revelator Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772) whose concept of the universe was energized not by animal magnetism but by a spirituous substance known as Divine Influx, which connected all animal, vegetable, and mineral elements. [Image at right] The human soul, being part of the individual but separate from the physical body, was of the same spirituous substance as the cosmic elements in the universe and influenced by the vibrations coming from the Divine Influx. In the hands of America’s unconventional healers, the secular science of animal magnetism and the spirituous fluid of Divine Influx became competing spheres of healing in addressing the soul’s journey into spiritual growth and healthy-mindedness (Haller 2012:18-43).

Phineas Parkhurst Quimby (1802-1866), of Belfast, Maine, drew from both Mesmer and Swedenborg to develop his unique mind-cure healing method which connected the individual’s inner spiritual nature to Christ’s teachings in a system he called the “Science of Health” (Dresser 1921:66-67). [Image at right] It reflected knowledge gained from both the sciences and from the revelatory side of religion. Using what he called the “silent method” to create copies on his mind of patients’ illnesses, and then providing oral instruction to convince patients of using their own innate powers to overcome their illnesses, Quimby built a robust healing practice in Portland, Maine. Among his more notable patients who subsequently established their own mind-healing practices were Warren Felt Evans, Julius and Annetta Dresser, and Mary Baker Patterson (later known as Mary Baker Eddy), the founder of Christian Science. Their single common denominator was the power of mind over body. The discovery of this truth overshadowed the different markers they employed to treat illness. By the early twentieth century their healing systems would incorporate the concept of theistic evolution and powers revealed through the incarnation of Christ.

New Thought author and founder of a mind-cure sanitarium in Salisbury, Massachusetts, Warren Felt Evans (1817-1889), followed a spiritual but unchurched path of mental healing. Once a patient of Quimby and an avowed Swedenborgian, he incorporated the Swede’s psychology and metaphysics into his system of healing and writings that included The Mental Cure (1869), Soul and Body (1875), The Divine Law of Cure (1881), Healing by Faith (1885), and Esoteric Christianity and Metal Therapeutics (1886). Evans’s [Image at right] approach started with the belief that human beings remained ignorant of the opportunities of this life, giving rise to mental and physical unhappiness. Rectification of this unhappiness began with the inner person which received its form through Influx from the Divine. Pure ideals perpetuated pure thoughts and inevitably right actions. Material medicines could produce limited improvements in the body but it was the intelligent application of mental force that proved most effective and lasting. Whether the phenomenon of healing passed as mesmerism, hypnotism, or some other form or mechanism, it brought about thought transference from the healer, who was someone of high mental and moral character, to the diseased mind of the patient. For Evans, Jesus represented the ultimate balance of soul and body.

Competing with Evans for the hearts and minds of mental healing was Mary Baker Eddy (1821-1910), once a patient of Quimby, who claimed to be the authentic discoverer of Christian Science. In a series of writings, the most important being her Science and Health (1875), Eddy laid out a metaphysical healing system intended to distinguish it from all other competitors. Her system, which denied the errors of the senses and the laws of matter, claimed the capacity to heal functional, organic, chronic, and acute diseases without the assistance of conventional medicine or help from normative science. “If the [Christian] Scientist reaches his patient through divine Love, the healing work will be accomplished at one visit, and the disease will vanish into its native nothingness like dew before the morning sunshine,” Eddy [Image at right] assured her devotees. Unless the patient denied the existence of matter, the foundation of disease persisted. By removing the erroneous belief, the patient removed its effects (Eddy 1906:365-66, 379).

Eddy’s doctrinaire methods resulted in the establishment of the National Christian Scientist Association, which offered the Bachelor of Christian Science (CSB), the Doctrine of Christian Science (CSD), and Doctor of Divine Science (DSD). Its rigid cult-like doctrines of extreme idealism, its highly centralized authoritarianism, and Eddy’s pathological fear of malicious animal magnetism, led to a series of defections that included Emma Curtis Hopkins (1849-1925), who relied on a network of sympathetic healers to chart a new course in metaphysical healing. Among them were Charles and Myrtle Fillmore, co-founders of the Unity School of Christianity; New Thought publisher Elizabeth Towne; Helen Van-Anderson, founder of the Boston New Thought Church of the Higher Life; Malinda Cramer, co-founder of Divine Science and first president of the International Divine Science Ministry; Annie Rix Militz, founder of the Home of Truth associations; New Thought author William Walker Atkinson; and Ernest S. Holmes, founder of the church Religious Science. Eventually New Thought’s largest religious denominations derived not as direct descendants from Quimby, but as defections from Eddy’s mind-body system of healing known as Christian Science.

DOCTRINES/BELIEFS

In an address delivered at Harvard’s School of Theology in 1909, university President Charles Eliot characterized the essential elements of future religions, explaining that they would be less authoritative, less anthropomorphic in their representations of God, less ascetic and gloomy, less reliant on deceased thinkers and philosophers, and less expiatory in nature. Future religions would adopt the language of the sciences, including descriptive terms such as energy, vital force, and omnipresence; emphasize God’s all pervading love; reject the idea that humans might be alienated from the world; and focus on the discovery of God through self-consciousness. Eliot’s prediction for the future course of religion and spirituality turned out to be a prescient description of New Thought whose religious and secular literature emphasized healing, self-discovery, and empowerment.

As it developed, New Thought represented a cluster of church and unchurched organizations, beliefs and practices that centered around a highly nuanced vision that each individual mind was an expression of the cosmic universe and where optimism, individualism, self-sufficiency, activism, and healthy-mindedness took precedence over the brutishness of social class, economic conflict, and the status quo. Measured against the principal denominations of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, New Thought’s religious and secular leadership advocated a democratic “religion” whose over-simplification of principles and purposes fit nicely with the nation’s growing ambivalence toward religious dogma and affiliations.  This applied also to New Thought’s secularists, whose devotion to post-Enlightenment rationality took second place to intuitive experience, concentration, affirmation, and visualization. For both its church and unchurched devotees, New Thought’s spokespeople painted a picture of America as a self-regulating society governed by moral individualism unblemished by issues of class, race, and ethnicity.

In 1917, the International New Thought Association (INTA) adopted a “Declaration of Principles,” which included references to Christianity. In 1957, the specific references to Christianity were removed and replaced with the oneness of God and humanity in a unique combination of spirituality and the creative power of thought. In 2002, the INTA again amended its “Declaration of Principles” to express the following:

We affirm God as Mind, Infinite Being, Spirit, and Ultimate Reality.

We affirm that God, the Good, is supreme, universal, and everlasting.

We affirm the unity of God and humanity, in that the divine nature dwells within and expresses through each of us, by means of our acceptance of it, as health, supply, wisdom, love, life, truth, power, beauty, and peace.

We affirm the power of prayer and the capacity of each person to have mystical experience with God, and to enjoy the grace of God.

We affirm the freedom of all persons as to beliefs, and we honor the diversity of humanity by being open and affirming of all persons, affirming the dignity of human beings as founded on the presence of God within them, and, therefore, the principle of democracy.

We affirm that we are all spiritual beings, dwelling in a spiritual universe that is governed by spiritual law, and that in alignment with spiritual law, we can heal, prosper, and harmonize.

We affirm that our mental states are carried forward into manifestation and become our experience in daily living.

We affirm the manifestation of the kingdom of heaven here and now.

We affirm expression of the highest spiritual principle in loving one another unconditionally, promoting the highest good for all, teaching and healing one another, ministering to one another, and living together in peace in accordance with the teachings of Jesus and other enlightened teachers.

We affirm our evolving awareness of the nature of reality and our willingness to refine our beliefs accordingly (International New Thought Alliance website 2017).

RITUALS/PRACTICES

As a predominantly urban movement, New Thought grew at a prodigious rate by emphasizing healthy-mindedness, prosperity and personal magnetism. Though its various churches struggled to define a coherent unified vision, what emerged was an idealistic, syncretic, and hybrid set of beliefs drawn loosely from a combination of metaphysical assumptions and pseudoscience that devolved into the simple belief in the divinity of each individual and the infinite possibilities through the power of creative thinking, i.e., thought-as-power. Thoughts can materialize; they can also attract, persuade and influence other human beings; and their success was a sign of virtue and the outcome of the quality of mind.

With views shared across its many churches and unchurched associations and publishing houses, the supporters of New Thought produced books and periodicals that helped define the social, political, and religious parameters of American life and culture. Instead of purporting a fixed set of rituals and practices, its advocates suggested a set of laws that included such terminology as the “Law of the Good,” “Law of Attraction,” “Law of Degrees,” and “Law of Success.” Its proponents, insofar as it is possible to evoke some level of commonality, emphasized a belief in God as both immanent and transcendent, the sole healer, sustainer, and unifier of the universe. Humanity moved in step with nature’s plan, where man served as a co-creator with God to realize wellness, harmony and prosperity, and where science compelled belief in a glorious future for humanity.

As a representative of New Thought principles, the New Thought Temple in Cincinnati in 1898 made the statement that its purpose was “to provide a universal church without fixed creed, dogma, or ritual, where all people may worship God and where they may study the Principles and Fundamentals of New Thought in all of its phases, as a Philosophy, a religion, a science and the practice of sane, sensible and spiritual living.”(New Thought Unity Center) Nevertheless, various churches operating under the umbrella of New Thought have taught the use of spoken and unspoken prayer, spiritual baptism and communion, the sprinkling of water, and the consumption of bread and wine with verbal references to life and substance. Some have been known to use Tarot cards and practice Astrology.

The plethora of publications that came in the wake of evolutionary theory forced New Thoughters to consider the distinction between their love of fellow human beings and the evidence of poverty, hunger, and disease among society’s underclass. What are the rules that define the purposes and limitations of sympathy and benevolence toward society’s weaker elements? Enamored with evolutionary theory and convinced it represented a divinely inspired plan for the individual and society, the spokespersons of New Thought’s idealism tended to shift their attention away from real problems to a belief that all would eventually be set right one way or another. In the meantime, material bounty was no longer an obstacle to grace, a factor that made social reform carry a more limited liability.

ORGANIZATION/LEADERSHIP

As the New Thought movement spread across the American landscape, its leaders forged a federation of ministries that were strong on personal development, repudiated wire-drawn metaphysics, and opposed formalized structures for their services and activities. Rich in spiritual suggestion, they drew sustenance from the World’s Parliament of Religions in 1893 and the communal union felt by many of its attendees for a true spiritual philosophy of life and happiness. Out of this experience emerged the International Metaphysical League in 1899, whose delegates began using the term New Thought to express their shared thinking. In 1908, the League changed its constitution to become the National New Thought Alliance whose annual conventions offered classes on such subjects as “God in Man,” “Psychical Secrets,” “Masters of Yourself and Your World,” and “Unfolding Individuality” (Dresser 1928:200). In 1914, the Alliance again changed its name to the International New Thought Alliance (INTA), defining its purpose: “To teach the infinitude of the Supreme One; the Divinity of Man and his Infinite possibilities through the creative power of constructive thinking and obedience to the voice of the Indwelling Presence, which is our source of Inspiration, Power, Health, and Prosperity” (Dresser 1928:211).

Today, New Thought exists in a more or less constant state of flux, marked by groups forming, moving, renaming themselves, and sometimes simply vanishing. Aside from the challenge of tracking and determining the states of its organizations, there remains the question of whether or not to include groups that share the beliefs of New Thought but do not identify themselves as such. Those major denominations, associations, and institutions that currently accept their classification as part of the New Thought movement include:

Abundant Life Center, Vancouver, WA; Affiliated New Thought Network, Pacific Grove, CA; Agape International Spiritual Center, Culver, City, CA; Association for Global New Thought, Santa Barbara, CA; Association of Unity Churches, Lee’s Summit, MO; Center for Inner Awareness, Salem, OR; Christ Truth League, Fort Worth, TX;  Church of Truth, Pasadena, CA; College of Divine Metaphysics, Moab, Utah; Divine Science Federation International, MO; Divine Science School, Washington, DC;  Divine Unity Ministries, Cody, WY; Emerson Theological Institute, Oakhurst, CA; First Church of Divine Science, New York, NY; Global Religious Science Ministries, Silver Spring, MD; Hillside International Chapel and Truth Center, Atlanta, GA; Home of Truth, Alameda, CA; Humanitarian New Thought Movement, Australia; Inner Light Ministries, Santa Cruz, CA; Institute of Mind Sciences, Karachi, Pakistan; International Metaphysical Ministry, Sedona, AZ; International New Thought Alliance, Mesa, AZ;  International Spiritual Truth Center, Stockton, CA; Life Changers International, Hoffman Estates, IL; Living Truth Center, East Cleveland, OH; Metropolitan Spiritual Churches of Christ, Kansas City, MO; New Thought Ministries of Oregon, Wilsonville, OR; New Thought Ministries, Glen Allen, VA; Noohra Foundation, Smyrna, GA; One Spirit Ministries, Cresco, PA; Piscean-Aquarian Ministry for New Thought, Asheville, NC; Real Life Today Church, Washington, DC;  Seicho-No-Ie, Gardena, CA; Society for the Study of Metaphysical Religion, Clearwater, FL; Society of Jewish Science, New York, NY; Southwestern College, Santa Fe, NM; Spiritual Empowerment Center, Baltimore, MD; Teaching of the Inner Christ, El Cajon, CA; Understanding Principles for Better Living Church, Los Angeles, CA; United Centers for Spiritual Living, Golden, CO; United Church Schools, New York, NY; United Divine Science, Largo, MD; Universal Foundation for Better Living, Miami Gardens, FL; Universal Truth Center for Better Living, Miami Gardens, FL; Victoria Truth Center, British Columbia, Canada.

ISSUES/CHALLENGES

By the early twentieth century, the marketplace for New Thought’s religious and secular followers witnessed an exponential growth in their non-conventional approaches to healing. As the markers of Calvinism gave way to a liberal belief in man’s innate goodness, the concept of humanity acquired a vision that included the contact of mind with mind, verbally-based suggestions and affirmations, confidence in the oneness with God, and the extension of the concept of healthy-mindedness to include a new gospel of individual success and prosperity. This change resulted in the emergence of both a church and unchurched literature that muted class conflicts, labor unrest, and poverty with the promise of material comfort that was just a wish away from realization.

New Thought’s prosperity gospelers turned money into an end in itself as a visible assurance of God’s glorifying reward. Riches, no longer a danger to the soul, became the object of one’s calling, rationalizing salvation in terms of material worth. “Have no doubt in your mind of God’s willingness to give you any good things that you would give yourself,” wrote Home of Truth founder Annie Rix Militz (Militz 1905:2-3). Charles B. Newcomb’s All’s Right with the World (1899), assured readers that “We are never denied anything we crave. . . . The power to wish and the power to execute are one and the same. All things are ours as soon as we recognize and appropriate from the universal life. This is done without cost or deprivation to our neighbor” (Newcomb 1899:201-04). Over the decades, similar ratiocinations came from the pages of Charles Fillmore, William Walker Atkinson, Wallace Wattles, Paul Ellsworth, and other New Thought authors. MBany were contracted through Sydney Flower’s New Thought Publishing Company and New Thought’s most noted publisher, Elizabeth Towne (1865-1960). [Image at right]

By transforming the society’s economic contradictions into issues of personal success or failure, New Thought’s new generation of instructors, counselors, and prophets offered a “prosperity gospel” for individuals to heal themselves. Its writers, examples of which include Charles F. Haanel, Frank Channing Haddock, Dorothea Brande, Elbert Hubbard, Orison Swett Marden, Bruce Barton, Napoleon Hill, and Dale Carnegie, spoke of success attained through mind power and positive thinking. Former terms such as magnetism, energy, thought waves, mental control and suggestion, which had once carried authoritative meaning in the nineteenth century, gave way to terms such as perseverance, prosperity, thought power, ambition, personal well-being, and potential. The new generation of New Thought gospelers rationalized life and salvation in terms of material wealth and prosperity. As critic Clifford Howard noted in 1910, many of New Thought’s newest inspirational writers, speakers, and publishing houses behaved like patent-medicine vendors “marketing the power of God” (Page 1910, XIX:846-50).

From the 1920s onward, New Thought writers and motivational lecturers (both secular and religious) turned physical health and spiritual well-being into the power to attract, persuade, influence, and control others. Emerson’s self-reliant individual now came alive in the selling of secrets. Charles F. Haanel’s The Master Key System (1917), Robert Collier’s The Secret of the Ages (1926), and Napoleon Hill’s The Law of Success (1925) argued that the ‘key’ to whatever one wanted lay in the cultivation of mental power. Bruce Barton’s The Man Nobody Knows (1925) authenticated salesmanship through the life and character of Jesus. Although the phrase “thoughts are things” was a phrase common among New Thought proponents, William Walker Atkinson (1862-1932), one of the most influential representatives of the New Thought movement, taught that a more correct phrase was “thoughts are forces.” With proper control and exercise of these forces, anything was possible. “Just think of it. ANYTHING. Try it. Try it in earnest and you will succeed. It is the operation of a mighty law” (Atkinson 1901:64).

Today, the marketers of New Thought’s messages come by way of books, magazines, CDs, videos, talk shows, infomercials, workshops, Facebook, and Twitter. The books and videos of Stephen R. Covey, James Redfield, Deepak Chopra, Jon Mundy, Caroline Myss, Byron Katie, Rhonda Byrne, and Eckhard Tolle are indicative of the positive mood of optimism and healthy-mindedness that has taken root in mainstream thinking. Most of their ideas and secrets of success are simply the reworking of nineteenth century ideas and concepts that are now infused with terms drawn from esoteric combinations of philosophy, medicine, quantum physics, and psychology. Church and unchurched groups and associations have come together rhetorically to share in the ever-evolving forms of self-discovery. The Association of Unity Churches, the Universal Foundation for Better Living in Chicago, the One Spirit Ministries, and the United Church of Religious Science and its Affiliated New Thought Network are just a few of the operational arms of the churched side of New Thought.

Prosperity and healthy-mindedness continue to be central elements in the literature of the New Thought movement today. The magazine New Thought, published by the INTA, features articles such as “Prosperity for the New Age,” “Self Management and Soul Unfoldment,” “Love your Way to Success,” and “Staying Centered.” This is confirmed by the republication of late nineteenth and early twentieth century authors and the pirating of their ideas by contemporary ministers and motivational speakers. It is also evident in the voluminous writings and website articles of Alan Anderson and Deborah Whitehouse, both members of the executive board of the INTA, and television celebrities like Stephen R. Covey (1932-2012), Gayle M. Delaney (b. 1949), Anthony Robbins (b. 1960), Wayne Walter Dyer (b. 1940), Gary Zukav (b. 1942), and Bryan Tracy (b. 1944) provide motivational lectures, video tapes, and Internet sites offering messages of hope, healing, and abundance for those in search of life’s meaning.

The term “New Thought” is curiously absent from much of today’s discussions about healing, spirituality, positive-thinking, and the prosperity gospel. That is because the name New Thought has been replaced by the marketing of specific labels (i.e., Rhoda Byrne’s “The Secret”), trademarks (i.e., Rick Warren’s “Purpose Driven Life”), and Internet sites. Today’s spokespeople continue to advocate a self-reliant individualism, the avoidance of self-pity, a stoic’s view of life’s paradoxes, and a belief in the possible. Although compromised over and over again by unsavory commercialism, they teach the power of mind to remake the circumstances and conditions in one’s personal life.

IMAGES
Image #1: Photograph of Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Image #2: Photograph of Franz Anton Mesmer.
Image #3: Photograph of Emanuel Swedenborg.
Image #4: Photograph of Phineas Park Quimby.
Image #5: Photograph of William Felt Evans.
Image #6: Photograph of Mary Baker Eddy.
Image #7: Photograph of Elizabeth Towne.

REFERENCES

Atkinson, William Walker. 1901. Thought-Force in Business and Everyday Life. Chicago: The Psychic Research Company.

Eddy, Mary Baker. 1906. Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. Boston: Trustees Under the Will of Mary Baker G. Eddy.

Dresser, Horatio W. 1928. A History of the New Thought Movement. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell.

Dresser, Horatio W., ed. 1921, The Quimby Manuscripts; Showing the Discovery of Spiritual Healing and the Origin of Christian Science. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell.

Dresser, Horatio W. 1899. Voices of Freedom: And Studies in the Philosophy of Individualism. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons.

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

International New Thought Alliance website. 2017. “Declaration of Principles.” Accessed from  http://www.newthoughtalliance.org/about.html on 1 November 2011.

James, William. 1902. The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature. New York: Modern Library.

Militz,  Annie Rix. 1905. All Things are Possible to Them that Believe. Los Angeles: The Master Mind Publishing.

Newcomb, Charles B. 1899. All’s Right with the World. Boston: Lee and Shepard.

New Thought Unity Center website. 2017. Accessed from  http://www.ntunity.org/our-history on 30 December 2017)

Page, Walter Hines, ed, The World’s Work 1900-1932. New York: Doubleday,

Seale, Ervin, ed. 1988. Phineas Parkhurst Quimby: The Complete Writings,  3 Volumes. Marina del Rey, CA: Devorss.

SUPPLEMENTARY RESOURCES

Ahlstrom, Sidney E.  1972. A Religious History of the American People. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

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

Allen, Abel Leighton. 1914. The Message of New Thought. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell.

Anderson, C. Alan. 1993. Healing Hypotheses: Horatio W. Dresser and the Philosophy of New Thought. New York: Garland.

Anderson, C. Alan, and Deborah G. Whitehouse. 2002. New Thought: A Practical American Spirituality. New York: Crossroad Publishing.

Atkins, Gaius Glenn. 1923. Modern Religious Cults and Movements. New York: Fleming H. Revell.

Atkinson, William Walker. 1915. New Thought, Its History and Principles; Or, The Message of the New Thought: A Condensed History of its Real Origin with a Statement of its Basic Principles and True Aims. Holyoke, MA: Elizabeth Towne.

Bebee, Tom. 1977. Who’s Who in New Thought. Lakewood, GA: CSA Press.

Bixby, James Thomson. 1915. The New World and the New Thought. Boston: Beacon Press.

Braude, Ann. 1989. Radical Spirits: Spiritualism and Women’s Rights in Nineteenth Century America. Boston: Beacon Press.

Brown, Henry Harrison. 1903. New Thought Primer, Origin, History, and Principles of the Movement; A Lesson in Soul Culture. San Francisco: Now Folk.

Bruce, Steve. 1990. Pray TV: Televangelism in America. London: Routledge.

Byrne, Rhonda. 2006. The Secret. New York: Atria Books.

Dresser, Horatio W. 1917. Handbook of the New Thought. New York: G. P. Putnam.

Ehrenreich, Barbara. 2009. Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has  Undermined America. New York: Metropolitan Books.

Fuller, Robert C. 1986. Americans and the Unconscious. New York: Oxford University Press.

Griswald, Alfred Whitney. 1934. “New Thought: A Cult of Success.” American Journal of Sociology 40:309-18.

Haller, John S. 2010. Swedenborg, Mesmer, and the Mind/Body Connection: The Roots of Complementary Medicine. West Chester, PA: Swedenborg Foundation.

Harley, Gail M. 2002. Emma Curtis Hopkins: Forgotten Founder of New Thought. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press.

Hill, Napoleon. 2008. The Law of Success. New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin.

Hopkins, Emma Curtis. 1925. All is Divine Order. Pittsfield, MA: Sun Printing.

Horowitz, Mitch. 2009. Occult America: The Secret History of How Mysticism Shaped Our Nation. S.I.: Random House Digital.

Huber, Richard. The American Idea of Success. 1971. New York: McGraw-Hill,

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Post Date:
31 December 2017

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