New Thought Christianity – A Brief History
New thinking: ancient wisdom
New Thought and Christianity mix just as well as Christianity and everything else. What is important to realize is that the fundamental principles behind the entire New Thought Movement predate Christianity, even the Old Testament, by many thousands of years.
Many scholars call these lessons Hermetic Wisdombut even that is misleading because Hermes is a western name attributed to an ancient Egyptian philosopher named one thousand. ‘New Thought’ is essentially the teachings of a 5,000 year old Egyptian named ‘your’ adapted for our modern palates. Basically, the New Thought Movement is based on the notions of:
- divine goodness
- Equality between race, gender, creed and economic status
- human creative potential (We can create the lives we want)
- The Agreement of Similar Things (also called the ‘Law of Attraction’)
- The inclusive/pervasive nature of Divinity
Sounds pretty simple, right? It’s not really any different than the United States Declaration of Independence. Would it surprise you to learn that all 20 of the original signers of the Declaration of Independence were students of these ancient hermetic teachings?
New Thought Meets Christianity
Among other things, Emma Curtis Hopkins (1849-1925) is often credited with coining the phrase; “The New Thought Movement”. She was such a confident, prolific, outspoken and controversial figure in our world’s history that she was always willing to stand up for precisely what she believed in; including being instrumental in securing the right to vote for women in the United States.
As editor of “The Christian Science Journal”, she tried to bring the Eastern lessons of Hinduism and Buddhism within the reach of Christianity. It was her firm belief that the seeds of truth lie within all the world’s religions and must be understood from a standpoint above any property. In other words, she did not view Christianity as being bound by strict dogmas or singular teachings, but rather she viewed the basic concepts as being present in religions throughout the world.
But Christian Science was a religion and was not about to discard its strict teachings for the sake of one woman’s opinions. So she was fired as editor of the Christian Science Journal and nearly excommunicated from her ranks.
If you can’t join them, beat them…
From his perspective, the fundamental teachings of Christianity insist that divinity is omnipresent. How could Divinity be simultaneously all-powerful and omnipresent, and yet owned by a religious group?
It didn’t make sense to her. If God is omnipresent, we should be able to see signs of God everywhere, end of story. So he decided to start his own church. Here it is where it gets interesting. Emma Curtis Hopkins, editor of the Christian Science Journal, is fired from her position as editor and decides to start her own church naming it exactly after the one she just left! If she couldn’t get the Christian Science Church to see things her way, she was going to create her own Christian Science Church and call it: The Christian Science Church.
How is that possible? Well, that sort of thing can’t really happen these days, but this was over 30 years before radio or the widespread use of telephones and the Christian Science Movement spread rapidly across America. People were interested in a new way of practicing their faith, and Christian Science was quickly filling that popular void in the 37 US states at the time. People were interested in the teachings, most people didn’t even realize that there were two completely unaffiliated organizations with the same name!
New Thought Christianity Proliferates
Emma Curtis Hopkins was a Preach What I Practice teacher. If her students were to follow in her footsteps, they would also have to start their own churches. Some of her notable students include:
- Charles and Myrtle Fillmore, who founded Unity Church
- Anna Rix Militz, who founded The Home of Truth
- Ernest Holmes, who founded the Church of Religious Science
- Malinda Cramer, Nona L. Brooks, and Fannie Brooks, who founded the Church of Divine Science
There are many other New Thought Christian groups with more than 800 churches worldwide and close to 10 million practitioners spread across the globe. They are so diverse that any effort to describe them concisely here would be ridiculous.
So are they all the same? Do they all teach the same? Actually, each and every one of them teaches something different, but the Basic Principle: “There is an omnipresent force of goodness that underlies all things” is a root common to all of them.
This is an epically important principle for people all over the world. Getting rid of the idea that we are inherently bad and replacing it with the idea that we are inherently good is a tremendously powerful way of thinking. Literally hundreds of different Churches now offer their own versions of that same central truth to the world. I for one think it’s a pretty entertaining way to get the message across. After all, the idea of being ‘born well’ instead of being ‘born sinner’ should be worth at least a few dozen versions…