New Thought

A young woman, dying of hereditary tuberculosis, attends a lecture in 1886, leaning heavily on her husband's arm. He himself walks with a severe limp, having damaged his hip in a childhood skating accident that left him with a withered leg. The woman emerges from the lecture with a new and powerful belief: "I am a child of God and I do not inherit sickness."

Two years later, with no further medical intervention, the woman is completely well. Her husband's leg, no longer withered, has grown three inches longer, and the constant pain has disappeared. The husband and wife begin a ministry that becomes worldwide, healing and prospering many thousands of people.

An elderly Greek gentleman washes dishes in a hash joint, eking out a bare existence. He literally saves his pennies and invests them in thousands of shares of stock in the bankrupt Missouri Pacific Railroad, then selling for six cents a share. Each night, he writes out his vision for the railroad: new, enlightened leadership, new tracks and equipment, new prosperity. In the morning, he rereads what he has written and then burns the paper at the tiny sink in the corner of his shabby little room, "so that my words go forth into the universe." When a kindly stockbroker takes an interest in him, he explains that he is doing all this at the suggestion of his minister.

Months later, the stockbroker begins to read in the daily paper about the rebirth of the Missouri Pacific. First a line, then a column, then long articles describe the belief that it could be rebuilt, then the acquisition of intelligent new leadership, new track, and new rolling stock. Soon, Missouri Pacific is trading not for six cents, but for $89 a share, and the astounded stockbroker is wracking his brain to recall the name of the elderly gentleman's minister!

The name of the minister was Ernest Holmes. The name of the lecturer was Eugene B. Weeks; his listeners were Myrtle and Charles Fillmore. All of them were students of Emma Curtis Hopkins, herself a student of a woman who had been healed by an unschooled Maine clockmaker and inventor named Phineas Parkhurst Quimby. Quimby believed that he had rediscovered the lost healing methods of Jesus. The loosely organized movement that began with him eventually became known as New Thought, and it consists of a number of independently developed branches such as Unity, Religious Science, and Divine Science.

Quimby never sought to found a new religion. He avoided both organized religion and organized medicine, turning, as did Jesus, to God as the source of healing. Even today, New Thought embraces a minimalist creed, leaving the individual free to relate directly to God. It's a do-it-yourself religion. Its emphasis is not on religiosity but on spirituality.

Spirituality is perhaps the most important aspect of religion today. It refers, as religiosity cannot, to the intensely personal, devotional, life-transforming aspects of religion. It is a term preferred, for example, by people who have had enormously moving experiences but who are disinclined to engage in conventional religious alignments, activities, or orientations. The apostle Paul said, "The letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life" (2 Cor. 3:6). Religiosity commonly is connected with the letter, the mechanistic, literal observance or prescribed practice of a system of beliefs.

Yet if New Thought is spiritual, it is also intensely practical. It is the application of one's religious beliefs to solve the problems of daily living. Originally dealing with problems of sickness, it rapidly expanded to include problems with lack of money or difficulties in relationships with other people. Jesus, in his great compassion for people, saw to it that their daily needs were met and taught us to pray for "our daily bread." The genius of New Thought is that, following the example of Jesus, it synthesizes the seeming opposites of practicality and spirituality. Yet New Thought goes beyond problem solving to teach us how to create the world we want by forming it with our thoughts. Jesus said, "I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly" (John 10:10). New Thoughters believe in a life of abundance here and now.

American philosopher and psychologist William James referred to New Thought as "the religion of healthy-mindedness" and regarded it as the American people's "only decidedly original contribution to the systematic philosophy of life." Its principles underlie nearly all of the American success literature of the past century and more, revealed by students of success from Orison Swett Marden to Napoleon Hill to Stephen Covey.

All the early leaders of New Thought came from Christian backgrounds, yet most of them had found organized religion restrictive or repressive and turned away from it. They were all deeply spiritual, though they were not all deeply religious. Since America was largely settled by people who came here to escape repressive religions, this should not be surprising. What is surprising is how often the oppressed become oppressors at the first opportunity. New Thought has happily escaped from that pattern, tolerating very great latitude in beliefs and practices. Yet critics have complained that New Thought did not insist on suffering as somehow necessary for salvation! The "religion of healthy-mindedness" has always been an upbeat, positive, optimistic way of life. Interestingly, recent research in psychology has revealed that optimists do better in every way, including health, longevity, and overall performance.

Not everyone in New Thought is seeking refuge from a religion that failed to meet his or her needs. Many people continue to be loyal members of a mainstream church while using New Thought as a little leaven for the loaf. The best-known example of this is the late Norman Vincent Peale, a faithful Reformed Church minister who acknowledged in writing his debt to New Thought, the source of his Positive Thinking concept.

New Thought is what all Christianity could have become if it had been able to avoid the stultifying tendencies needed to become a religion capable of competing with other outlooks for the title of official religion of the Roman Empire. It is what all Christianity could have become if it had allowed freedom of belief, concentrating on following the loving, healing example of Jesus rather than developing a rigid superstructure of teachings about Jesus.

What are the principles of New Thought, this peculiarly American philosophico-religious way of life? In a nutshell, New Thought is expressed in Romans 12:2, "Be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind." New Thoughters seek nothing less than total life transformation, empowerment through changing their thoughts and keeping them changed. The linchpin of New Thought is the Law of Mind Action: thoughts held in mind produce after their kind. There are many ways to express this: like attracts like; as in mind, so in manifestation; as in heaven, so on earth; "them that has, gets." This goes along with what philosophers refer to as idealism, belief that the world is really made up of thoughts or mind or spirit or living units of experience. Its opposite is materialism, belief that the world is made up of material "stuff" that one can measure, or lifeless units of energy.

In the longstanding battle between science and religion, idealists generally have represented religion and materialists have represented science. Ironically, physics, the king of sciences, the yardstick by w