New Thought

New Thought, a mind-healing movement, based on religious and metaphysical presuppositions, that originated in the United States in the 19th century. The great diversity of views and styles of life represented in various New Thought groups makes it virtually impossible to determine the number of the movement’s members or adherents. The influence of the various New Thought groups has been spread by its leaders through lectures, journals, and books not only in the United States but also in the United Kingdom, continental Europe, Asia, Africa, and Australia. Many adherents of New Thought consider themselves to be Christian, though generalizations about their relations to Christianity have been questioned.

Origins of New Thought

The origins of New Thought may be traced to a dissatisfaction on the part of many persons with scientific empiricism and their reaction to the religious skepticism of the 17th and 18th centuries. The Romanticism of the 19th century also influenced the New Thought movement, of which Phineas P. Quimby (1802–66) is usually cited as the earliest proponent. A native of Portland, Maine, Quimby practiced mesmerism (hypnotism) and developed his concepts of mental and spiritual healing and health based on the view that physical illness is a matter of the mind. Quimby’s influence was reflected in the writings of Warren F. Evans (1817–89), a Methodist and then a Swedenborgian minister (a leader of a theosophical movement based on the teachings of the 18th-century Swedish scientist and theologian Emanuel Swedenborg), who published a number of works exploring and systematizing Quimby’s ideas, including Mental Cure (1869), Mental Medicine (1872), and Soul and Body (1876). Other proponents of Quimbian New Thought were Julius Dresser (1838–93), a popular lecturer, and his son Horatio (1866–1954), who spread the elder Dresser’s teachings and later edited The Quimby Manuscripts (1921). The extent of Quimby’s influence on Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of Christian Science, was a matter of controversy in the 19th and early 20th centuries, when many of Quimby’s followers accused her of failing to acknowledge her religion’s basis in Quimby’s ideas. With the publication of The Quimby Manuscripts, however, it became possible to see Eddy’s (and New Thought’s) radical departure from Quimby’s main emphases. Recent evaluations of Eddy recognize that Quimby was an important stimulus to Eddy’s development but that the religious teaching of Christian Science as it finally emerged was essentially foreign to Quimby’s thought.

Teachings and practices of New Thought

Elements of New Thought may be traced to Platonism, based on the idealism of the 5th–4th-century-bce Greek philosopher Plato, who held that the realm of forms, or “ideas,” is more real than that of matter; to Swedenborgianism, especially Swedenborg’s view that the material realm is one of effects whose causes are spiritual and whose purpose is divine; to Hegelianism, based on the views of the 18th–19th-century German philosopher G.W.F. Hegel, especially those concerning the external world, mental phenomena, and the nervous organism as the meeting ground of the body and the mind; to the spiritual teachings of certain Eastern religions (e.g., Hinduism); and, particularly, to the Transcendentalism (a form of idealism) of the 19th-century American philosopher and poet Ralph Waldo Emerson.

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Although it is difficult to summarize New Thought beliefs, since they are so varied and to so large a degree individualistic, it is possible to summarize some of the more prevalent views. As far as Christian Science is concerned, New Thought adherents do not accept Mary Baker Eddy’s teaching or any other formulation as the final revelation. Rather, truth is viewed as a matter of continuing revelation, and no one leader or institution can declare with finality what the nature of truth is. Moreover, New Thought does not avoid medical science, as Eddy did, and it is essentially positive and optimistic about life and its outcome.

In 1916 the International New Thought Alliance (formed 1914) agreed upon a purpose that embraces some central ideas of most groups:

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.

In 1917, at the St. Louis (Missouri) Congress, the alliance adopted a “Declaration of Principles.” It was modified in 1919 and again in 2000.

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This purpose and these principles emphasized the immanence of God, the divine nature of humanity, the immediate availability of God’s power to humans, the spiritual character of the universe, and the fact that sin, human disorders, and human disease are basically matters of incorrect thinking. Moreover, according to New Thought, humans can live in oneness with God in love, truth, peace, health, and plenty. Many New Thought groups emphasize Jesus as teacher and healer and proclaim his kingdom as being within a person. New Thought leaders—unlike Quimby, it should be noted—have increasingly stressed material prosperity as one result of New Thought. There are no established patterns of worship, although the services often involve explication of New Thought ideas, testimony to healing, and prayer for the sick.