08 - Twentieth century.

Twentieth century.  After the philosophy of New Thought was established, several individuals and organizations rose to prominence to promote the beliefs. However, there is no consensus on who founded the New Thought movement. Charles Brodie Patterson has been credited. Patterson, a Canadian expatriate who lived in New York City, was labelled the movement's leader when he died in the early 20th century. One of Eddy's early Christian Science students, Ursula Gestefeld, created a philosophy called the "Science of Being" after Eddy kicked her out of her church. Science of Being groups eventually formed the Church of New Thought in 1904, which was the first group to refer itself as such. While Julius Dresser, and later his son Horatio, are sometimes credited as founders of New Thought as a named movement, others share this title. Horatio wrote A History of the New Thought Movement, which was published in 1919, and named his father an essential figure in founding the movement. Emma Curtis Hopkins is also considered a founder.  Hopkins, called the "Teacher of Teachers", was a former student of Mary Baker Eddy. Because of her role in teaching several influential leaders who emerge later in New Thought movement history, she is also given credit as a mother of the movement. Inspired by medieval mystic Joachim of Fiore, Hopkins viewed the Christian Trinity: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Mother-Spirit. She wrote High Mysticism and Scientific Christian Mental Practice and founded the Emma Hopkins College of Metaphysical Science, which graduated a large number of women.  Numerous churches and groups developed within the New Thought movement. Emma Curtis Hopkins is called the "Teacher of Teachers" because of the number of people she taught who went on to found groups within the New Thought movement. After learning from Hopkins, Annie Rix Militz went on to found the Home of Truth. Another student, Malinda E. Cramer became a co-founder of Divine Science, along with Mrs. Bingham, who later taught Nona L. Brooks, who co-founded Divine Science with Cramer. Charles and Myrtle Fillmore, who went to Hopkins together, went on to found the Unity School of Christianity afterwards. Authors learned from Hopkins, too, including Dr. H. Emilie Cady, writer of the Unity textbook Lessons in Truth; Ella Wheeler Wilcox, New Thought poet; and Elizabeth Towne. Considerably later, Ernest Holmes, who established Religious Science and founded the United Centers for Spiritual Living.  The Unity Church is the largest New Thought church today, with thousands of members around the world. It was formed by the Fillmores in 1891. Divine Science was also founded in the late 19th century by Melinda Cramer and Nona Brooks. The United Centers for Spiritual Living was founded by Ernest Holmes in 1927. A similar organization, the Society for Jewish Science, originally conceived by Rabbi Alfred G. Moses in the early 1900s, the movement was institutionalized in 1922 with Rabbi Morris Lichtenstein's. The New Thought movement extends around the world. The largest denomination outside the U.S., Seicho-no-Ie, was founded in 1930 by Masaharu Taniguchi in Japan. Today, it has missions around the world, including the U.S. Smaller churches, including the Home of Truth founded in 1899 in Alameda, California continue successfully,[24] as does the Agape International Spiritual Center, a megachurch led by Rev. Dr. Michael Beckwith in the Los Angeles-area.  Alongside these church-based developments, a parallel stream of New Thought took shape through the systematization of mental suggestion and psychological discipline. Henry Wood contributed significantly to this strand in works such as Ideal Suggestion Through Mental Photography (1893) and later New Thought Simplified, in which he articulated a structured philosophy of mental causation grounded in disciplined thought and constructive affirmation. Wood’s writings presented New Thought not only as a devotional system but as a practical mental science centered on the deliberate direction of consciousness.  This movement toward a disciplined and systematized mental science within New Thought found institutional expression in the Chicago School of Psychology, founded by Herbert A. Parkyn in 1896. It was the first American institution devoted specifically to the systematic teaching of hypnotism, suggestion, and auto-suggestion. The school framed mind cure as operating according to the Law of Suggestion, rather than supernatural power. Its development of auto-suggestion as a system of self-directed affirmations aimed at reshaping character and circumstance helped define the practical core of New Thought’s self-empowerment emphasis.  Among the Chicago School’s most prominent graduates was William Walker Atkinson, who worked as associate editor with Parkyn's Suggestion magazine in translating clinical suggestive principles into broader concepts of thought force, personal magnetism, and will development for everyday life. Atkinson later joined with Sydney B. Flower, a graduate and former secretary of the school, to establish New Thought magazine, which became one the movement’s most influential journals. A variety of umbrella New Thought organizations have existed, including the International New Thought Alliance, which existed in some form as early as 1899. The Affiliated New Thought Network was formed in 1992 to provide an overarching New Thought organization. Since 1974 the Universal Foundation for Better Living has been a gathering of Christian New Thought congregations around the world. In New York City, New Thought leaders created an umbrella organization called the League for the Larger Life. It lasted from 1916 through the 1950s.  There have been many New Thought schools. The most famous may be the Unity School of Christianity in Missouri, founded in the early 20th century. The Emerson Theological Institute has operated since 1992. At the turn of the 20th century Horatio Dresser ran an organization called the School of Applied Metaphysics.  Psychiana was a mail-order denomination operated by Frank B. Robinson that taught and spread the word about New Thought through the U.S. Postal Service.  Wikipedia: Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License.This episode includes AI-generated content.