|
New Thought Religion
The New Thought Religion also known as the New Thought Movement originated in the United States during the late 19th Century. It is an allied group of religious faiths and secular organizations and others who share a set of metaphysical beliefs. New Thought as a movement had no single origin, but was rather propelled along by a number of spiritual thinkers and philosophers and emerged through a variety of religious denominations and churches.
The earliest identifiable proponent of the movement was Phineas Parkhurst Quimby (1802–66), an American philosopher, mesmerist, healer, and inventor. These metaphysical beliefs are concerned with the effects of positive thinking, law of attraction, healing, life force, creative visualization and personal power. It promotes the ideas that God is ubiquitous, spirit is the totality of real things, true human selfhood is divine, divine thought is a force for good, all sickness originates in the mind, and 'right thinking' has a healing effect.
Although New Thought is neither monolithic nor doctrinaire, in general modern day adherents of New Thought believe that God is "supreme, universal, and everlasting", that divinity dwells within each person and that all people are spiritual beings, and that "the highest spiritual principle [is] loving one another unconditionally and that our mental states are carried forward into manifestation and become our experience in daily living. The three major, but distinct, religious denominations within the American New Thought movement are Unity Church, Religious Science and the Church of Divine Science.
|
