08/30/2026
CwG Chapel Presents - From the Directors Chair
World Religions & Conversations with God - Deepening Spiritual & Religious Practice Through Comparative Religion
New Thought: The Old Wisdom in a New Conversation
There is something almost amusing about calling it “New Thought.”
New?
The idea that consciousness matters.
The idea that thought influences experience.
The idea that there is a Divine Presence within and around us.
The idea that human beings can awaken to a deeper reality.
The idea that we are not separate from the Source of life.
The idea that love, rather than fear, is the deeper truth of existence.
None of these ideas are new. They are found throughout the history of humanity. They appear in the Vedic traditions of India, Buddhism and Taoism, Kabbalah and Sufism, Christian mysticism and Gnosticism, Hermeticism and Neoplatonism, the philosophies of ancient Greece and Rome, and in Indigenous and African spiritual traditions.
What became known as New Thought in nineteenth-century America was not the invention of a new spiritual truth. It was, in many ways, a new conversation about very old truths. And that makes New Thought particularly important to our World Religions & Conversations with God series. Because perhaps the real story is not the history of one movement. Perhaps the real story is the continuing evolution of humanity's understanding of the Divine.
What Do We Mean by “New Thought”?
New Thought is a broad spiritual and religious movement that emerged primarily in the United States during the nineteenth century. It developed around ideas concerning the relationship between consciousness, thought, belief, healing, spirituality and human experience.
There is no single founder, creed or scripture that defines all of New Thought. It is better understood as a family of related movements that developed from overlapping currents of Christian mysticism, metaphysics, Transcendentalism, Swedenborgianism, mesmerism, idealist philosophy, mental healing and growing Western interest in Eastern religions.
Some New Thought traditions remained explicitly Christian.
Some became increasingly metaphysical.
Some incorporated ideas from Eastern religions.
Some emphasized healing.
Some emphasized affirmative prayer.
Some emphasized the creative power of consciousness.
Some emphasized prosperity and manifestation.
Some emphasized mystical experience and the nature of God.
Yet beneath these differences was a common question:
What happens when we change our understanding of ourselves, God and reality?
That question should sound familiar to anyone who has spent time with Conversations with God.
Before New Thought, There Was Old Thought
To understand New Thought, we need to look backward.
The movement did not appear in a vacuum. It emerged from a Western intellectual and spiritual environment already influenced by Christian mysticism, Hermeticism, Neoplatonism, Kabbalah, Swedenborgianism, Transcendentalism and a growing interest in Eastern wisdom traditions. And those traditions themselves were influenced by even older traditions.
This is the important point. Ideas have lineages. A spiritual insight does not suddenly become true when someone gives it a new name.
The language may change.
The interpretation may change.
The cultural setting may change.
But the underlying insight may have been present for centuries or millennia.
New Thought therefore belongs within the much larger story we have been exploring throughout this series.
1. Emanuel Swedenborg
1688–1772
Before we arrive at the nineteenth-century American metaphysical movement, we need to stop with one of the most important bridges between traditional Christianity and later metaphysical spirituality: Emanuel Swedenborg.
Swedenborg was a Swedish scientist, philosopher, theologian and mystic. His early life was devoted largely to science, mathematics, engineering and philosophy. Later in life, his attention turned increasingly toward spiritual experience and the interpretation of Scripture.
Swedenborg developed an elaborate mystical understanding of reality in which the spiritual and natural worlds corresponded to one another. He believed Scripture contained deeper spiritual meanings and described God in terms of Divine Love and Divine Wisdom.
He also understood heaven and hell in ways that differed substantially from conventional Christian imagery, emphasizing the inner orientation of the individual toward love, wisdom and the Divine.
Swedenborgianism therefore became an important alternative stream of Christian spirituality. And this matters enormously for our New Thought story. Swedenborg helped establish an intellectual and spiritual bridge between: Christianity → mysticism → metaphysics → consciousness → spiritual transformation.
His influence would eventually reach directly into the emerging New Thought movement through people such as Warren Felt Evans. But Swedenborg is important for another reason.
He reminds us that what later New Thought thinkers were saying was not entirely new even within Christianity.
The Western Christian tradition already contained a mystical stream that understood God, consciousness, Scripture and spiritual transformation in profoundly interior ways.
2. Franz Anton Mesmer
1734–1815
Next comes Franz Anton Mesmer, the Austrian physician associated with what he called animal magnetism. Mesmer proposed that an invisible force operated through living beings and that disturbances in this force could contribute to illness.
Although the specific theory of animal magnetism was eventually rejected by mainstream science, Mesmer's influence on nineteenth-century Western culture was considerable.
His work helped generate interest in:
• invisible forces
• altered states of consciousness
• suggestion
• healing
• the relationship between mind and body
• the possibility that consciousness could affect physical experience
Mesmer therefore belongs in the background of the New Thought story, not because New Thought accepted his scientific claims, but because mesmerism helped create the cultural environment in which mental healing and consciousness became legitimate subjects of spiritual exploration.
3. Ralph Waldo Emerson and Transcendentalism
1803–1882
If Swedenborg provides an important spiritual bridge, Ralph Waldo Emerson provides one of the great philosophical bridges. Emerson became one of the leading figures of American Transcendentalism, a movement that emphasized intuition, individual spiritual experience, the unity of nature and spirit, and the possibility of direct relationship with the Divine.
Transcendentalism rejected the idea that religious truth had to be received exclusively through established institutions. The individual could experience the Divine directly. Nature could become a revelation. Consciousness could become a doorway to spiritual understanding. The Divine could be discovered within rather than merely described from without.
Emerson was influenced by many sources, including Christianity, German idealism, Neoplatonism, Swedenborg and Eastern religious literature. And this is precisely what makes him so important to our larger theme.
He was not inventing spirituality from nothing.
He was synthesizing wisdom.
He was reading across traditions and asking what they might reveal about the nature of reality and human consciousness.
That should sound remarkably familiar.
Emerson's Transcendentalism helped prepare the cultural soil in which New Thought would grow.
4. Phineas Parkhurst Quimby
1802–1866
Quimby is often called the “Father of New Thought,” although the history is much more complicated than that title suggests.
Quimby was a healer who became interested in mesmerism and developed an approach to healing emphasizing the relationship between thought, belief and illness.
He increasingly explored the idea that mistaken beliefs could produce suffering and that changing one's understanding could contribute to healing.
Quimby worked with Mary Baker Eddy for a period beginning in 1862, and their relationship became an important part of the history of both Christian Science and later metaphysical movements. But it is important not to reduce the entire New Thought movement to Quimby. He was one stream among many.
His significance lies particularly in the question he helped bring into public discussion: Could changing consciousness change experience? That question would become one of the central questions of New Thought.
5. Warren Felt Evans
1817–1889
Warren Felt Evans is one of the most important figures connecting Swedenborgianism with the emerging mental-healing movement.
Evans was a Swedenborgian minister, writer and metaphysical thinker. His book The Mental Cure, published in 1869, became one of the earliest significant works associated with the developing New Thought tradition.
Evans combined Christian spirituality, Swedenborgian ideas and mental healing. He was interested in the relationship between the mind, spiritual reality and healing.
His work demonstrates something essential about the genealogy of New Thought. It was not simply:
Quimby → New Thought.
It was more like: Ancient mysticism → Christian mysticism → Swedenborg → Transcendentalism and metaphysics → mental healing → New Thought.
And even that is an oversimplification.
The streams were crossing, influencing one another and developing simultaneously.
6. Mary Baker Eddy and Christian Science
1821–1910
Mary Baker Eddy founded Christian Science, making it one of the earliest major organized religious expressions to emerge from this nineteenth-century metaphysical environment.
Her major work, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, was first published in 1875, and the Church of Christ, Scientist was formally organized in 1879.
Christian Science developed a distinctive theology centered on God, Spirit and spiritual reality, and it emphasized spiritual healing.
Christian Science shares historical territory with New Thought, but it is important to distinguish the two.
Christian Science became its own religious tradition with its own theology, scripture, organizational structure and identity. It still exists today as an international religious movement.
Christian Science is therefore best understood as historically related to the New Thought story while remaining doctrinally distinct from the broader New Thought movement.
7. Emma Curtis Hopkins
1849–1925
If Quimby helped open the door, Emma Curtis Hopkins helped open the floodgates. Hopkins became one of the most influential teachers in the development of metaphysical Christianity.
She studied with Mary Baker Eddy for a period and later established her own teaching work. She became known as the “Teacher of Teachers” because so many people who later established New Thought organizations were influenced by her directly or through her students.
Among the movements and leaders influenced by her were people associated with:
• Unity
• Divine Science
• other metaphysical Christian movements
• the broader New Thought tradition
Hopkins moved the discussion beyond the question of whether thought could influence healing. She asked deeper questions about Divine Mind, human consciousness and the nature of God.
And this represents another evolutionary step.
The question was becoming less:
“Can thinking make me healthy?”
and increasingly:
“What is consciousness, and what is its relationship to the Divine?”
8. Malinda Cramer and Nona Brooks — Divine Science
Divine Science developed in the late nineteenth century through the work of Malinda Cramer, Nona L. Brooks and others.
Divine Science emphasized the omnipresence of God and the possibility of experiencing healing and transformation through an awakened understanding of one's relationship with the Divine.
Like other New Thought traditions, it drew from Christianity while incorporating metaphysical ideas.
Its central orientation was not simply about thinking positively.
It was about recognizing the presence and activity of God within life.
Divine Science continues to exist today, although it is considerably smaller than some of the other New Thought organizations.
9. Charles and Myrtle Fillmore — Unity
1880s–Present
Perhaps the most widely recognized expression of New Thought is Unity, founded by Charles and Myrtle Fillmore. The Fillmores began exploring metaphysical Christianity in the 1880s.
They were influenced by Christian Science, Emma Curtis Hopkins, Transcendentalism, metaphysics and Eastern religious traditions.
What makes Unity especially important to our comparative-religion project is the Fillmores' willingness to look beyond Christianity for spiritual wisdom.
Unity's educational and publishing work eventually reflected interests in Christianity, Theosophy, the Bhagavad Gita, Buddhism, Yoga and other spiritual traditions.
The Fillmores were not necessarily saying that all religions were identical. They were asking what wisdom could be found within them. That is a major distinction.
Unity became a spiritual movement organized around the idea that truth can be discovered through multiple avenues of spiritual exploration.
Unity continues today with spiritual centers, educational programs, prayer ministries and communities throughout the world.
10. H. Emilie Cady
1848–1941
Another important figure in Unity's development was H. Emilie Cady. A physician and metaphysical writer, Cady studied with Emma Curtis Hopkins and wrote Lessons in Truth, which became one of Unity's most influential texts. Cady helped translate metaphysical ideas into practical spiritual living.
Her work is a reminder that movements are not created only by founders.
Sometimes a book becomes a teacher.
Sometimes an idea becomes a practice.
Sometimes a phrase survives long after the person who wrote it has disappeared from public memory.
11. Ralph Waldo Trine
1866–1958
Ralph Waldo Trine helped move New Thought beyond organized religion and into popular spirituality. His best-known book, In Tune with the Infinite, presented an accessible vision of humanity's relationship with the Infinite and the power of consciousness.
Trine represents an important transition. New Thought was becoming less about establishing another denomination and increasingly about personal spiritual development.
The ideas were moving into books, lectures, self-development and popular culture. The seeds of what we now call the modern spiritual-growth movement were beginning to emerge.
12. Thomas Troward
1847–1916
English judge and writer Thomas Troward became another important influence on twentieth-century metaphysical thought.
Troward attempted to reconcile spirituality, reason, Divine Mind and universal law.
His writings influenced later New Thought thinkers, including Ernest Holmes. Troward's importance lies partly in his attempt to make spirituality intellectually coherent. Rather than asking people simply to believe, he encouraged them to examine the principles underlying spiritual experience.
Again, we see the movement evolving.
Mysticism was being translated into metaphysics.
Metaphysics was being translated into psychology.
Psychology was beginning to be translated into practical spirituality.
13. Ernest Holmes — Religious Science / Science of Mind
1887–1960
Then came Ernest Holmes, one of the most influential figures in modern New Thought. Holmes studied Christianity, New Thought, Transcendentalism, metaphysics, philosophy and other spiritual traditions.
His most influential work, The Science of Mind, was published in 1926. He founded the Institute of Religious Science in Los Angeles in 1927. Holmes sought to bring together science, philosophy and religion in a practical spiritual system. He emphasized Divine Mind, consciousness, affirmative prayer and what he called spiritual mind treatment.
Holmes' approach became known as Religious Science and Science of Mind. The movement continues today, with many of its communities operating under the name Centers for Spiritual Living.
Holmes is particularly important to our CwG conversation because he represents a further movement away from traditional religious authority and toward direct spiritual experience and conscious participation in life.
14. Jewish Science
Early 20th Century
The metaphysical impulse also found expression within Judaism.
Jewish Science developed in the early twentieth century, with Rabbi Morris Lichtenstein becoming its principal institutional figure.
Jewish Science explored prayer, healing, spirituality and consciousness while maintaining a Jewish identity. Its existence is another reminder that metaphysical spirituality was never exclusively Christian.
The same questions were being asked through different religious languages.
15. Masaharu Taniguchi — Seicho-No-Ie
1930–Present
The story then becomes increasingly international. In Japan, Masaharu Taniguchi founded Seicho-No-Ie in 1930.
The movement developed a synthesis incorporating Buddhist, Shinto and Christian ideas while emphasizing spiritual identity, consciousness and the recognition of a deeper divine reality.
Its existence demonstrates something important about the evolution of New Thought: The conversation was no longer confined to nineteenth-century American Christianity. It had become part of a global conversation about consciousness and spiritual reality.
The New Thought Family Today
Today, the New Thought landscape includes a variety of organizations and expressions.
Among them are:
• Unity
• Centers for Spiritual Living / Religious Science
• Divine Science
• Jewish Science
• International New Thought Alliance
• Association for Global New Thought
• Affiliated New Thought Network
• independent New Thought churches and spiritual centers
• contemporary metaphysical and spiritual communities
Christian Science is historically related to the same nineteenth-century environment but remains a distinct religious tradition.
Some movements have grown smaller.
Some have changed names.
Some have merged.
Some have disappeared.
And some of their ideas have escaped institutional boundaries altogether.
They now appear in: personal development, meditation, psychology, wellness, spirituality, coaching and contemporary conversations about consciousness. In that sense, perhaps one of New Thought's greatest accomplishments is that the ideas outgrew the institutions.
But Is It Really “New”?
This brings us to the heart of our exploration.
If we call this movement New Thought, what exactly is new about it?
The answer may be:
The form is new. The wisdom is ancient.
The language changes.
The cultural context changes.
The metaphors change.
The psychological vocabulary changes.
The scientific vocabulary changes.
The institutions change.
But the questions remain remarkably consistent.
We have encountered these questions throughout our journey.
The Same Wisdom Wearing Different Clothes
Hinduism: The deepest Self is not separate from ultimate reality.
Buddhism: Our experience is profoundly affected by consciousness, perception, attachment and identification.
Taoism: Peace comes through alignment with the deeper movement of reality rather than resistance to it.
Kabbalah: The Divine is intimately involved with creation and the human journey toward greater awareness.
Sufism: The apparent separation between the human and the Divine can dissolve through remembrance and love.
Christian Mysticism: Union with God is possible.
Gnosticism: Awakening involves remembering a deeper spiritual identity.
Hermeticism: Reality is interconnected, and the levels of existence correspond.
Neoplatonism: All things ultimately participate in and flow from the One.
Indigenous traditions: Human beings exist within a living web of relationship rather than as isolated individuals.
And then New Thought begins speaking about: Mind. Consciousness. Belief. Affirmation. Divine Presence. Healing. Spiritual identity. Is that genuinely new? Or is it another generation using its own vocabulary to talk about an ancient human intuition?
Conversations with God and the New Thought Conversation
This is where Conversations with God enters our story. CwG does not need to be placed neatly inside the New Thought movement.
It is broader than that. But there is a powerful family resemblance.
CwG invites us to reconsider our ideas about:
God.
Ourselves.
Life.
Death.
Suffering.
Choice.
Consciousness.
Reality.
And one of its central messages is remarkably consistent with the larger trajectory we have been following: Human beings have misunderstood their relationship with the Divine.
CwG speaks of God as All That Is. “All things are One Thing. There is Only One Thing, and all things are part of The One Thing There Is.”
It challenges the idea that God exists as a separate being somewhere outside creation. It invites us to reconsider the idea that we are separate from the Divine. It suggests that our understanding of ourselves profoundly affects our experience. It speaks of fear and separation as experiences rather than ultimate truths. And it presents human beings as participants in the unfolding and creation of their experience.
These ideas can sound revolutionary. But comparative religion changes the way we hear them. Because we have heard versions of them before. Again and again. And now... again!
From Religion to Revelation
Perhaps this is one of the most important things comparative religion can teach us: Truth does not become false because it appears in another religion. Nor does truth become true simply because it appears in ours.
Truth is truth.
The challenge is learning to recognize it beneath the language.
A Hindu may speak of Brahman.
A Buddhist may speak of awakening.
A Taoist may speak of the Tao.
A Christian mystic may speak of union with God.
A Sufi may speak of the Beloved.
A Kabbalist may speak of Ein Sof.
A Hermeticist may speak of the One Mind.
A Neoplatonist may speak of the One.
A New Thought practitioner may speak of Divine Mind.
Conversations with God may speak of God as All That Is.
Different words.
Different histories.
Different cultures.
Different metaphors.
And yet perhaps they are all pointing toward something that cannot be completely contained by language.
Translation Is Interpretation
This is why comparative religious study matters. Every religion interprets its experience of the Divine through the language available to its people. And translation is interpretation.
When an ancient spiritual insight moves from one language and culture into another, something inevitably changes. The same is true when an ancient spiritual insight is translated into nineteenth-century metaphysics.
Or twentieth-century psychology.
Or twenty-first-century conversations about consciousness.
The words change. The experience may not.
Perhaps what we call spiritual evolution is, at least in part, humanity continually finding better language for what we have always been trying to remember.
From “New Thought” to “Old Wisdom”
Maybe we should therefore stop thinking of New Thought as a movement that suddenly appeared in nineteenth-century America.
Maybe it is better understood as a branch on an ancient tree. The roots reach backward into the oldest spiritual and philosophical traditions we have explored. The trunk passes through mysticism, philosophy, metaphysics and religious reform. The nineteenth century produced new branches.
Christian Science became one.
Divine Science became another.
Unity became another.
Religious Science became another.
Jewish Science became another.
Seicho-No-Ie became another.
And countless contemporary spiritual movements have continued growing from those branches. The tree is still alive. And it is still growing.
The Thought Isn't New - The Awareness Is
There is another way to understand the name.
Perhaps New Thought isn't about discovering new truth.
Perhaps it is about discovering an old truth anew.
Every generation forgets something.
Every generation rediscovers something.
Every generation translates something.
Every generation asks:
Who are we?
Why are we here?
What is God?
Are we separate from God?
What is consciousness?
What is the nature of reality?
Why do we suffer?
What does it mean to be fully alive?
And every generation gives those questions its own answers.
That does not necessarily mean the previous generation was wrong.
It may mean that understanding itself evolves.
The Continuing Conversation
This is why we have spent these weeks moving through so many religions, philosophies and spiritual traditions.
We are not trying to determine which religion is right.
We are trying to discover what each tradition reveals that is true.
That is a very different question.
Perhaps Christianity has something to offer Buddhism.
Perhaps Buddhism has something to offer Christianity.
Perhaps Taoism can illuminate Christianity.
Perhaps Kabbalah can illuminate Judaism.
Perhaps Hermeticism can illuminate modern metaphysics.
Perhaps ancient Greek philosophy can illuminate contemporary spirituality.
Perhaps Indigenous wisdom can remind modern humanity what it means to live in relationship with the whole.
And perhaps New Thought can be understood as one of the more recent attempts to gather these ancient streams and allow them to speak to one another and to us. That makes New Thought less a rejection of the past and more an evolution of the conversation.
Old Thought, New Language
So perhaps the title New Thought is both accurate and misleading.
It is new in its historical form.
New in its American expression.
New in some of its vocabulary.
New in its willingness to combine religious, philosophical and metaphysical ideas.
But the essential questions?
The essential intuitions?
The longing to know God?
The recognition of an underlying unity?
The possibility of awakening?
The transformative power of consciousness?
The conviction that love is deeper than fear?
Those are not new.
They are among humanity's oldest questions and deepest intuitions.
What we are witnessing is not New Thought at all.
We are witnessing Old Wisdom becoming conscious of itself again.
And perhaps that is what spiritual evolution looks like.
A Final CwG Reflection
Because God is All of It, there is truth in all of it. Hindu truth, Christian truth, Buddhist truth, Jewish truth, Muslim truth, Taoist truth, New Thought truth and CwG truth. And larger truths yet to be revealed.
There can be different perceptions of truth.
Different interpretations.
Different experiences.
Different languages.
Different maps.
But the territory remains what it is.
And perhaps the great invitation of comparative religion is to stop arguing long enough to explore the territory together.
The more traditions we study, the more we may begin to recognize something remarkable: The wisdom may change its clothes, but the Divine keeps saying the same thing in different ways.
Perhaps New Thought isn't new.
Perhaps it is simply the latest chapter in a conversation that humanity has been having with God since the beginning.
And perhaps the next chapter is yours to write?
Next Week
We have looked at New Thought as a broad historical movement. Now we can slow down and explore its individual branches more deeply.
Until then...
Blessed Be,
J.R.
J.R. Westen, D.D., C.Ad
Executive Director/Head Coach
CwG Foundation
PS: I hope you are enjoying our CwG Chapel's weekly look into World Religions and CwG.
Do you have questions about God, CwG or any of the religions or topics I cover?
Feel free to ask: Write [email protected]
Or join us on Wednesdays, 10:00 AM Pacific for our CwG Spiritual Discussion & Support Group:
https://www.cwg.org/CWG_Spiritual_Support_Group
For one-on-one CwG Coaching or Spiritual Counseling, including Addiction and Grief Recovery: www.jrwesten.com
