Background of New Thought by Mark Hicks
In less than 120 years, New Thought has grown to be one of the most influential spiritual movements in our time:
- It's publications are read by millions of people, including evangelicals, mainstream Protestants and Catholics, as well as those who are "spiritual but not religious."
- It's best known minister was praised by Oprah, who said "his book changed my perspective on life and religion."
- It's congregations are filled with members of AA, who find its teachings on love, forgiveness, living one day at a time and living free from resentments crucial to recovery.
- It is perhaps the only American denomination that has fully embraced the spiritual teachings of Emerson and Thoreau.
- It's history was crucial to the discovery of what we now know as the mind-body connection.
Background of New Thought explains the basic beliefs of its membership, describes how this movement originated and grew, and helps to place New Thought in the context of mainstream Christianity, western culture and American history.
The thirty-one lessons in this book include:
- material from Unity's HI-604 class syllabus,
- material from Phil White's lectures on Background of New Thought
- material from Eric Butterworth's lectures on the Antecedents of New Thought
- content from some scholarly books (listed in the Bibliography),
- lots of colorful pictures,
- plenty of my own content.
You can freely download the entire book as a PDF (84 pages). The online text is the most up-to-date. I apply updates to the PDF and the printed copy when I've got enough time or when I get ready to teach a new class. Links to download are in the lower right. The Creative Commons copyright license (shown below) lets you build upon this material to produce improved versions.
