20 Lessons In Building the Christ Consciousness
Hi Friends,
Frances W. Foulks never married, she earned her living as an independent spiritual writer, publishing Effectual Prayer with the Elizabeth Towne Publishing Company in 1928 and dozens of articles for Unity magazine in the 1920s and 1930s.
Although she was never ordained, she was clearly a Unity “insider”, as is evident in these photographs. Her contribution to Unity as an editor and book author was far more impactful than her Unity magazine articles. Effectual Prayer was Unity’s main handbook on prayer from the 1960s until the 2010s and Frances was, along with Cora Fillmore, one of two editors of the Fillmore papers (Frances for Myrtle Fillmore’s Healing Letters and Cora for Teach Us To Pray and several other books).
What I have here, besides several photos and a small amount of biographical information, is a PDF of “Building the Christ Consciousness”, a series of 20 unpublished lessons discovered in the 1970s, edited by Elizabeth Sand Turner, and published in Unity in serialized fashion from January 1978 through August 1979. Click here for that PDF. I will be grateful for a transcriber to extract the text so I can put it out in a more readable form.
What I have to come at some date in the future is a deeper analysis of how her writings dovetail with those of Cora Fillmore, her colleague in editing the Fillmore papers, and with those of Catherine Ponder. Click here for a preview of the work in progress.
Frances Warder Foulks was born August 20, 1876, to Joseph S. Foulks and Mary Ellen Cooper. The Foulks family line can be found with her grandparents, Dennis Foulks and Frances C. Warder, who were married January 10, 1842. She is living in Nashville, Tennessee, from 1903 until 1917, according to the Nashville City Directory. She is listed as an artist in 1903 and became a writer/administrator for a Retail Merchants Association in later years, according to several articles in the local paper. She is listed in the 1930 census living in Nashville with her sister’s family (JR Dowell and Margaret F. Dowell) with her occupation given as a writer.
She published several articles in Unity magazine in the 1920s and her book Effectual Prayer was published by Elizabeth Towne in 1928. In 1930 she gave a series of lectures in West Palm Beach entitled “Mystical Science of Prosperity” at the Unity Society.
Unity’s first book by Frances Foulks, All Things Made New, was published in October 1931. From 1934 to 1936, Frances edited the letters of Myrtle Fillmore, which was published as Unity’s second book by Frances Foulks, Myrtle Fillmore’s Healing Letters. Unity’s third book by Frances Foulks was a republishing of Effectual Prayer in 1945.
An autochrome photograph of Frances W. Foulks standing by a doorway at Unity Farm on July 29, 1935 is in the Kansas City Public Library Frank Lauder Collection.
Frances passed September 6, 1936 at Unity farm and is buried with her mother and sister Margaret in Nashville. The cause of death is difficult to interpret but it appears to be heart related with hypertension. I am grateful for a TruthUnity subscriber who found this information and share it with us.
Sunday, March 19, 2023
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