What Is Unity?
by Greg Barrette
Although Unity is over one hundred years old as a religious movement, most of its adherents are new to it, and may find it difficult to answer when friends ask, "What is Unity?" I find two ways that help me to answer. First, I compare Unity to other religious and philosophical systems with which they may be familiar. Second, I give them a three-word answer: Unity is "positive, practical Christianity".
This challenge of defining Unity is made more difficult by its confusion with other philosophies with coincidentally similar names. Even so, there are some similarities between Unity and Unitarianism that go beyond the sound of their names. Ralph Waldo Emerson was a Unitarian minister, and was also a favorite author of the founder of Unity, Charles Fillmore. many members of the New England transcendentalist movement, out of which Unity sprung, were Unitarians. Although today’s Unitarian Church has changed a great deal, with its current emphasis on political, social-action and intellectual issues, it has its roots in a progressive, inclusive universal attitude toward religion that is similar to Unity'’.
I find that it is easier to define Unity in comparison to other organizations than it is to define it by its set of beliefs because Unity is an experiential religion as opposed to a dogmatic one. That is, Unity stresses the internal spiritual experience of its adherents, rather than a rigidly held code of beliefs. So I usually compare Unity to the similar teachings of those who have been influenced by it, but who might be better known, such as Norman Vincent Peale and Robert Schuller, or to the teachings of the 12-step groups. Emmet Fox, who was a Unity minister in every respect except his ordination (He asked for one, but was told he had to attend the ministerial school!) wrote the book, Sermon on the Mount which was used for study in the first Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. Unity’s indirect influence on the religious scene may far surpass its direct influence.
Methodism and Christian Science
One of the best definitions of Unity was overheard by Charles Fillmore, our co-founder, in the cafeteria line of the old Unity Inn. One businessman said to another, "What is this Unity anyway?" He replied, "Well, I think it’s a little like Christian Science only they have a heck of a lot more fun!" There are parallels between my parents’ background and that of Unity, in that my father was a Christian Scientist and my mother was a Methodist. The Fillmores had been Methodists, yet their emphasis on spiritual healing held similarities to Christian Science. They also communicated in the language of liberal Protestantism, such as is found in the Methodist church.
My parents did not agree about religion, but when my sister was born with serious birth defects that would have prevented her from walking, someone gave them the phone number of Unity’s prayer ministry, Silent Unity. Unity’s is the original and oldest mail-in and phone-in prayer ministry. From Silent Unity, they received an affirmation (a positive prayer statement) that they recited for the next year: "You are God’s whole and perfect child. You are aglow with God’s life, light and wisdom." Through a remarkable set of circumstances, they were led to a new hospital which had a doctor who had heard of an experimental new treatment. He offered to try it out on my sister, promising nothing. After spending a year in a full body cast, my sister emerged completely healed. At its best, this treatment was only supposed to improve, not heal her. The doctor called it a miracle—and it was! Needless to say, when I was born some months later, my parents were confirmed Unity students (of course, they didn’t have to call Silent Unity about me!!).
New England Transcendentalism
Ralph Waldo Emerson is read by every generation of high school and college students and is probably America’s best-known religious philosopher. He also has the distinction of being the author most often quoted by Unity founder, Charles Fillmore. Along with the poet Whittier and the essayist Thoreau, Emerson led a movement known in its day as New England Transcendentalism. A lesser-known transcendentalist, Phineas Quimby, provided the link between Unity and that philosophy.
Quimby was a nineteenth-century hypnotherapist who noticed that many of his patients had fearful and rigid attitudes regarding religion that lessened their responsiveness to treatment. He tried to teach them a different way of looking at religion, one that he had gleaned in part from Emerson’s writings. One of his patients, a Mary Patterson, received successful treatment for chronic invalidism from Quimby. Later, under the name Mary Baker Eddy, she founded Christian Science, incorporating some of Quimby’s ideas.
Unity’s Founders
Unity’s founders were trained and ordained by Emma Curtis Hopkins, who was Mary Baker Eddy’s assistant for a short time, but broke away desiring a more liberal stance on doctrinal issues. After moving to Chicago and founding her own ministerial school, Hopkins trained speakers who traveled from town to town. One of these, E. B. Weeks gave a lecture to an audience in Kansas City that included a woman who was dying of tuberculosis and malaria. Her name was Myrtle Fillmore.
Myrtle Fillmore attended a Kansas City lecture on affirmative healing by E. B. Weeks. She used one affirmation, "I am a child of God—therefore I do not inherit sickness!," as a daily positive prayer until she experienced a total healing of both conditions. I’ll let her tell what occurred.
"What that revelation did to me was not at first apparent to my senses, but it held my mind up above negation…I gained in health and understanding. Then others saw that there was something new in me and asked me to share it. I did. Others were healed and began to study."
Later, her husband Charles joined her in this study. He was in his eighties when he described his experience in this way: "I was nearing the half-century mark and I began to get wrinkled and gray. My knees tottered and a great weakness came over me…My cheeks have filled out, the wrinkles and crows feet are gone and I actually feel like the boy that I am! By silently affirming my unity with the infinite energy of the one true God, I gained renewed youthfulness and power."
Their intention was not to found a new denomination. They felt that the world had enough churches as it was. They only wanted people in those churches to practice these transformative principles. The original purpose of Unity was to support people with prayer and publications. Even today, many more people know of Unity’s prayer ministry, Silent Unity, and its magazine, Daily Word,, than know of the existence of Unity Churches. The Fillmores were somewhat reluctant to endorse Unity’s emergence as a church movement, at first. It was only after individuals began forming churches on their own, with mixed results, that the Fillmores took charge of chartering churches and ordaining ministers.
Unity Is Positive
Unity is positive, practical Christianity. That is my favorite answer to the question "What is Unity?". Often, I will ask the questioners if they have ever heard of Norman Vincent Peale or his book, The Power of Positive Thinking. I had the good fortune of being his chauffeur for a day in 1978 while I was in Ministerial School. When he found out where I attended, he told me that he greatly admired the writings of Unity’s co-founder, Charles Fillmore, and that they had influenced his book. Peale said that he had spoken at the dedication of the new auditorium at Unity headquarters in 1972.
In 1989, he returned there to dedicate the new prayer ministry building, and said, "I have been spiritually fed by this place for many, many years. I am glad to acknowledge the debt of gratitude I owe to Unity for my own spiritual insights and growth, and for the help it has given me in my ministry over many years. It has helped me in preaching, in writing and I dealing with individuals. I have a great respect and regard for the Fillmores. Unity ministers are leading people to higher levels of consciousness. Unity has related mind to the spiritual life. It teaches people to think their way into understanding and newness of life."
Charles Fillmore was a positive person with a sense of humor. Several years ago, a friend of mine interviewed the then-owner of the Kansas City Royals baseball team. His first job, as a boy was as a deliverer of laundry, and Fillmore was his favorite customer because each time a package of laundry was delivered, Fillmore would tell him a joke—some of which were surprising coming from a religious leader!
Unity, being positive, focuses on answers, on results, on solutions. It teaches that God is a present force for good in our lives through which all things will turn out well if we will practice spiritual principles.
Unity Is Practical
To say Unity is practical is to say Unity is less concerned with theory than results. An engineer friend likens it to the difference between engineering and physics. A physicist is more concerned with theory, but an engineer takes that theory and applies it in a practical sense to build something. Unity is less concerned with theology (religious theory) than it is with application. Unity takes the position that religion only has value to the extent that it is practiced day by day. In fact, the original name of Unity was "The Society of Practical Christianity".
Unity teaches what most people believe in their heart of hearts to be true. It’s just that they never figured there would be a church sensible enough to teach it! One Sunday, a man said to me, "Unity is the one church where I don’t have to park my brain at the door when I come in". Another said, "This is the only church where I felt better after church than before".
For many people, religion is austere and forbidding. The story is told of a monastery whose order followed many practices of self-denial, including silence except for two words spoken in an interview with the abbot once every ten years. After his first ten years, one monk approached the abbot with his first words uttered in that time. He said, "Food cold". "Yes, my son," the abbot replied. Ten years later, the monk’s two words were, "Bed hard", to which the abbot again replied, "Yes, my son, I understand". After ten more years, the monk said, "I quit". The abbot frowned and said, "I’m not surprised. You’ve been complaining ever since you got here!"
When we say Unity is "practical Christianity", we mean that it teaches us how to affirm God in the midst of life, not how to deny the reality of our physical existence. The question we need to ask as truth seekers is "Does my religion affirm life?" Unity supports us in having well-integrated and balanced lives.
Lately teachings have crept into some churches that propose that the physical life is "just an illusion". I have noticed over the years that individuals who subscribe to such a belief find it difficult to make their lives work in a material sense. Energy follows thought and if we believe that the physical realm isn’t real, it tends to cooperate with our belief—and ceases to function.
Unity does not separate us into two parts, one good and one bad. The holistic model of self holds that we have a fourfold nature (physical, emotional, mental and spiritual). None of it is separate from God and all of it is good. Unity does not teach that the ego is bad, as some non-Unity teachings do. We believe that the ego is just the personal self, a vehicle by means of which the divinity in us expresses in manifest life. It is limited, but it is not bad.
There is no aspect of life that should be kept separate from God. Unity does not separate the marketplace and spirituality. Our purpose as human beings is to materialize the spiritual and to spiritualize the material realm. They are just two aspects, or expressions, of the same reality.
Unity Is Christian
Unity’s founder, Charles Fillmore once wrote that Unity was a return to "first century Christianity". In the time of the first disciples, Christianity was far less concerned with its theology than with its results in the lives of Christians. It was open-minded about beliefs, but definite about the power of prayer.
Christianity is the religion based on the teachings and the teaching spirit of Jesus Christ. These teachings are found in the words of Jesus which are found in the four Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. But what of the spirit of Jesus Christ? May Rowland, director of Silent Unity for fifty years, once told an interviewer, "Charles felt that Jesus was his friend. There were times that I almost felt like looking around the room to see if Jesus was there. Charles would often say ‘I am a walking disciple of Jesus Christ’ and sometimes he’d sign his letters with his name, and then add ‘Representative-of Christ-At-Large’".
What is the Christ? The Christ, as defined in John 1, is more than could only be embodied in Jesus or any one person. It is the universal spirit that indwells all; it is the life force and the essence of all creation. That Unity is Christian includes that we respect all world religions as valid for their cultures and times.
Unity’s teachings are positive, practical and Christian. Through them, Unity students unfold their expression of the same Christ spirit of which the apostle Paul wrote, "Let that mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus," and "Christ in you, your hope of glory."
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