Visiting Other Churches: New Series, No. 1 . . .

UNITY CHURCH:  MIND CULT? 

I am almost finished with my project of visiting every church in my home town of Denton, Texas. I am now looking out for those assemblies in homes, warehouses, store fronts, hotels, and community rooms. Some are very tiny, such as when I sat with the Quakers in a home where there were just four of us. I am in that shady area of what is a church and what isn't. One family in a poor part of town has a sign on their house indicating that it is a "gospel mission" where the hungry can get a meal and folk can pray together. I plan to visit. A poor black Pentecostal group vacated the shack where they met before I got to them. A sign on the door indicates that they have moved across town. I will eventually visit them.

There have been a few new congregations organized since I began this project. Such is the case with Unity of Denton, which is part of an international body known as the Unity School of Christianity with headquarters in Unity Village, Mo. They are strong on organization and advertising, for while they are yet a small group in Denton and meet in a store front (which they have decorated nicely), they have lots of activities and take a large chunk of the free advertising on the church page of the local paper. I was surprised to see that they have two services on Sunday morning and activities all week. They emphasize meditation (including classes for children), healing ("You can heal your life"), and yoga (mind control techniques drawn from Hinduism), which makes them something like first cousins of Christian Science, with which they share common origins. Classes through the week provide training in these disciplines. I took note of an announcement for "World Peace Meditation."

Their special vocabulary is suggestive of oriental influence, such as visualization and affirmation, going into silence, and "If we are willing to do the mental work, almost anything can be healed." You will note the subtle doctrine of salvation (healing) by works, mental works. One of their tracts emanating from Unity Village is titled "A Prosperity Meditation," the gist of which is that one can be healthy, wealthy, and wise through meditation. Prosperity results from tapping the resources that are from within, "a process of growth and fulfillment," as the tract puts ii

Another tract from Unity Village is "The Light That Shines For You," which one might suppose would be a reference to "the light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not comprehend it" or to "the light of the world," familiar biblical references to the entrance of Jesus Christ into human history. But the Unity philosophy places little emphasis upon the Christ of history who died and rose again. Like the Christian Scientists, they see Christ as the Mind that is within, the true Self, Self-Fulfillment, or some such Gnostic idea. In this tract the light that shines for you is an artificially lighted room in Unity Village where "Silent Unity" consists of continual prayers, day and night, that reach out to those in need. That lighted prayer room has not had a dark moment during the 90 years of Unity history. There is a number you can call, and the answer will be "Silent Unity," and you can state your need. That is the light that shines for you.

Another tract, called "The Golden Key," identifies the golden key as scientific prayer, and the treasure that the key unlocks is harmony and happiness. Unity does not deal with sin as a reality and so there is no such thing as salvation in any orthodox Christian sense. The tract assures the reader that scientific prayer will get one out of any difficulty. There is this incredibly simplistic approach to life's weighty problems: 

All you have to do is this: Stop thinking about the difficuty, whatever it is, and think about God instead. This is the complete rule, and if only you will do this, the trouble, whatever it is, will disappear. It makes no difference what kind of trouble it is. It may be a big thing or a little thing; it may concern health, finance, a lawsuit, a quarrel, an accident, or anything else conceivable, but whatever it is, stop thinking about it and think of God instead - that is all you have to do.

This runs counter to the Biblical teaching on prayer, which is not intended as an escape from life's difficulties but for the courage to persevere. Our Lord assures us that in this world we will have tribulation (Jn. 16:33), and all the yoga of the orient and all the "Master Mind" of Unity will not change that fact, but through prayer the Lord gives us the strength to bear it, even with good cheer. You would be ill-advised to take the above prescription to a hospital or a nursing home and recommend it to those afflicted with Parkinson's disease, ADS, cancer, or Alzheimer's. All they have to do is to stop thinking about it and think about God! But you would be well-advised to share with them your trust that God will be with us through any difficulty, and you could pray the Lord's prayer with them and read the 23rd Psalm. That is what religion is about instead of being an escape hatch.

I attended the early service one Sunday at Unity of Denton where no more than eight or ten were assembled. The regular pastor, a woman, was absent. The service, led by her substitute, began with an invocation: "The presence of Christ within me establishes peace and harmony in my life. I am serene." We sang several hymns, including Kum ba yah, my Lord and Let There Be Peace on Earth. There was special music and reading from the Scriptures. A unique feature was a period of meditation; another was the "Blessing" they say in unison, reading from the Order of Worship, such as "Divine love, through me, blesses and multiplies all that I have, all that I give and all that I receive."

The service impressed me as perfunctory and matter of fact. It was not only informal but lighthearted. They probably intended to create a friendly, low key atmosphere (such as joking with each other), but it came across as shallow and insincere. There was certainly no sense of urgency that one feels at some churches. This may be because they do not think of themselves as "church" and they almost make light of "Sunday service." An example: 

Unity is a church, but a new and different kind of church. It has teachings, but not a creed. It is more a weekday application of spiritual principles to daily problems than it is a Sunday service. Unity has students, but demands no affiliation. It is more a movement than a body of believers.

In comparison to other churches Unity may rightly be seen as a cult, which means that it has radical or extreme features and is significantly different from what is considered normative in religion. Some cults are socially radical, even macabre and ghastly in their behavior, blindly following the unpredictable antics of some guru, such as Jim Jones' People's Church, which drank poison at his behest. Others are politically radical, such as the Black Muslims and Jehovah's Witnesses. Others are radically prophetic, ushering in some new age, such as Swedenborgianism, Mormonism, and Armstrong's Worldwide Church of God. Still others are radically syncretistic in that they claim to be the essence of all religions and are usually Eastern in origin, such as the Bahai faith and the Rosicrucian fellowship. Others are radically mystical and even occult, such as Spiritism.

Then there are those cults that are radically intellectual and sophisticated, making a religion of psychology, meditation, yoga, universal soul, and define God and Christ as "Mind." These are legion and include Christian Science, New Thought, Theosophy, and Unity. These cults are generally more respected in society, not only because they attract more sophisticated and well-to-do people, but also because they emphasize healing and thereby make some worthwhile contribution or appear to. They also have the advantage of basing their religion on what has generally come to be accepted as true, even if they overdo it, which is that the mind has great influence over the body.

Cults have other common characteristics, such as being founded by and evolving around some charismatic and colorful figure, who are often great promoters and organizers. oddly enough these leaders are often women or man and wife teams. Unity, for instance traces its beginnings to Charles and Myrtle Fillmore, who in turn were influenced by Christian Science, founded by Mary Baker Eddy.

Another common trait is extra-Biblical revelation. They have their own Bibles, special revelation, "Key to the Scriptures," or whatever. Or they so allegorize and spiritualize the Scriptures as to significantly distort their meaning. And so they may be accused of using Biblical terminology but confusing the meaning with a lot of mumbo-jumbo. The Unity movement is particularly guilty of this.

Unity literature, for example, speaks of the atonement as "agreement C reconciliation of man's mind with divine Mind through the superconsciousness Christ-mind," which hardly reflects the Bible's plain language, such as "God made Him who knew no sin to become sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God through Him" (2 Cor. 5:21). The Holy Spirit is defined as "The very spirit of truth lying latent within us, each and every one." The resurrection is spiritualized into their doctrine of the reincarnation. It is understandable, therefore, that they would say of the Bible: "Scripture may be a satisfactory authority for those who are not themselves in direct communion with the Lord." And who is the Lord? "This Christ or perfect-man idea existing eternally in divine Mind is the true, spiritual, higher-self of every individual."

Unity of Denton is therefore seriously at variance with historic, Biblical Christianity. While we will love and respect them as neighbors, we can only view their system as a challenge to the apostolic faith. We will meet the challenge in the spirit of Christ and by an appeal to the great facts of the gospel, authenticated by those who were witnesses to the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. —the Editor