The Unity Church

[uofl19]

Does anyone here know anything about the Unity Church. My Mother subscribes monthly to there little prayer book the Living Word. I have never heard a Priest or anyone say or talk about it. Is it bad?? Good?? I know Evangelicals BLAST it. They compare it to the lies of JW and Mormonism.

My Mother still goes to Mass every Sunday, however, from time to time she has gone to Unity’s Christmas Service. She really enjoys it. I looked up info on their Web Site and to me it sound like a “Feel Good” everyone goes to Heaven type Religion. Definitely slanted towards the “Liberal” Side. However, if Evangelicals blast it, I thought maybe it’s not so bad??? HAHA!! Any thoughts??

 

[Christy_Beth]

It is my understanding that the Unity Church adheres to new age teaching. As such, it would be bad indeed. New Age philosophy ascribes to “goddess” worship and other kinds of “feel good” religion. My older brother is into all of that. While he doesn’t deny God, his God isn’t the one of the bible.

 

[Cairisti]

There’s a Unity Church here in Houston and from the looks of it, it’s one of those “feel good” type churches. A friend of mine goes there .

 

[Digitonomy]

From p. 202 of Separated Brethren, by William H. Whalen, published by Our Sunday Visitor:

Unity students interpret much of the Bible and many of the Christian doctrines allegorically or “metaphysically,” as they would prefer to call it. A Hindu or Jew would find little to upset his religious sensibilities in Unity literature. In fact, the Hindu might feel more at home perusing Unity books than the Christian, as the sect teaches that the soul passes through various reincarnations “till we all come into Unity.”

 

[jennstall]

Christy Beth:

It is my understanding that the Unity Church adheres to new age teaching. As such, it would be bad indeed. New Age philosophy ascribes to “goddess” worship and other kinds of “feel good” religion. My older brother is into all of that. While he doesn’t deny God, his God isn’t the one of the bible.

It’s not new age, it is New Thought, which may sound like symantics, but isn’t. New Thought isn’t about goddess worship and it isn’t a product of the 1950s and 60s. New Thought started in the late 1800s. Unity, Christian Science, Religious Science and a few other groups that I can’t remember the name of right now all rose out of the early New Thought movement with Christian Science ultimately proving the most divergent. Unity and Religious Science are very similiar, though Unity tends to have a more Christian flavor. Both groups see God as being “the wisdom of the Universe” (and I’m totally paraphrasing). They are very much into the idea of God as Word, but not of God as Father. In fact, Religious Science generally refers to God as It. New Thought is very much into metaphysics and practical mysticism. For a very shorthand idea of what they believe I think it is fair to say you can look at George Lucas’ concept of “The Force” in Star Wars since he borrowed heavily from New Thought philosphers when he came up with that.

I would say that the largest philosophical difference between Christianity and New Thought is that New Thought philosophy teaches that God can be manipulated through prayer. And yes, yes, there are a million ways in which Christianity and New Thought differ, but I think this concept of manipulating God through prayer is the most critical since New Thought generally has very strong regard for Christianity and Jesus.

I wouldn’t consider them a cult because there is no attempt at coercion or proselytization and there’s no financial abuse. I have very warm feelings towards Religious Science in particular because it gave me what I needed to finally come back home to the Catholic Church. I worked out a lot of my anger issues with the practical spiritual tools that Religious Science has to offer.

 

[Zooey]

The reason that evangelical Christians don’t like the Unity church, is that it is not Christian (although it calls itself Christian). They believe in reincarnation,& reject the Deity of Christ. They say we are all “Christs”, & that there is no such thing as sin.
They also believe that sickness is the result of “wrong thinking”. If you get sick, it is your fault. When you die, that was unnecessary, because we could all live forever if we just “thought positive”.
They spend a lot of time on prosperity thinking too–much the same, you can be rich if you think rich…One of their women preachers wrote a book about Jesus called Millionaire from Nazareth…The whole reason Jesus came to earth was to teach us all how to think positive thoughts so we could all be rich like Him…(Funny, I thought He worked in a carpenter shop…) Of course, He was just a “great teacher”; Christians have “misunderstood” Him…
It was founded by people who left Christian Science. Unlike them Unity will let you go to the doctor, however, they will tell you it is your own wrong thinking that made you sick in the 1st place…
OY!!!

 

[Liberian]

uofl19:

Does anyone here know anything about the Unity Church. My Mother subscribes monthly to there little prayer book the Living Word. I have never heard a Priest or anyone say or talk about it. Is it bad?? Good?? I know Evangelicals BLAST it. They compare it to the lies of JW and Mormonism.

My Mother still goes to Mass every Sunday, however, from time to time she has gone to Unity’s Christmas Service. She really enjoys it. I looked up info on their Web Site and to me it sound like a “Feel Good” everyone goes to Heaven type Religion. Definitely slanted towards the “Liberal” Side. However, if Evangelicals blast it, I thought maybe it’s not so bad??? HAHA!! Any thoughts??

There is a Unity Church in Huntsville that sponsored a “Seminar on Conscious Eating” by somebody with a very strong Hindu influence. The agenda included several talks on Ayurvedic practices of one form or another.

An engineer friend of mine who visited that church told me that on the altar they had a symbol of a three-dimensional coordinate axes (three perpendicular lines in a perspective view), with a circle around them. It looked to him a lot like a cross with circle around it and a slash through it, the classic “Prohibited” symbol in modern American society. I don’t think the church deliberately meant that particular interpretation, but according to my friend it accurately symbolized their practices.

• Liberian