The Nature of Unity
Unity is a religious movement that began over a century ago. In the 1880’s Charles and Myrtle Fillmore, co-founders of Unity, began to work with some new ideas that they had found about life. Charles had a withered leg; Myrtle had tuberculosis. But in a short time, Myrtle was healed and Charles’ health was so much improved that other people, seeing the changes in them, were drawn to them to find out how they, too, could change.
The Fillmores had no thought of starting a new religion; they just wanted to help themselves and others who turned to them for help. In 1889 they began to publish a little magazine called Modern Thought, which a few years later they renamed Unity. In this magazine, they presented the ideas that had helped them heal themselves and find peace and strength. These ideas are simple. They are centered around two basic propositions:
One ~ God is Good.
Two ~ God is available, in fact, God is in you.
If God is good, God’s will is good. It is impossible to believe that a good God — a God who is love and intelligence — could have made you in any other way except to be healthy, happy, prosperous, loved and loving, courageous and strong. If you are not healthy and happy, it can only be because you have separated yourself from God in mind — the only place you can separate yourself from God and God’s good. You have only to reunite in mind with God, and your life is certain to be full and fulfilling. You do this best by getting still and realizing your oneness with God. Every thought, negative or positive, comes one at time to the door of your conscious mind; there you let it in or turn it away. To have a good life, you have to learn to say no to the negative thoughts which deny your oneness with god’s good and say yes to the positive thoughts which affirm your oneness with God’s good.
Perhaps this is an oversimplification of Unity teachings, but these are the essential elements.
Unity is not a proselytizing religion. We are happy to have you call yourself a Unity student and join a Unity group. But we are also happy when we can help you be a better Methodist, a better Catholic, a better whatever you are.
Unity began as an open-ended religion, and we pray it always will be. May we always be seekers after Truth rather than people who feel that they have found all the Truth and must form an exclusive little circle to preserve it.
Unity is the religion of the written word, and Unity School of Christianity is the organization that has carried that written word around the world. Unity has grown almost entirely because individuals who have been helped by its ideas have told others who need help about it. Unity has always been a warm and loving way of life, sensitive to people’s needs, God-centered but human-hearted. This is Unity