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The New Thought Movement: History, Key Teachers and Beliefs

What the New Thought movement is, where it began, the teachers who shaped it from Quimby to Neville Goddard, and how it led to modern manifestation.

Quick answer: The New Thought movement is a spiritual and philosophical tradition that grew up in nineteenth-century America. Its teachers held that the mind, spiritual reality and everyday experience are closely linked, and they explored mental healing, Divine Mind, prayer, affirmations and personal transformation. It has no single founder or governing body. Modern manifestation, the law of attraction and Neville Goddard's law of assumption all borrow from its ideas.

Long before "manifestation" became a familiar word, a loose network of healers, ministers and writers was asking one question: if the way we understand our inner world changes, does the outer one change with it? This guide traces where that question came from, who carried it forward, and how it reached the methods people practise today.

What is the New Thought movement?

New Thought is best understood as a family of related teachings rather than one church. It spread through teachers, books, periodicals and, later, organisations such as Unity, Divine Science and Religious Science. Some of its teachers worked inside Christianity; others built broader metaphysical philosophies. What they shared was a conviction that the inner life deserves far more attention than it is usually given.

Harvard Divinity School's Center for the Study of World Religions describes it as a group of American religions whose members believe that the physical world can be shaped by a person's thoughts, especially towards healing and prosperity (Hutchinson, CSWR).

The five main beliefs of New Thought

1. Thought shapes experience. Habitual thoughts and beliefs influence how we meet our circumstances. Some teachers went further and said thought directly shapes outer events. That stronger claim is a matter of belief, not established science.
2. Divine Mind. Many traditions describe God as an underlying Mind that people can align with, though teachers explained that relationship very differently.
3. Mental healing. The movement began partly in nineteenth-century mind-cure practice: the idea that correcting mistaken beliefs could contribute to healing. These claims belong to their historical context and are no substitute for medical care.
4. Prayer, affirmations and visualisation. Spoken affirmations, contemplative prayer and mental pictures became core practices, understood either as acts of faith or as ways of directing attention.
5. Prosperity and transformation. Later writers applied the same principles to work, abundance and self-development, which became the most recognisable side of New Thought literature.

Where did the New Thought movement begin?

Mid-nineteenth-century America was full of mesmerism, spiritual healing and fresh readings of Christianity. Some healers began to ask whether illness could be understood entirely through physical symptoms, or whether belief and expectation played a bigger part than anyone admitted.

Phineas Parkhurst Quimby (1802–1866)

Quimby, a clockmaker from Maine, started out as a mesmerist and gradually concluded that mistaken beliefs were themselves a source of suffering. Helping a patient change their understanding of an illness, he thought, could change how they experienced it. Among those who studied with him were Warren Felt Evans, Annetta and Julius Dresser, and Mary Baker Eddy, who later founded Christian Science along a separate path (Southwestern College library). Quimby is often called the father of New Thought, but the movement was built by many people who adapted and sometimes disputed his ideas.

Emma Curtis Hopkins (1849–1925)

If Quimby supplied the questions, Hopkins built the classroom. After a period working with Christian Science she developed her own metaphysical Christianity and trained a generation of leaders. Her biographer Gail Harley notes that she "instructed or ordained every prominent New Thought leader who founded a major denomination of the movement's churches" (Syracuse University Press). Her students included Charles and Myrtle Fillmore (Unity), Nona L. Brooks (Divine Science) and Ernest Holmes, who studied with her late in her life before founding Religious Science. Beryl Satter's history of the movement gives a full chapter to how Hopkins spread New Thought between 1885 and 1905 (University of California Press).

The wider influences

New Thought also drew on Swedenborg's theology, mesmerism, metaphysical readings of scripture and American Transcendentalism. Ralph Waldo Emerson's essays on the individual and a larger spiritual order were widely read by later teachers, although Transcendentalism and New Thought were separate movements.

A short timeline of New Thought

This is a simplified timeline. Historians divide the periods differently.

The three currents of New Thought

Harvard's CSWR entry proposes a useful way to read the history as three overlapping currents (CSWR):

1. The healing current. Mental healing, modelled on the healings of Jesus and the idea of a person's natural spiritual wholeness. Quimby, Evans and the early mind-cure practitioners sit here.
2. The healing and prosperity current. Aligning the whole person with a divine vision of the world, bringing both health and abundance. Hopkins, Unity, Religious Science and most of the writers below belong here.
3. The Word and Faith current. Mainly evangelical versions that stress faith in God's promises and scripture, often with a strong prosperity message.

The writers behind modern manifestation

The church founders built institutions. The writers below are the ones most manifestation readers actually meet, usually through a single book. Several of their texts can be read free, in full, in our Source Archive.

Thomas Troward (1847–1916)

A retired judge from British India whose Edinburgh lectures gave New Thought a tight, almost legal logic: universal mind is impersonal and responds to the individual mind that impresses it. Neville and Ernest Holmes both read him closely. Read who Troward was, then The Edinburgh Lectures, The Doré Lectures and The Creative Process in the Individual.

William Walker Atkinson (1862–1932)

A Chicago lawyer turned editor who wrote under many names and helped popularise the phrase "law of attraction" in Thought Vibration (1906). He is widely credited as a co-author of The Kybalion. His life is poorly documented; the most thorough account is John Haller's intellectual biography (Southern Illinois University).

James Allen (1864–1912)

An English writer whose short book As a Man Thinketh argued that character and circumstance grow from habitual thought. It is gentler and more moral than most New Thought writing. See James Allen's teaching or read As a Man Thinketh in full.

Wallace D. Wattles (1860–1911)

Wattles wrote The Science of Getting Rich (1910), a plain, step-by-step book about holding a clear mental picture and acting "in a certain way". It later inspired The Secret. See Wattles and the full text.

Charles F. Haanel (1866–1949)

A St Louis businessman whose Master Key System (1912 in book form) was sold as a 24-week correspondence course: one lesson and one exercise each week. It is the closest thing in the tradition to a training programme. See Haanel and The Master Key System.

Genevieve Behrend (1881–1960)

Troward's only personal student. Her Your Invisible Power (1921) turns his abstract lectures into a working method of visualisation, including her well-known account of picturing $20,000. See Behrend and Your Invisible Power.

Florence Scovel Shinn (1871–1940)

A New York illustrator turned metaphysical teacher. The Game of Life and How to Play It (1925) is built on the spoken word: short, exact affirmations used at the moment of trouble. See Shinn's teaching, The Game of Life, and our guide to writing affirmations that work.

Emmet Fox (1886–1951) and Joseph Murphy (1898–1981)

Fox, a Divine Science minister, drew huge crowds in New York and wrote the famous Seven Day Mental Diet. Murphy, also a Divine Science minister, wrote The Power of Your Subconscious Mind (1963), one of the best-selling books the movement ever produced. See Emmet Fox and Joseph Murphy.

Abdullah and Neville Goddard (1905–1972)

Neville never belonged to a New Thought church, but he lectured in the same halls, to the same audiences, and read Troward. What made him different was the teacher he credited: an Ethiopian rabbi he called Abdullah, with whom he said he studied for five years. Neville moved the emphasis away from thought and affirmation towards imagination and feeling: assume the state of the wish fulfilled and live from it. See Neville Goddard.

How New Thought connects to manifestation

New Thought and the law of attraction

The phrase "law of attraction" circulated in New Thought writing from the late nineteenth century and was popularised by Atkinson. In that framework, thoughts are a kind of force that draws matching experiences. Modern law-of-attraction books simplified this considerably.

New Thought and the law of assumption

The law of assumption belongs to Neville. Instead of attracting something from outside, you identify inwardly with the state you want until it feels natural. It shares New Thought's interest in imagination and inner identity, but Neville's biblical readings deserve to be taken on their own terms. For the full practice, read what the law of assumption is, and for the side-by-side comparison, law of assumption vs law of attraction.

New Thought and modern self-help

Positive thinking, affirmations, visualisation and "mindset" language all carry traces of New Thought, usually with the religious framing removed. Napoleon Hill, Norman Vincent Peale and Louise Hay are the usual bridges.

New Thought vs Christian Science and New Age

Is New Thought the same as Christian Science? No. Both come partly out of Quimby's circle, but Eddy built a single, tightly governed church, while New Thought stayed plural and open.

Is New Thought Christian? Unity and Divine Science describe themselves as Christian. Religious Science draws on many traditions. Many independent writers, from Atkinson to Neville, did not fit any church.

What practices come from New Thought?

1. Affirmations. Short present-tense statements used to correct a belief, as Shinn taught. Try our affirmation generator for wording.
2. Prayer and contemplation. Quiet turning towards a spiritual truth, rather than asking for things.
3. Visualisation. Holding a clear picture, as Wattles and Behrend taught. Neville's version, done in the drowsy state before sleep, is SATS.
4. Self-concept. Changing the person you take yourself to be, the core of Neville's work.
5. Daily training. Haanel's weekly lessons and Fox's seven-day diet both treated the mind as something trained every day, not changed once.

Is New Thought supported by science?

Some ideas overlap with research: expectation affects how people report symptoms, and attention and self-belief influence behaviour. The metaphysical claims, that thought directly creates outer events or that prayer replaces medicine, are spiritual beliefs, not proven laws. It is fair to read New Thought as a spiritual practice and to keep medical, legal and financial decisions grounded in qualified advice.

Why New Thought still matters

Most people who practise manifestation have never heard of Quimby or Hopkins, yet they use their vocabulary every day. Knowing the history lets you tell the difference between a teacher's actual method and the slogans built on top of it, and go back to the original books when the slogans stop working.

Turn the reading into daily training

Haanel set a weekly exercise. Fox demanded seven unbroken days. Neville asked his audiences to revise each day before sleep. None of them thought one inspired evening was enough; they trained the mind on paper and in practice, day after day. If you want a place to do the same, with dated pages for each day's assumption, revision and evidence, click here to view The Manifestation Journal.

Frequently asked questions

Who founded the New Thought movement?

No single person. Phineas Quimby is usually called its father, Warren Felt Evans and the Dressers named and spread it, and Emma Curtis Hopkins trained the leaders who founded its main churches.

What does New Thought mean in simple terms?

The belief that your thoughts and spiritual understanding shape your experience, and that changing them can change your life.

Is New Thought the same as the law of attraction?

No. The law of attraction is one idea that came out of New Thought writing, popularised by William Walker Atkinson. New Thought is the much wider tradition.

Is Neville Goddard part of New Thought?

He is usually grouped with it and read Troward, but he never joined a New Thought church and credited his teaching to Abdullah. His law of assumption is a distinct approach.

Which New Thought authors should I read first?

Start with something short: James Allen's As a Man Thinketh or Florence Scovel Shinn's The Game of Life. For structure, Haanel's Master Key System; for depth, Troward's Edinburgh Lectures. All are free in our Source Archive.

Is New Thought a religion?

Partly. Unity, Divine Science and Religious Science are religious organisations, but many readers treat New Thought as a philosophy or practice without joining any church.