What Does New Thought Say About War?
By Mitch Horowitz
Is there a role for positive-mind metaphysics during periods of armed conflict and war?
The question itself seems almost contradictory. New Thought and other mind-metaphysics traditions have a long history of prayers and meditations for peace. Most New Thought practitioners regard war as an aberrant departure from the higher, sublime truths and creativity that govern our lives.
But the positive-thinking movement has never been pacifist in nature. Indeed the Science of Mind symbol itself is on the US Department of Veteran’s Affairs list of approved insignias for service members’ tombstones. And specific events in the history of Religious Science point toward a role for positive-mind metaphysics in today’s struggle against terrorism.
In 1941, just before America entered World War II, Science of Mind founder Ernest Holmes teamed up with Frank B. Robinson, leader of a dynamic positive-mind religion called Psychiana, to host a series of Los Angeles prayer meetings celebrating the values of freedom and rallying morale for the war on fascism.
One known photograph survives from the event, which Robinson called the “American Spiritual Awakening.” It shows Holmes and Robinson smiling at each other across the stage of the Philharmonic Auditorium in Los Angeles. A packed crowd of 3,500 looks on. While not visible from the photograph, a banner draped across the stage proclaims Robinson’s key aphorism: “I Believe in the Power of the Living God.”
The integrated rallies, which occurred across five days, were a stark anomaly at a time when most mainline churches remained segregated. A columnist for the West Coast African-American newspaper The Neighborhood News told readers: “If it does for you what it has done for me, you would not take a hundred dollars for attending this meeting.”
During a period when ethnic hatreds and fascist ideology were plunging nations into war, the message of plurality that pervades the surviving transcripts of the Robinson-Holmes mission is stirring. Holmes opened the first meeting on Sunday, September 21, 1941:
Dr. Robinson calls his work “Psychiana” which means bringing Spiritual Power to the world. I happen to belong to a movement called “Religious Science,” which means the same thing. Some of you may go to a Jewish Synagogue; you may be a Methodist, Baptist, Catholic, but there is but one God. We meet here today not on a theological background, but upon the foreground of a spiritual conception, the common meeting ground of every race, every creed, every color, every philosophy, and every religion on the face of the earth.
Calling their racially mixed audience “Beloved,” Robinson extended Holmes’s remarks the next day:
Now, Beloved, when the Almighty created the human race, He created black, white, yellow, and every other color which exists on earth, in one creation. He did not make three or four special jobs of creation, nor did he make several different attributes, one for each nation. He made them all flesh and blood – every human soul that has ever lived on the face of this earth. We are all brothers, regardless of our religious affiliation, our race, or nationality.
While known as a political conservative – Robinson ardently opposed the New Deal and supported each of the Republican challengers to Franklin Roosevelt – here was a religious leader who, together with Holmes, was making social statements that would not become common fare for at least another twenty-five years.
And Robinson’s statements seem sadly necessary to gaze back on today, as Donald J. Trump and other GOP hopefuls vilify Muslims, immigrants, and Syrian refugees – dividing the nation from its most hallowed ideals, all for the sake of a few points in the polls.
Robinson was tireless in using mind dynamics to combat fascism. In 1940 he offered his mail-order flock a button with Hitler’s image, surrounded at the top by the words “‘Psychiana’ Spiritual Blitzkrieg,” with this pledge at the bottom: “Believing that right is superior to brute force, I am helping to bring Hitler’s defeat by repeating hourly, The Power of Right (God) Will Bring Your Speedy Downfall.”
Artist Tim Botta has partnered with me to revive this campaign: We are asking people to make hourly affirmations for the defeat of ISIS, for which Tim has designed an insignia – pictured at the top of this article – that pays tribute to Robinson’s earlier campaign. You can join our movement by tweeting and posting the insignia with the hashtag #MindOverISIS, and using the following affirmation: “I am helping to bring about the immediate defeat of ISIS by repeating hourly: ‘The Power of Right (God) Will Bring About Your Speedy Downfall.”
Of course, rallies, affirmations, prayers, and meditations cannot, of themselves, defeat terror or armed evil. The mind may be the ultimate arbiter of reality – but we do not, as yet, fully experience that sphere of existence. We must contend with the daily physical aspects of life, including those forces that aberrantly endanger and take innocent lives. When defensive force is required – as it sometimes is – New Thought can dedicate its power to augmenting, strengthening, and heightening the resolve of every just combatant.
And what of the inevitable victims – the dead and injured? How can their lives be honored – and their survivors comforted?
A radio host once asked: If you were the minister of a New Thought congregation, what would you tell a congregant who had suffered a terrible tragedy or loss? If some counsel were needed, I would refer to the words of Rabbi Joshua Loth Liebman (1907-1948), one of the few leaders in the positive-thinking movement who directly addressed the Holocaust. Two years after the war, Liebman said:
Mine has been a rabbinate of trouble—of depression. Hitler’s rise, world crisis, global war, the attempted extermination of my people … For those who have lost loved ones during the tragic war, all of the rest of life will be but a half loaf of bread—yet a half loaf eaten in courage and accepted in truth is infinitely better than a moldy whole loaf, green with the decay of self-pity and selfish sorrow which really dishonors the memory of those who lived for our up building and happiness.
We honor life by valuing the sacrifices that others have made for us, and the opportunities we have been granted for developing our highest potential. Philosopher Jacob Needleman once asked me: “What do you do when someone offers you a gift?” After I looked at him blankly, he replied: “You accept it!” The continuation of one’s life following a tragedy is to accept an irreplaceable gift. We have been given life for a purpose, which is: to be generative. Use your life. Go and build.
MITCH HOROWITZ is a writer and publisher with a lifelong interest in man’s search for meaning. The PEN Award-winning author of Occult America and One Simple Idea, Mitch has written on everything from the war on witches to the secret life of Ronald Reagan for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Salon, and Time. The Washington Post says Mitch “treats esoteric ideas and movements with an even-handed intellectual studiousness that is too often lost in today’s raised-voice discussions.” Tim Botta’s artwork appears at http://timbotta.tumblr.com/
I just sent Jesse Jennings this question–almost sent it to you because I thought you (Mitch)might be able to address the historical perspective. Was trying to think where Dr. Holmes teachings might have addressed this and was thinking of looking at the years certain works were published to look for influences. Thank you for addressing this! Would love to know more if there are specific written references.
Hi Chris, Thank you for that question — it helped me to recall and look up a statement from Ernest that impressed me years ago. It is from Science of Mind magazine from July 1955: “I am not a pacifist, but, when only six percent of the national budget is for the alleviation of impoverishment and seventy-two or seventy-three percent is for destruction, one knows there is something wrong in the worldly state of affairs and in the human mind.” Ernest’s brother Fenwicke writes this in his 1970 bio of Ernest: “During World War II, besides their constant personal treatment work, Ernest and Hazel Holmes donated 45,000 paperbound copies of his book This Thing Called Life to the armed forces. Among the many letters received from the soldiers in appreciation was one from a boy in the South Seas who wrote that his troop possessed only two copies, and since everybody wanted to read one of them, they pasted the books page by page on boards where all men who were off duty could read them. During the Korean War, immediately after breakfast Ernest would return to his room or drive to the office and spend some time treating for peace and protection of all life.” Fenwicke also noted: “Like all teachers of metaphysics, during his lifetime he had had to face the problem of evil in a world at war, but he continued to affirm that good is the ultimate power and peace, man’s rightful condition and destiny. He was pacific but not a pacifist.” I hope this helps! I have the full transcripts of the Holmes-Robinson prayer meetings and when I have time I will look in there, too. Very best! Mitch
There ARE souls who dedicate their existence to such work – and some friends of such souls who mingle in and around the world of men.. There is something kind of implied in the language, a vibe of ‘pushing against’ that strikes me as … not the way to accomplish the purpose desired. It may be mere semantics, and I may be perceiving it incorrectly.. but to ASSERT peace, which can be a very aggressive act, one ‘calls down’ the light – one joins with that higher power and wills it.. I have engaged in some extraordinary affairs, and while there has been direct conflict (!) the vibe, at least on my part, while OUTSTANDINGLY aggressive, was … there was no attention paid to labels. No thought about right or wrong – and – simply defense. With the power of a goddess mother grizzly.. The problem is that our nation – as Holmes points out – runs on war. Ours is a war based economy, and the opponent in this instance is one we created, with knowledge. So it is tricky….
PS Chris, I also write further about the Holmes-Robinson collaborations here, which may provide some additional background: http://mitchhorowitz.com/other-writings/the-mail-order-prophet/. I also critique the failure of one very bright light in the positive-thinking movement, Glenn Clark, to contend with the realities of WW II in my book “One Simple Idea.” I love Glenn Clark and his work, but his (very reasonable) anti-war position got diverted into unreason and, finally, near-sympathy for Hitler. So, there were those dark moments, too…
Excellent article, Mitch and very timely. It’s difficult to talk about what New Thought says about war or any other issue without considering the cultural, economic and political structures in which it developed and resides. After all, religion is more about man creating God in his own image than the reverse. It can inspire us to be bigger than ourselves, but it’s also a justification for greed, race hatred, revenge and war. Throughout history religion has been a mask that we put on to cover the evil we want to do anyway.
It’s no surprise then that New Thought inspires (or more accurately justifies) a wide range of thinking on political and economic issues. This blog has already noted that you can find all kinds of people and thinking in New Thought churches and centers – from extreme right conservatives to libertarians to socialists. It’s a philosophy that doesn’t offer a hard delineation between right and wrong acts and behaviors and so can accommodate all kinds of social views. Yet, unlike many other philosophies, it puts all people on an equal plane as expressions of spirit. Knowing that we are truly all one makes the interracial meetings that Holmes and Robinson describes possible. That’s certainly a good thing for all of us.
Great observations all around, thanks Randy.
Ditto to what Mitch said Randy.
I am reminded of a wonderful observation by Rice University’s comparative religion scholar Jeffrey Kriapal (in the forthcoming book The Super Natural- more on that later). He said that religion is both a reflection or projection of of our culture, psychology and fears and an authentic experience of an all-embracing consciousness. But the latter is always and always filtered through the first. Materialists only see the the first and ridicule the second while many religions ignore our psychological and cultural filters. The trick Kripal (and his co-author Whitley Strieber) argue is to be able to integrate those two dynamics and honor our experience of Spirit while holding our explanations, interpretations and stories of those experiences lightly and always seek to create new, more inclusive and compassionate stories.
So my take on this is that yes, NT has been bound by the inevitable cultural and psychological aspects but in moments like the interracial meetings more consciousness breaks through and so too with NT’s tolerance for diversity: ways we are presented with a better more compassionate story.
It certainly doesn’t help matters when our leaders lie to us about the reasons for going to war. That said, war is still a “necessary evil” in our world. But what we hold in mind collectively going into war is as important as anything else. Our leaders, to certain extent, know this and try to shape and aim that collective “energy”. Some do it better than others. FDR comes to mind.
The morning that this article appeared on my Facebook feed I just happened to be reading from the collected essays of Frederick Bailes.
Bailes writes, “Man is rapidly coming to understand the relative value of the inner and the outer and is beginning to see its relation to international problems. War and fighting come from the belief in the supremacy of the outer, the physical. The day will come when the worlds thought will be healed and wars cease.”
While I believe this to be true I also think we are not even close that day. Indeed, it seems to me that our culture has actually moved backward a bit recently.
What we in the New Thought movement believe about the power of thought and life after death can be offensive to some of those who believe that Ultimate Power lies outside of themselves.
I think it’s important to honor the sacrifice of our fallen warriors. But I think it’s equally as important to not shy away from what we believe. While we in New Thought may still debate what happens exactly after death it’s safe to say that we believe life continues on. Onward, upward, and Godward as Joseph Murphy was so fond of saying.