UNITY'S FOUNDERS
Unity's founders were trained and ordained by Emma Curtis Hopkins, who was Mary Baker Eddy's assistant for a
short time, but broke away over her more liberal stance on
doctrinal Issues. After moving to Chicago and founding her own ministerial school, Hopkins trained speakers, who
traveled from town to town. One of these, E. B. Weeks, gave a lecture to an audience in Kansas City that included a
woman who was dying of tuberculosis and malaria: Her. name was Myrtle Fillmore.
Myrtle Fillmore attended a, Kansas City lecture on affirmative healing by E. B. Weeks. She used one affirmation,
"I am a child of God-therefore I do not inherit sickness," as a daily positive prayer until she experienced a total
healing of both conditions. I'll her tell what occurred: '
"What the revelation did to me was not at first apparent to my senses, but it held my mind up above negation
.... I gained In health and understanding. Then others saw that there was something new in me and asked me to share
it. I did. Others were healed and began to study." .
Later, her husband Charles joined her in this study. He was in his eighties when he described, his experience in
this way: "I was nearing the half-century mark and I began to get wrinkled and gray. My knees tottered and a great
weakness came over me .... My cheeks have filled out, the wrinkles and crows feet are gone and I actually feel like
the boy that I am! By silently affirming my unity with the infinite energy of the one true God, I gained renewed
youthfulness and power."
, Their intention was not to found a new denomination. They felt that the world had enough churches as It was.
They only wanted individuals in those churches to practice these transformative principles. The original purpose of
Unity was to support people with prayer and publications. Even today, many more people know of Unity's prayer
ministry, Silent Unity, and its magazine, Daily Word, than know of the existence of Unity Churches. The Fillmores
were somewhat reluctant to endorse Unity's emergence as a church movement, at first. It was only after individuals
began forming churches on their own, with mixed results, that the Fillmores took charge of chartering churches and
ordaining ministers.
Copyright Rev. Gregory Barrettte 1993
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