# The New Age and the prosperity gospel The New Age movement and its cousins: the Theosophical roots, the documented Lucis Trust and World Goodwill links to the UN, the New Thought lineage, and the modern prosperity-gospel preachers. Documented connections, with conspiracy framing flagged as such. *This story part of: Demographics and family* *Cultural Marxism: critical theory and the conspiracy theory parallel this story* *Uhuru Kenyatta: dynasty, Jubilee, debt, and the handshake state parallel this story* ## c. 1774 — Franz Mesmer teaches animal magnetism Physician Franz Mesmer claimed an invisible natural force he called animal magnetism could heal the body. His ideas were later discredited by science but seeded the later interest in unseen healing energies that New Thought and New Age healing would draw on. ## c. 1836 — Emerson and the Transcendentalists Ralph Waldo Emerson's essay Nature launched Transcendentalism, which taught that the divine is found within the self and in nature. This American strand of thought, mixing individual intuition with Eastern ideas, is a recognized ancestor of both New Thought and the later New Age. ## c. March 1848 — The Fox sisters and modern Spiritualism Reports of rapping noises around sisters Kate and Maggie Fox sparked the Spiritualist movement, which held that the living can communicate with the dead through mediums. The sisters later confessed to faking the raps, but Spiritualism grew into a mass movement that fed later esoteric and New Age currents. ## c. 1859 — Phineas Quimby and mental healing Clockmaker turned healer Phineas Quimby taught that illness comes from mistaken beliefs and can be cured by correcting the mind. His mental-healing ideas are the direct root of the New Thought movement and influenced Mary Baker Eddy, who was once his patient. ## 17 November 1875 — Blavatsky founds the Theosophical Society Helena Blavatsky and Henry Steel Olcott founded the Theosophical Society, which blended Western occultism with Hindu and Buddhist ideas and spoke of hidden spiritual masters guiding humanity. Theosophy is the single most important organized source of ideas that later shaped the New Age movement. ## 1879 — Mary Baker Eddy founds Christian Science Mary Baker Eddy, whose textbook Science and Health appeared in 1875, founded the Church of Christ, Scientist, teaching that sickness and matter are illusions overcome by correct spiritual understanding. Christian Science grew from the same mental-healing soil as New Thought, though it developed as a separate church with its own doctrines. ## c. 1886 — Emma Curtis Hopkins spreads New Thought A former associate of Mary Baker Eddy, Emma Curtis Hopkins trained a generation of teachers and became known as the teacher of teachers of New Thought. Her students founded several of the movements that carry New Thought forward today. ## 1888 — Blavatsky publishes The Secret Doctrine Helena Blavatsky's The Secret Doctrine laid out a Theosophical account of cosmic evolution, root races and ascended masters. The book became a core esoteric text and supplied vocabulary and concepts that New Age writers reused for the next century. ## 1889 — The Fillmores found Unity Charles and Myrtle Fillmore founded Unity, one of the largest New Thought organizations, teaching positive prayer, healing and the divine potential within each person. Unity remains active and helped carry New Thought ideas into mainstream American religion. ## 11 September 1893 — Vivekananda at the World's Parliament of Religions Swami Vivekananda introduced a large American audience to Hindu Vedanta philosophy at the World's Parliament of Religions, arguing that all religions lead to the same truth. His visit opened the door for Eastern spirituality in the West, a key ingredient of the later New Age. ## c. 1900 — New Thought roots of the prosperity gospel The prosperity gospel draws heavily on New Thought, which taught that thoughts and spoken words have the power to shape material reality and attract wealth and health. Historians trace the movement's mind-over-matter core back to this earlier metaphysical teaching rather than to traditional Christian theology. ## 1920 — Yogananda brings yoga to America Paramahansa Yogananda arrived in the United States and founded the Self-Realization Fellowship, teaching kriya yoga and meditation. His 1946 Autobiography of a Yogi became a lasting bestseller and drew many Westerners toward Indian spiritual practice. ## c. 1920 — E. W. Kenyon bridges New Thought and faith healing Preacher and writer E. W. Kenyon blended New Thought ideas about positive confession with Pentecostal faith healing. Scholars widely see him as the key link who passed metaphysical ideas into what became the Word of Faith movement. ## 1922 — Lucifer Publishing Company is founded Alice and Foster Bailey founded the Lucifer Publishing Company to print Alice Bailey's esoteric books; in Theosophical usage the name referred to the light-bearer or morning star, not the devil. Critics later seized on the original name, but it was renamed within a few years and the organization has always described it as a reference to spiritual light. ## 1923 — Alice Bailey opens the Arcane School Alice Bailey, who said she received teachings from a Tibetan master, founded the Arcane School to train students in esoteric meditation and service. Bailey popularized the phrase New Age and her writings shaped much of the movement's later spiritual vocabulary. ## c. 1924 — Lucifer Publishing is renamed Lucis The Baileys' publishing company was renamed Lucis Publishing Company in the mid-1920s, and the wider work became the Lucis Trust. Some sources date the change to 1924 and others to 1925, but the shift to the Lucis name is well documented. ## 1926 — Ernest Holmes and Religious Science Ernest Holmes published The Science of Mind and founded what became Religious Science, a New Thought body teaching that thought shapes reality and that God is an impersonal creative intelligence available to all. His system directly influenced later self-help and prosperity teaching. ## 1932 — Alice Bailey founds World Goodwill Alice Bailey founded World Goodwill as an activity of the Lucis Trust to promote right human relations and world service. World Goodwill later became the vehicle through which the Trust engaged with the United Nations. ## 1937 — Napoleon Hill's Think and Grow Rich Napoleon Hill's Think and Grow Rich taught that focused desire and belief could produce wealth, drawing on New Thought ideas about the creative power of the mind. The bestseller shaped modern success literature and fed directly into prosperity preaching. ## c. 1945 — The Great Invocation and the UN Lucis Trust supporters promote a prayer called the Great Invocation and have long linked their work to UN ideals of peace and goodwill. The prayer is a Lucis Trust text, not a UN document, and the connection is one of shared vocabulary about world unity rather than official endorsement. ## c. 1947 — Oral Roberts and the healing revivals Oral Roberts led large tent healing revivals and pioneered religious television, later teaching a doctrine of seed-faith giving in which donations are expected to bring a greater return. He was a central figure in spreading prosperity and healing teaching across America. ## 1952 — Norman Vincent Peale's positive thinking Pastor Norman Vincent Peale's The Power of Positive Thinking mixed Christian language with New Thought techniques of affirmation and visualization. It sold in the millions and helped make the mind-over-circumstances message respectable in mainstream churches. ## 1952 — The UN Meditation Room is created The United Nations set aside a quiet room for meditation and reflection open to people of all faiths and none. Its existence is often cited in conspiracy claims, but a nondenominational quiet room is a common feature of many public institutions. ## 1957 — Hammarskjold redesigns the Meditation Room Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold, a devout and reflective man, oversaw the 1957 redesign of the UN Meditation Room around a block of iron ore and an abstract mural, deliberately keeping it free of any single religion's symbols. The room reflects his personal spirituality, not an official UN faith. ## 1962 — Esalen Institute opens at Big Sur Michael Murphy and Dick Price founded the Esalen Institute, a retreat center that became the hub of the human potential movement, mixing psychology, Eastern practice and encounter groups. Esalen was one of the main incubators of what became New Age culture. ## c. 1962 — The human potential movement Drawing on humanistic psychologists like Abraham Maslow, the human potential movement held that people carry vast untapped inner capacities for growth and self-actualization. Its optimistic view of the self flowed directly into New Age self-development teaching. ## 1967 — Kenneth Copeland builds a prosperity empire A student of Kenneth Hagin, Kenneth Copeland built a global media ministry teaching that faith-filled words unlock wealth and health. He became one of the wealthiest and most prominent prosperity preachers, and his private jets drew wide criticism. ## c. 1967 — The 1960s counterculture The 1960s counterculture mixed Eastern religion, psychedelics, astrology and communal living into a broad search for expanded consciousness. This cultural moment gave the emerging New Age its audience and much of its style. ## February 1968 — The Beatles, the Maharishi and Transcendental Meditation The Beatles studied with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in India, giving Transcendental Meditation worldwide attention. The episode helped turn Eastern meditation into a mass Western interest and marked a high point of the 1960s spiritual counterculture. ## 1970 — Sri Chinmoy leads meditations at the UN Indian spiritual teacher Sri Chinmoy began leading a voluntary meditation group for UN staff and delegates that met for decades. It was a staff interest group, not an official organ of the United Nations. ## c. 1970 — Seed-faith giving is popularized Oral Roberts popularized seed-faith, the teaching that money given to a ministry is a seed that God will multiply back to the giver. The idea became a fundraising engine for prosperity ministries and is one of the movement's most criticized doctrines. ## 1974 — Kenneth Hagin and the Word of Faith movement Kenneth Hagin founded the Rhema Bible Training Center and became the leading teacher of the Word of Faith movement, stressing positive confession, healing and prosperity as the believer's right. He drew extensively on E. W. Kenyon's earlier writings. ## 1976 — A Course in Miracles is published A Course in Miracles, which psychologist Helen Schucman said she received through inner dictation, presented a spiritual system using Christian words with a very different, mind-centered meaning. It became a widely read New Age text promoted by teachers like Marianne Williamson. ## c. 1980 — Conspiracy claim: a Lucifer Trust runs the UN Some writers claim a sinister Lucifer Trust secretly directs the United Nations, playing on the publisher's original 1920s name. The documented reality is an NGO called the Lucis Trust whose World Goodwill has ordinary consultative status like thousands of other groups, with no governing power over the UN. ## c. 1980 — Contrast on God: divine self versus personal Creator New Age and New Thought thought tends toward pantheism or monism, holding that all is one divine reality and that the self is part of God. Orthodox biblical Christianity teaches a transcendent, personal Creator who is distinct from creation, a fundamental difference between the two views of the divine. ## c. 1980 — Contrast on Jesus: ascended master versus incarnate Son Many New Age teachings present Jesus as one enlightened master or good teacher among several, sometimes as a being who attained Christ consciousness. Orthodox Christianity confesses Jesus as the unique incarnate Son of God, fully God and fully man, a claim the two traditions understand very differently. ## c. 1980 — Contrast on salvation: self-realization versus grace New Age spirituality generally frames the human problem as ignorance of one's own divinity, solved by self-realization and raised consciousness. Orthodox Christianity frames the problem as sin against God, solved not by self-effort but by grace through the atoning death and resurrection of Christ. ## c. 1980 — Contrast on the afterlife: reincarnation versus resurrection New Age belief commonly includes reincarnation, in which the soul returns through many lives to grow spiritually. Orthodox Christianity teaches a single earthly life followed by bodily resurrection and final judgment, so the two traditions picture human destiny in incompatible ways. ## c. 1980 — Contrast on truth: many paths versus exclusive claim New Age thought usually holds that all religions are paths up the same mountain to one truth. Orthodox Christianity makes an exclusive claim that salvation comes through Christ alone, which is a core reason the two frameworks cannot simply be merged. ## c. 1980 — Lucis Trust's World Goodwill gains UN consultative status World Goodwill, an activity of the Lucis Trust, holds consultative status with the UN Economic and Social Council and is listed on the UN roster of nongovernmental organizations, a real and verifiable fact. This status is the same kind held by thousands of other NGOs and does not give the Trust any control over UN policy, contrary to conspiracy claims that it secretly runs the organization. ## c. 1980 — Positive confession, name it and claim it Word of Faith teachers hold that believers can speak desired outcomes into existence through positive confession, a practice critics nickname name it and claim it. Many mainstream theologians reject this as closer to New Thought magic than to biblical prayer, which submits requests to God's will. > "some disturbing evidence exists that the income of working couples in 1990 has only slightly more purchasing power than the income of the average working man did in 1910." > — Dumbing Us Down, p. 121-127 ## c. 1982 — Robert Muller, the philosopher of the UN Robert Muller, a long-serving UN assistant secretary-general, wrote New Genesis: Shaping a Global Spirituality and is often called the philosopher of the UN for promoting a shared spiritual world ethic. His personal views were genuinely mystical and drew on Alice Bailey's ideas, but they were his own advocacy and never adopted as UN doctrine. ## 1983 — Shirley MacLaine popularizes the New Age Actress Shirley MacLaine's bestselling memoir Out on a Limb, later a 1987 television miniseries, described her turn to reincarnation, channeling and the idea that each person is divine. Her fame carried New Age ideas into ordinary living rooms and made the term widely known. ## c. 1983 — Christian discernment ministries respond to the New Age From the 1980s onward, evangelical writers such as those behind books on the New Age produced a large body of critique aimed at warning Christians away from its teachings. This response shaped how many churches understand and talk about New Age spirituality. ## c. 1984 — Muller's World Core Curriculum Robert Muller designed a World Core Curriculum for global education that he said drew on the teachings Alice Bailey attributed to a Tibetan master. It influenced some private Muller schools but was never a United Nations program, though critics often present it as one. ## c. 1986 — Creflo Dollar and World Changers Creflo Dollar built World Changers Church International on explicit prosperity teaching that faith and giving produce financial abundance. His appeals for donations toward private jets became a widely cited example of the movement's excesses. ## c. 1986 — Oprah Winfrey gives New Age ideas a platform Across her long-running talk show and later ventures, Oprah Winfrey featured teachers such as Eckhart Tolle and books like The Secret, spreading New Thought and New Age ideas to a huge mainstream audience. Her platform did more than any single figure to normalize this spirituality in popular culture. ## 16 August 1987 — The Harmonic Convergence Author Jose Arguelles promoted the Harmonic Convergence as a globally synchronized meditation tied to Mayan calendar cycles, drawing thousands to sacred sites. It was the first mass New Age event and showed the movement could organize people worldwide. ## c. 1987 — The televangelist boom and its scandals Prosperity preaching reached mass audiences through 1980s religious television, but figures such as Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart fell in fraud and morality scandals that damaged the movement's image. The scandals sharpened public scrutiny of ministry finances. ## c. 1990 — Conspiracy claim: the UN is a New Age one-world religion A recurring conspiracy theory holds that the UN is a front for a New Age one-world religion, pointing to the Lucis Trust's NGO status, the Meditation Room and figures like Muller. In reality these are limited and largely symbolic links; the UN is a secular intergovernmental body with no official religion, and the theory overreads real but minor facts. ## 1996 — T. D. Jakes and the Potter's House Bishop T. D. Jakes founded the Potter's House and became a leading preacher and media figure whose message blends personal empowerment, healing and material blessing. He is often grouped with prosperity teachers, though his emphasis and theology are debated. ## c. 1996 — Scholars describe the New Age as a milieu, not a church Religious scholars describe the New Age not as an organized religion with creeds and clergy but as a loose spiritual milieu where individuals mix ideas from many sources. This is why claims of a single unified New Age religion controlling institutions are hard to support factually. ## 1999 — Joel Osteen and the megachurch message Joel Osteen took over Lakewood Church and built the largest congregation in the United States on an upbeat message that God wants believers to prosper and live their best life now. Supporters find it encouraging while critics say it softens or omits traditional teaching on sin and the cross. ## 3 February 2003 — The Catholic Church studies the New Age The Vatican released a study called Jesus Christ the Bearer of the Water of Life, offering a careful description of New Age beliefs and explaining where they differ from Christian faith. It is a notable example of a mainstream church engaging the movement analytically rather than only polemically. ## c. 2005 — Mainstream Christian rejection of the prosperity gospel Many evangelical and traditional Christian leaders formally reject the prosperity gospel, arguing it distorts the Bible by promising health and wealth and by treating faith as a tool to get things from God. This internal criticism shows the movement sits at the edge of, and often in conflict with, orthodox Christianity. ## 2006 — The Secret and the law of attraction Rhonda Byrne's book and film The Secret repackaged the New Thought law of attraction, the claim that positive thoughts draw wealth and success into your life. Promoted heavily on daytime television, it became a global bestseller and mainstreamed manifestation thinking. ## c. 2010 — New Age enters the modern wellness industry Practices with New Age roots such as energy healing, chakras, mindfulness and manifestation have become a large part of the multibillion-dollar wellness industry. The spiritual origins are often stripped away and repackaged as lifestyle and self-care products. ## c. 2011 — New Thought churches continue today Organized New Thought bodies such as Unity and Centers for Spiritual Living, formerly Religious Science, remain active and teach the divine potential of the individual. They keep the historic New Thought stream alive as recognizable churches alongside the looser New Age. ## c. 2015 — Debates over yoga and meditation in churches As yoga and meditation became mainstream, Christians divided over whether these practices can be adopted as neutral exercise or carry Eastern spiritual meaning that conflicts with their faith. The debate shows the ongoing overlap and friction between New Age derived practice and Christianity. ## c. 2017 — The revival of crystals and astrology Crystals, astrology and tarot saw a strong revival among younger people, spread through social media and mobile apps. Surveys show many users treat these as casual identity and wellness tools rather than a formal religion, blending New Age practice with everyday culture. ## c. 2018 — Wellness spirituality blends with self-help Modern self-help increasingly fuses New Thought optimism, therapy language and New Age practice into a broad spiritual-but-not-religious outlook. Surveys track a steady rise in people who leave organized religion yet keep private spiritual beliefs of this kind. ## c. 2020 — Manifestation goes viral online Manifestation, the belief that focused thought and belief can make desired outcomes real, spread widely through social media videos and influencers. It is a direct descendant of New Thought's law of attraction now detached from any church.