Joel Goldsmith's Christianity

It's interesting as a blogger to see what gets commented on most.
And for me it is my posts about Joel Goldsmith.




There are obviously many dedicated readers and students of Goldsmith's work out there.
One of the comments I got on the blog yesterday prompted me to do this post, as it addressed a question I have myself been considering for many years: Can Joel Goldsmith be called a Christian?
Rhoberta, the commenter, mentioned that Goldsmith himself rejected the label. This doesn't surprise me, as almost all of the New Thought teachers saw themselves as universalists who drew on all the world's religious traditions and whose teachings were in turn accessible across the board. And while this sentiment was admirable, in practise the written work and the rhetoric of Goldsmith, Fillmore and others was so rooted in Christianity and in Biblical reflection that it makes their work very difficult for the non-Christian to negotiate.
I worked for many years in a New Age bookshop, and Goldsmith was always shelved there in the "Christianity" section. I had not read him at this stage, but was fascinated by his books because they were among the only ones that ever sold from that section. I remember asking customers on several occasions what Goldsmith was all about and they suddenly grew very mysterious, and so I was left none the wiser. I read at some stage a passing reference to him in another book as a "Christian Sience writer" and this made him even more mysterious, as Christian Science was by that stage (in mid-90s Australia) an almost entirely forgotten tradition, and I was intrigued as to why we sold so many copies of The Infinite Way.
I'd actually be really interested to see some specific references to Goldsmith's denial of his Christianity, as I have been unable to find any in the books in my collection. I would suggest that his teaching is entirely grounded in the Christian tradition, via the heterodox theology of Mary Baker Eddy. Like his predecessor Charles Fillmore (who had also emerged out of Christian Science), he invoked the Christ ideal in his writing. Australian journalist Tess Van Sommers, in her quaint 1966 overview of Religions in Australia, sums up this theology perfectly, writing "Jesus Christ is not regarded...as a Divine personage. He is looked on as the man who developed the power of divinity within himself to the fullest possible extent. Christ is regarded as the power of God within Jesus, and potentially within all humans, which can enable them to demonstrate their oneness with God."
Goldsmith writes frequently about this idea of an inner Christ, of "the Christ in each one" (Gift of Love, 1975). While it is far from orthodox Christian theology, it is nonetheless an idea entirely focused on the Christian ideal, employing Christian language, and it is rarely expressed in any other way (unlike, for example, in the work of Ernest Holmes, which occasionally makes reference to Buddha-nature and other Eastern spiritual concepts).
Goldsmith describes Christ, or the Christ-ideal, as the ultimate in spiritual attainment, the summit of spiritual perfection, writing in Practising the Presence:

"I was led ultimately to that grandest experience of all, in which the great Master, Christ Jesus, reveals that if we abide in the Word and let the Word abide in us, we shall bear fruit richly..."

Finally, I wanted to make the point firmly that Goldsmith was for many years a conventional Christian Science practitioner, as described so interestingly by Lorraine Sinkler in The Spiritual Journey of Joel Goldsmith, Modern Mystic. One of my other readers, Jean F., rightly castigated me for previously dismissing Goldsmith's Christian Science period as a brief blip in his spiritual development.
So yes, I would suggest that, in all outward forms and for all basic purposes, Goldsmith was a Christian. Certainly, if you pressed one of his books into the hands of an average 21st century secular reader they would be incapable of distinguishing his writing from that of the devotional tracts of more conventional Protestant clergymen - which is why you will normally find his books mouldering away in the "Christianity" section of second-hand bookstores. But I absolutely accept that, on a a more careful analysis, he was a deeply heterodox religious thinker who, perhaps, saw himself as a universalist and whose personal theology was so removed from conventional Christian thinking as to be rejected by most mainstream-Christians as entirely heretical and outside the fold.

Jesus' Path to Success

The Sermon on the Mount: The Key to Success in Life by Emmet Fox

This unlikely little book is one of the great classics of New Thought literature, and Fox one of its most eminent teachers. He is frequently cited in contemporary self-help literature, and his teachings and methods have been particularly advocated by Louise Hay. The Sermon on the Mount is his classic work, considered to be the best example of his teaching, and is still in print.

Fox himself, however, has faded somewhat into obscurity. Perhaps because, unlike other New Thought teachers of the early part of the Twentieth Century, he never successfully established his own personal school or church. He was a minister of the Divine Science sect of Nona Brooks. He may well have been the first to establish a really successful "Hotel ministry" - whereby he gave his lessons and services in rented function rooms or concert halls - something that was to become a feature of New Thought ministries, and used with particular success by Ernest Holmes, founder of the Church of Religious Science.

Fox died in 1951, just as Holmes was beginning to take off, and we can assume that he was a great influence on the work and style of Holmes and others. He was also influential in the beginnings of the Alcoholics Anonymous movement, and many early AA members adopted his Sunday services as their home church. Fox's influence was greatest in the 1920s and 30s - The Sermon on the Mount was first published in 1938 - and in her wonderful scholarly study of the life and influence of Norman Vincent Peale, God's Salesman, Carol V. R. George suggests that Fox's writing and ministry were also an influence on the then-young and impressionable Peale.

Like most New Thought books of the era, The Sermon on the Mount is filled with Christian imagery and language. Of course, the whole thing is based on Christs's Sermon on the Mount in the Gospel of Matthew, and offers a new, "metaphysical" reading of the message of the Beatitudes. It is a canny offering, because many of the seemingly anti-materialist statements of the Sermon must have sat at odds with some of New Thought's this-wordly aims - especially those of prosperity, success and abundance. Fox, in this intriguing little book, re-casts the Sermon on the Mount as the ultimate New Thought text, and re-casts some of the interpretations of the text, rejecting traditional readings as both faulty and horribly superficial. The book came with an addendum, a long exegisis on the Lord's Prayer, which is particularly fascinating and quite hard-hitting.

For all of the accusations against New Thought as being a feelgood path for the undisciplined, Fox's message of, and insistence upon, total forgiveness of one's enemies (as prescribed in the Lord's Prayer) comes across as particularly forceful.

"Search and see if you are not really holding a grudge (it may be camouflaged in some self-righteous way) against some individual, or some body of people, a nation, a race, a social class, some religious movement of which you disapprove perhaps, a political party, or what-not. If you are doing so, then you have an act of forgiveness to perform..."

Such an injunction strikes guilt into my own heart, and would certainbly be salient advice to many modern advocates of spirituality. In a tradition dating back to the 18th century writings of Swedenborg, Fox in this book is decrying what he sees as overly-literalist and decidedly unsophisticated Biblical analysis. He asserts that the Beatitudes, the most-loved and familiar list of Christian advice, are almost entirely misunderstood by those who claim to be Christians. He posits the text instead as a prescription for success in life, part of the great New Thought project of reclaiming the Bible as historic self-help book.
I don't think it's unfair to say that the book is somewhat dated now, its overtly devotional tone making it an uncomfortable read for a secular audience. And of course the author assumes a great deal of Biblical knowledge which simply doesn't exist among a 21st century readership. Nonetheless the book's chatty, elder-brother tone still works its charm, and its frequent rallying cries and urgings are still efective as motivational tools and inspirers of thought. Ironically, his re-reading of the message of the Sermon on the Mount is even more counter-cultural now than it would have been in 1938. In many ways this particular part of the Bible has been re-claimed by Christian progressives who cast it as the ultimate anti-establishment and anti-materialist teaching of Jesus Christ. It is fascinating to hear it being cast in this book as somewhat the opposite, as "The Key to Success in Life," and a tool to successful negoitiation in the material world.

What I'm Up To: Gordon Powell

I'm committed now to writing one chapter a month in order to have my thesis finished by February 2012, so there's no time for dilly-dallying.
This month's chapter is focused on the writing of Australian Presbyterian clergyman Gordon Powell. Largely forgotten now, Powell was one of the most prominent and progressive clergymen in Australia in teh 50s and 60s, and he modelled his ministry very closely on that of Norman Vincent Peale. Rising to fame as the minister in charge of the beautiful art-deco St. Stephen's church in Macquarie Street, Sydney, Powell finally moved on to Melbourne, where he spent most of the rest of his life at the Collins St Independent Church.
He was a forward-thinking man, and for many years his lunchtime services at St. Stephen's were broadcast on radio stations throughout Australia. This was, of course, the kind of thing that Peale had done before him in America. And also like Peale, he branched out into popular self-help writing, creating books that taught the Christian message in an accessible, non-nonsense manner focused on psychology, happiness and the art of living.
In this chapter I am comparing Powell's work with that of Peale's, and I am describing the way that mainstream religion absorbed the ideas of New Thought in an effort to modernise and popularise its image. Norman Vincent Peale was heavily influenced by the philosophy and life of New Thought legend Ernest Holmes, though as a conservative Christian he was very wary of admitting this influence.
The key ideas of this chapter are:

• The introduction of overt and orthod Christian ideas into self-help literature
• The repetition of Bibical verse and its use as affirmation
• The emphasis on the power of faith and communal worship
• The notion of positivity
• Christianising psychiatry

Plus a few others that I probably won't get around to.
Powell, like Peale before him, was a lively writer, and the books are actually a pleasure to read. It fascinates me that these books were ever released by a mainstream publisher in Australia, because to a twenty-first century reader they seem so laden with religious talk and imagery, so much talk of prayer and miracles. They would never be released today.

Norman Vincent Peale

One of the giants of self-help writing is Norman Vincent Peale. He almost single-handedly defined the genre in the 1950s and 60s, starting off with his monumental bestseller The Power of Positive Thinking, and he established for decades a particular style of self-help writing, a style which is still being emulated today.

I have written before of the overt religiosity of Peale's writing, and his radical re-casting of Christianity as a positive aid to lifestyle and success both captured the zeitgeist of mid-20th century America and helped, in part, to shape it. The stolid Protestant friendliness of Peale's utterances, coupled as they were with just the right degree of acknowledgement of science and medicine, set the minds of a generation at ease. His great genius of expression inspired other writers, most notably the Catholic Bishop Fulton J. Sheen, who sought to do with Catholicism what Peale had done with mainline Protestantism. In Australia Peale's style was copied by the Presbyterian clergyman Gordon Powell.

Peale sought to reconcile Christianity with psychiatry, something M. Scott Peck managed so successfully a generation later with The Road Less Travelled. Peale established the American Foundation of Religion and Psychiatry right next door to his church, and from here he attempted a kind of Christian psychotherapy, employing professionals from both camps. It would seem that counselling was his great passion, and his books are filled with case studies of people he had counselled. He seemed inordinately proud of the new hybrid he had created. Of course, this movement seems these days to have come to nothing and at the very most Christian-tinged counselling and psychology has acquired a dubious name, associated as it has become with the extreme right-wing fringe of Christianity, and the mental and spiritual abuse of young women and gay people.

Peale, I think, would have been shocked by the state of things now. He was most certainly not a fundamentalist, and saw himself as a part of the great tradition of American liberal Protestantism. Though the language of his books is almost shocking to a contemporary secular audience, it's worth keeping in mind that his reading of the Bible and his theological understanding was distinctly progressive. Though he claimed all his life to be a conventional Protestant clergyman, and was lionised by people like Billy Graham and Ronald Reagan, he was deeply influenced by the ideas of New Thought, and was for a time a student of Ernest Holmes.
Like most successful self-help writers, he diversified into other forms of media, and was particularly successful on radio, where his program 'The Art of Living' ran for 54 years. He was also one of the first to produce audio versions of his books, and you can still buy recordings of him reading The Power of Positive Thinking.

These days Peale is deeply unfashionable, though his books remain in print. It is hard to imagine that his worldview, as unashamedly religious as it was, will ever again be mainstream. Self-help critic Wendy Kaminer, in her book I'm Dysfunctional, You're Dysfunctional, accuses Peale of being a magical thinker and "oblivious to social injustice."