Unity School of Christianity

This began when in 1887 the wife of Charles Fillmore (1854-1948), a crippled real estate agent, was gradually healed of tuberculosis in an unusual manner. The Fillmores studied Christian Science* and New Thought, and from these studies emerged a new ideology to which Charles was converted by 1890. The Unity School is an independent institution of religious education that specifically denies sectarianism or denominationalism. Located at Unity Village, near Lee's Summit, Missouri, the school maintains a large printing and publishing house, a training school, a radio and television ministry, a personal prayer service (Silent Unity), and training and retreat facilities for students. The Silent Unity ministry answers over one-half million personal inquiries a year. No inquirer is asked to leave his own denomination. The Fillmores taught that God is Spirit or “Principle” and that Jesus was the perfect expression of the Divine Principle. Man is a trinity of spirit, soul, and body and receives his salvation through a series of reincarnations and regenerations of the body. All men will eventually become like Christ. Man overcomes want and illness through correct personal thought. The Unity School carries on a worldwide ministry through licensed teachers and ordained ministers who hold services in local “centers.”

See C. Braden, Spirits in Rebellion (1963).