by Sarah Gerard
Unity was by this time a hundred years old. Its prayer center, Silent Unity, was receiving over a million requests for prayer annually.113 In the first of three courses required for members of the Unity church to become Participating Members of the U-P.C., Dell deChant, one of the U-P.C.’s founding members and associate pastor at Unity-Clearwater, lists some typical difficult-to-answer questions facing a Unity practitioner in 1989:
What is Unity?114 Is it Christian? Is it part of the New Age movement? Is it part of New Thought? Does it endorse channeling and channeled teachings? Does it find any unique or authoritative value in the teachings of the Fillmores and H. Emilie Cady? Where can someone find out what Unity believes? Is Unity consistent in its teachings? What are its teachings on the central elements of Christian doctrine? These are religious questions, and there is no coherent, unified, and authoritative answer to these questions given by the two major institutions that represent the Unity movement.
This vagueness seemed to extend into Unity’s educational offerings, the U-P.C. asserted. Graduates from the Unity Ministerial School and the Unity School of Religious Studies weren’t well versed in Unity’s teachings or its history,115 or theology in general. Thus, they weren’t good ministers, let alone representatives of Unity. In fact, Unity didn’t even have an accredited theological seminary at the time116—no New Thought church did. The U-P.C. also complained that students in Unity schools were being taught by teachers who lacked terminal academic degrees,117 and they followed a curriculum that was less academically rigorous than that at other seminaries. When the founding members of the U-P.C. had attempted to reach out to Unity headquarters in Unity Village, Missouri, with their concerns, they were rebuffed.118 They were left with no choice but to organize independently.
As a founding member of the council, my dad’s chief concern was that those in need of Practical Christianity might not be able to receive its benefits should it continue to be adulterated by what he saw as untrue teachings. He had seen the benefits in his own life and didn’t want others to be denied: People who were sick or battling addiction might not be able to heal themselves. People who were struggling financially might not realize that they had the power to manifest wealth in their lives. He saw the need to address the challenges of identity, authenticity, and institutional structure in Unity.
The U-P.C. proceeded on the basis of three affirmations:119
To reaffirm the traditional teachings of Unity.
To establish a democratic and egalitarian Unity institution, and encourage the establishment of similar institutions.
To expand and enrich educational opportunities for practitioners of Unity.
The U-P.C. launched the Unity-Progressive Press and began publishing courses, tracts, and pamphlets, including one entitled “A Progressive Reaffirmation of Unity Faith.” By this time, my father had left journalism and gone into advertising, so he designed and printed it, as he did all of U-P.C.’s publications. The pamphlet is cream-colored and trifolded on letter-sized paper, and features on its cover a cheerful cartoon winged globe, a symbol of the relationship between Spirit, soul, and body in the Unity tradition. It was inspired by the cover of the Fillmores’ Unity, in which the thirty-two-item Unity “Statement of Faith” was originally printed. Most of the material contained in the new one is also in the original. The U-P.C. pamphlet lists forty statements expressing Unity’s primary teachings. Those wishing to be members of the U-P.C. are asked to sign their names at the bottom.120
Education was the most participatory aspect of the U-P.C. Among the council’s initiatives was establishing “a school of higher learning” in the form of the Unity-Progressive Theological Seminary. There, excellence would be encouraged and students could study not only New Thought teachings but also Christian history and theology, and ultimately receive ordination. Those seeking teaching certification but not ordination could proceed from the Participating Membership courses on to the Certified Instructor Program, a fourteen-course program with at least seven classes in each, taught over two years. My mom wasted no time in signing up for the latter.
As part of her U-P.C. coursework, my mom was required to keep a prayer journal. She kept it in the same spiral-bound notebook she used for a counseling group she’d joined after getting sober. The entries are brief; she writes a few lines every day, maxing out at half a page. When she begins the journal, she’s enthusiastic about recommitting herself to the daily practice of prayer after several weeks of not praying or meditating consistently—“I have had a challenge with discipline,” she admits. She reads from Frances Foulks’s Effectual Prayer each night and calls Foulks’s writing beautiful, her openness to Spirit so complete. She affirms the prayers at the end of each chapter, sometimes reciting them over to herself several times, other times just holding them in mind. She’s especially moved by the chapter on forgiveness. She finds herself wanting to remain in it even as she moves on to the next chapter. She thinks of the teachings in relation to a colleague with whom she’s in conflict: “I was able to thank the person I had been focused on last night for the things she had given me: self-awareness, a clearer sense of my role in my job,”121 she writes. In her first weekly self-assessment, she already finds herself stopping during the day and “turning more readily to prayer instead of dwelling in some negative consciousness.”
After the first week, though, she hears some bad news at the shelter. She spends most of a day dwelling in negativity. The next day is the same: She finds it necessary while driving to pull over and let her mind “chill out” before pulling back onto the road. When she tries to meditate late in the evening, she finds she’s too sleepy. The next day she notes, “Did not formally pray,” but returns the following day with determination, praying before work and reading from Effectual Prayer, which inspires her to turn her mind again toward forgiveness.
The following week, she’s frustrated by her failure to be moved by her readings and the lack of time for formal prayer within her busy work schedule. She is nonetheless, in her weekly assessment, “amazed to realize how angry I have been and how dramatically different that feels right now.”122 She sees this as a result of committing herself to the attempt of daily meditation, if not always achieving the act itself. She resolves to be more consistent.
For the next two days, she’s in “crisis mode” in Tallahassee, where the Domestic Violence Task Force is lobbying. “I don’t recall even thinking about taking the time to pray,” she writes later. The following day, she “turns it over” to God and decides to focus in on “naming recent upsetting incidents good” and “being open to learning from them.” She’s impressed with her ability not to become consumed by negativity like others around her.
She gives a speech for the Catholic Altar Guild the next evening, on behalf of the Spouse Abuse Shelter. Inspired by references to the rosary and the Virgin Mary among those present, she finally, frustrated with her inability to meditate consistently, decides to try reciting the Hail Mary several times slowly, getting in touch with Mary as a “receptive, responsive, obedient state of mind.” The familiarity of the prayer—for the first nine years of her life, she attended Mass—and the repetition of it help her break through to a state of peace. “We’re all really practicing the same religion,”123 she realizes.
Near the end of the journal, my mom writes about Bob.
Started prayer time at 10:00 pm, thinking of prayer class and an experience I had many years ago of feeling the presence of Spirit within. I was in a life-threatening situation then so the feeling/memory has not always been all-pleasant. It was tonight. I emotionally felt the Presence, and just let it happen. Joy!124
I was twelve when my mom first told me the story of Bob and the Spirit. I’d been having trouble with a friend at school. She was jealous when I sat with other people at lunchtime. She said cruel things about them not liking me and not wanting me to sit there. Her words made the world feel darker. On a particularly bad day, I told my mom about it. “It’s like the walls are closi
ng in,” I said.
We were in the kitchen. For some reason, the lights were off. My dad had yet to come home from work. I sat on a stool at the island counter and my mom stood on the other side, facing me. I could tell by the way she looked at me that what she was about to say would change the way I understood her. I knew about Bob, but now she told me how he would hit her sometimes just for being there. “Then I realized there’s a place inside me that he could never touch,” she said. I said nothing, but reached for that place within myself. It looked like a small light floating behind my breastbone. Though I wasn’t yet ready to separate from this friend, I felt stronger.
She ends the journal on a Sunday with a reflection on Leddy’s lesson of the morning. The topic had been obedience, and it throws my mom into a state of mind she finds hard to explain. Her prayerful experiences are “all being taken in.” She compares it to H. Emilie Cady’s concept of “chemicalization,” or the rapid reconfiguration of spiritual understanding.
The more I pray regularly, the more it feels my mind (my subconscious) is open but processing so fast that I’m not even sure what is going on. I’ve learned to name that turmoil good because I always end up stronger and clearer-minded when the dust settles, but it’s most disturbing while it’s going on.125
My mom is an emotionally reserved person. We’re close, but she’s never been the kind of mother who leaves notes in my lunchbox—though once I asked her to, and she was happy to oblige. When I argue with my husband, I call her for advice. She’s supported me in every life choice except the unhealthy ones. In those cases, she saved me. We’re alike in our love of silence.
I’ve seen her cry exactly twice: once when I walked into her bedroom without knocking after her little brother died, the other when I was hospitalized with anorexia. In most situations you can only deduce she’s upset about something by studying tiny fluctuations in her facial expression. If you ask her why she’s upset, she’ll just give you the look: a patient glare. I’ve always mythologized my mom as a kind of warrior, a kind of epic hero. Reading her prayer journal has been emotional. In it, she’s human.
My mom finished her Unity studies in 1992, a few months after the Florida Legislature ordered all twenty state attorneys’ offices to establish domestic violence units126 and specially train prosecutors in those units to handle abuse cases. It was a glimmer of hope, and another followed on its heels when the Florida Supreme Court ordered district courts to institute family law divisions,127 ensuring that judges in such divisions had the aptitude and desire to concentrate their efforts on domestic violence.
Despite the momentum they were gaining, my mom was exhausted. While she adhered to the belief that Spirit was the only true reality, she had neglected the material reality that her physical body had limitations. That year, she resigned from the Spouse Abuse Shelter and the Domestic Violence Task Force, and took a position as the director of a crisis hotline. She devoted much of her time outside of work to the newest phase of the Unity-Progressive Council: the Emma Curtis Hopkins College.
Dell invited my mom to serve on the provisional board of directors.128 The plan was to develop a new division of the Unity-Progressive Theological Seminary into an entirely independent educational institution129—a liberal arts college, in honor of Emma Curtis Hopkins. It would be a way to raise the level of discourse among Unity’s practitioners and its clergy. It would bring serious intellectual consideration back into the Unity tradition. And it would raise the public profile of the religion.
The first meeting convened on June 30 at Leddy’s home,130 across the street from Unity-Clearwater. A small group of PhDs, ThDs, JDs, MAs, and other distinguished fellows gathered in Leddy’s living room to discuss first steps. They would offer both bachelor’s and master’s degrees. Dell had already begun the process of laying out degree requirements and a course catalog,131 and preparing the articles of incorporation. It was decided that my mom would be president of the board and chair the steering committee132—nominations she was reluctant to accept, considering the amount of responsibility they might entail. Ultimately, she did so because Dell, a trusted friend and senior church member, was asking. Among the topics discussed were the necessity of finding funding and the designation of responsibility for beginning work on the thirty-thousand-volume library required of all universities by the Florida Department of Education. They would also need to locate a facility in which to house the college. At the closing of the meeting, my mom led the group in prayer.
Less than a year later, in April 1993, the Emma Curtis Hopkins College board met late in the evening at the home of one of its members to discuss alternatives for proceeding with the opening of the school.133 They had not been able to raise the target $50,000 set by the steering committee or secure a location, nor had they made much progress on the library. With my mom still presiding as president they decided to raise $30,000 by the next meeting, with the understanding that another $10,000 to $20,000 would be needed prior to the application for incorporation. It was also decided to enlarge the size of the board.
In July, they reconvened at my home.134 I was eight. I have no memory of this meeting, but I can imagine it easily: our one-story white house with pink trim and a pink rain tree in the front yard, a grapefruit tree in the back. Late evening. Twelve bodies packed into the tiny space shared by our living and dining rooms, their shoes pressed into the stained beige carpet, sounds of my Reader Rabbit computer game coming from my bedroom down the hall. Backs leaning against the white-painted bookshelves built into the outer wall of the kitchen. In the kitchen, a pot of coffee sat on the round wooden table, surrounded by mugs. My mom had cut her hair short by this time, with feathered bangs. She would have been sitting on the floor in her light-wash jeans and socks.
The meeting opened with a prayer led by Dell deChant.
Of the $30,000 they’d determined to raise at the last meeting, just $12,000 had been pledged and $3,000 collected.135 Due to the shortfall, Dell suggested postponing the application for incorporation, restructuring the board to add members, and aiming instead for an August 1995 opening—two full years away.
Much discussion was had among those present about how to raise funds. Someone suggested reaching out to other New Thought groups in the area. Someone else proposed starting an open-forum series like the one on ethics at University of Southern Florida. The question of temporarily housing the college at Unity-Clearwater was proposed as a money-saving option. Brent Elrod motioned that the board proceed with a 1995 opening as a new goal. Leddy seconded. The motion passed. Leddy closed with a prayer.
That night, my parents read me to sleep. This I remember. My dad taught me to read when I was just three, helping me sound out the opening lines of The Hobbit. After that, we’d take turns reading books together, returning to the same stories over and over: The Velveteen Rabbit; The Little Engine That Could; and my mother’s favorite, Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. I was almost too old to be read to by this time—I was reading novels on my own, lots of them—but it was an important ritual, one that we cherished.
When we’d read three books, they left. My door was cracked and I could hear them in the kitchen, talking about the meeting. The U-P.C. had come under criticism from the AUC, which believed they were founding a new religious sect. I fell asleep listening to the murmurs of their concern, and though I was almost too old for this, too, I hugged my teddy bear, the same one my father had bought when my mom left him in 1981, just before they found Unity.
It was around this time when I first felt God was real. My parents had bought me an illustrated children’s Bible. I never read the stories in the Bible, just stared at the pictures, which seemed to tell more interesting stories than the ones I found in the text. There were illustrations of men in flowing garments leading groups of others through harsh terrain, a baby among animals, fire, people being healed. The Bible stories meant nothing to me—I don’t think I ever learned them, even in Sunday school, where we mostly sang inspiratio
nal songs and did arts and crafts. But I knew what I should feel when I read them because I’d felt hints of it before—a sudden thrilling clarity. I could never make that clarity stay; as soon as I sensed it, it dissipated.
Then, one night, sitting in the backseat of my mom’s green Oldsmobile Delta coming back from a babysitter’s, held the illustrated children’s Bible on my lap unopened. It was past my bedtime and I was sleepy. As I looked out the window up into the dark sky, wondering where God was, if he was real like my parents said, I felt a light open up in my chest and spread outward through my arms, my throat, and into my mouth. I watched the dark streets outside my window fly past, knowing, for the first time, that we were made of the same material as all of it, were manifestations of the same omnipotent consciousness. I wanted to speak, to tell my mom what I was feeling, but no words came. Just a feeling of protection. A pure, nameless joy.
My mom has kept a binder of materials from the Emma Curtis Hopkins College on a bookshelf of New Thought texts in my parents’ home office for twenty-five years. It’s from those materials that I tell this story. In the binder, on the back of a drafted letter from Dell deChant to a potential board member in June 1994 are two pages of another letter, dated the same month and addressed to Alan Rowbotham, president of the AUC at the time. I don’t know who wrote the letter—it wasn’t Dell, as he’s referred to by name in it. I have pages three and six.
From them, I gather that in April 1993, the AUC, of which Unity-Clearwater was a member, conducted a closed investigation of Unity-Clearwater, of which the church was not made aware until later. In response to the perceived actions of the U-P.C. and the Unity-Progressive Theological Seminary, the AUC brought twenty charges against Unity-Clearwater, rendering them “not in good standing” in the eyes of the organization.