New Thought goes Down Under

By Joe Murray

New Thought News Service

Some go to Australia to practice their boomerang skills, others to visit Ayer’s Rock.

Some went to the island as punishment (Britain sent criminals to Australia in the 1700s and 1800s); some go to escape.

In less than a month, more than 10,000 people from all over the world are expected to go “Down Under” to be part of the historic 2009 Parliament of the World’s Religions.

The United Centers for Spiritual Living and other organizations affiliated with the Association for Global New Thought (AGNT) will convene with representatives of the world’s faith traditions in Melbourne, Australia, in early December.

The Parliament’s theme: “Make a World of Difference: Hearing Each Other, Healing the Earth.”

This will not be the first Parliament attended by New Thought communities. But for the first time, the New Thought organizations with specifically American roots, including those of Religious Science, have formed one delegation.

They are walking their talk.

As a united New Thought delegation, 10 groups have joined under the AGNT banner and are looking forward to bringing their contribution to the international community.

Dr. Barbara Fields, AGNT executive director, will be a delegation leader. For her, the unified movement reflects themes of the Parliament and underscores the principles of New Thought itself.

“Our movement is based on inclusiveness rather than exclusiveness, the empowerment of the divine within the individual, rather than on an external power or a mediating authority,” she says.

For Rev. Dr. Kathy Hearn, Community Spiritual Leader for the United Centers for Spiritual Living, the collaboration speaks to the emerging cohesion of the New Thought movement. She attended a previous Parliament in Barcelona, Spain, in 2005.

“There’s always been a New Thought presence, but we’ve never tried to bring the ten families of New Thought together,” she told Science of Mind magazine this summer. “It’s a higher degree of collaboration.”

The first Parliament was held in conjunction with the famed Chicago World’s Fair, or World’s Columbian Exposition, of 1893. It was at this early parliament that the philosophies of the East first met those of the West in a formal setting. The event sparked Western interest in Buddhism and Hinduism and set the stage for the introduction of the American New Thought Movement to the international community.

The Parliaments (there have been three previous such events in recent years, in Chicago in 1993; Cape Town, South Africa, in 1999; and Barcelona, Spain, in 2004) give religious leaders and spiritually active and concerned people the chance to talk and share ideas across faiths, traditions, and practices.

The role of the New Thought delegation is to be “a bridge between religious orthodoxy and the evolution of spirituality toward a socially engaged, enlightened humanity here and now,” says Fields.

By organizing with AGNT, the New Thought groups will have the chance to play larger than ever before.

“New Thought has never been understood or made visible, because no one understands that we create our own denominations,” Fields says. “This serves well within our own spiritual community, but to the outside world, it has made it difficult to be seen and understood by other religious leaders and their faiths. By coming together in Melbourne this year as a unified movement celebrating its own intra-faith diversity, we hope we will change this and shift our place in religious history.”