INTA - SSMR

SOCIETY FOR THE STUDY OF METAPHYSICAL RELIGION

Uniting popular and academic metaphysics and other disciplines

Guide to SSMR Bylaws, officers, and committees

The SSMR was formed in the mid-1980s largely by people associated with the delivery of certain academic papers at meetings of the American Academy of Religion. (For more details, click here.) These papers related to the New Thought movement, a philosophical-religious outlook and collection of practices that began in the nineteenth-century United States. The "Father of New Thought" was Phineas Parkhurst Quimby, a Maine clockmaker who practiced mesmerism and later moved beyond it in developing a form of spiritual healing. Among his patients and students were former Methodist minister and Swedenborgian lay leader Warren Felt Evans, who wrote the first books in the field, and Mary Baker Eddy, who later developed Christian Science. A one-time Eddy associate, Emma Curtis Hopkins, founded the first New Thought school and taught founders of the New Thought groups known as Divine Science, Unity, and Religious Science (Science of Mind).

NEW THOUGHT MOVEMENT

New Thought is to be distinguished from New Age, which it preceded by many decades and which it helped to produce. Both outlooks emphasize nontraditional healing and transformation of individuals and the world; but New Thought does not concern itself with occultism, herbs, crystals, body work, and similar accoutrements of New Age. New Thought emphasizes the practice of the presence of God for practical purposes. New Thought themes are found in teachings of Norman Vincent Peale and Robert Schuller, as well as Alcoholics Anonymous and much success literature. Among the more popular earlier writers in New Thought were Horatio W. Dresser and Henry Wood (both cited favorably by William James in The Varieties of Religious Experience), Charles Fillmore, H. Emilie Cady, Ralph Waldo Trine, Elizabeth Towne, Florence Scovel Shinn, Ernest Holmes, Joseph Murphy, and Emmet Fox. The writings of Emerson long have been read widely by New Thoughters, and one could well think of New Thought as a practically-applied Transcendentalism.

SSMR CONCERNS

The Society is concerned with metaphysics both in its traditional philosophical meaning (the study of the basic nature of all reality) and in its popular meaning (whatever is beyond the physical). Sometimes New Thought and other groups that emphasize the power of mind and the reality of more than the physical world are called metaphysics and their practitioners metaphysicians. Any group--whether esoteric, theosophical, New Age, or Christian Science--with such emphases would come within the purview of the Society, but thus far its attention has been concentrated on the New Thought movement, and its annual meetings have been held in conjunction with the annual Expos of the International New Thought Alliance.

MEMBERSHIP

Dell deChant
Society for the Study of Metaphysical Religion
P.O. Box 37
New Port Richey, FL 34656-0037
ddechant@luna.cas.usf.edu

Yearly membership, including subscription to The Journal of the Society for the Study of Metaphysical Religion.
Academic/Religious Professional US $35
Associate US $25
Student US $15
Group US $75
Yearly subscription to the Journal alone US $25 per year

SSMR REGIONAL CONFERENCE

The Seventh Annual Regional Conference, originally scheduled to be held, with co-sponsorship of Theosophical History, on October 26 and 27, 2001, has been postponed indefinitely. For details of speakers and presentations formerly to be offered, click here

For information on some of the SSMR conferences already held, click here.

AUTOMATED MAILING LIST

Anyone can join the free automated mailing list discussion group sponsored by the SSMR. You do not have to be a member of the Society for the Study of Metaphysical Religion to join the mailing list. There are Archives of the list, available to anyone. This email list was intended for people interested in intellectual topics related to New Thought and similar outlooks. However, it has assumed a more popular nature. If you would like to be added to a non-automated list devoted to information and discussion in line with the purposes of SSMR, please e-mail to caa@gis.net.

Guide to SSMR Bylaws, officers, and committees
New Thought Movement Home Page.
Voice of Shuttle humanities research
Boston University Religion and Philosophy Resources
A Guide to the Best Religious Studies Resources on the Internet
Finding God in Cyberspace
American Academy of Religion
Society of Biblical Literature
The Electronically Linked Academy (Scholars Press)
American Philosophical Association
Suber philosophy links

Created on behalf of SSMR
October 3, 1995
by Alan Anderson
Latest update Oct. 15, 2001