Several Denominations, One Shared Approach to Prayer

New Thought is not a single unified church but a family of related, formally organized denominations, including Unity, founded by Charles and Myrtle Fillmore, Religious Science, founded by Ernest Holmes, and others, each maintaining its own specific published prayer materials, ministerial training and institutional structure, meaning specific affirmative prayer texts vary by denomination even though the underlying theological approach to prayer as consciousness-alignment rather than petition remains broadly shared across them.

New Thought's influence extends considerably beyond its own formally organized denominations into the broader American positive thinking and prosperity gospel traditions, a wider cultural influence scholars of American religion trace directly to New Thought's original theological innovations even where the specific New Thought denominational label is no longer explicitly invoked. Given the genuine denominational diversity involved and each denomination's own published, separately authored prayer materials, this entry limits itself to describing the shared affirmative approach New Thought traditions generally share rather than presenting any single denomination's specific prayer texts as representative of the movement as a whole.