Silent Unity and a Ministry That Never Stops

Unity's best known institution is Silent Unity, a prayer ministry that receives requests by letter, telephone and, since the internet era, online, and holds them in continuous prayer around the clock rather than at scheduled services. Catherine Albanese's history of American metaphysical religion situates the practice as flowing directly from Unity's founding conviction, traced to Myrtle Fillmore's own recovery from tuberculosis in the 1880s after she began affirming statements of health rather than accepting her diagnosis as final, that sustained, disciplined prayer and affirmation can act on a condition regardless of the physical distance between the one praying and the one asking. The Encyclopedia of American Religions records that Silent Unity has operated continuously from Unity's headquarters near Kansas City since the 1890s, among the longest-running ministries of its kind anywhere in American religious life, answering requests from callers and correspondents who are frequently not Unity members and sometimes not self-identified as religious at all, extending the practice well beyond the movement's own formal membership. The ministry's continuous, always-available character is itself treated within Unity as a demonstration of its founding claim, that prayer directed at a request works independently of where or when it reaches the one offering it.