The transcendental religious movements of the last century are at he roots of the New Age movement. It came into being in response to Eastern mysticism. The Transcendental movement (1836-60) was shaped by philosopher-authors like Henry David Thoreau, Walt Whitman and RaIph Waldo Emerson, who was influenced by Hindu religious literature, spoke of the 'Over-Soul,' the 'mystic force within all nature and human personality' governed and brought into existence by Mind.

     New England psychic healer Phineas Parkhurst Quimby was part of this movement. He and one of his pupils, Mary Baker Eddy, spread the idea that disease was caused by erroneous thoughts. Out of this movement came Christian Science, Divine Science, Science of Mind, Religious Science, and the Unity School of Christianity.Both the Transcendentalists and Unitarians exalted the human potentialities - the transcending impulse for self-realization that is a basic theme of the New Age Movement.

     The Unity spiritual movement began in the late 1800s believing in prayer and the power of mind over the body. Charles and Myrtle Fillmore, a Kansas City, Missouri, couple with three young boys, had suffered lifelong physical ailments and constantly sought healing. They heard a lecture by a metaphysician named E.B. Weeks, and Myrtle came away with a startling new idea: “I am a child of God, and therefore I do not inherit sickness.” In two years of prayer and meditation, she healed her body of tuberculosis. Charles also began to investigate spiritual principles and healed a leg that had been damaged in a childhood ice skating accident.

     The Fillmores were devotees of Ralph Waldo Emerson and studied with the leading teachers of the day, including Mary Baker Eddy and Emma Curtis Hopkins. To share the exciting spiritual teachings they had learned, the Fillmores didn’t start a church but began to publish a magazine.

     The first issue of Modern Thought came out in 1889 and is now called Unity Magazine^®. The next year, in 1890, Charles and Myrtle formed a prayer group that is now Silent Unity, a 24/7 prayer ministry that responds to 2 million people a year through letters, telephone, and email. Book publishing began with Lessons in Truth, still aUnity classic, and Unity Books is still active. A second magazine was initiated in 1924, Daily Word, which now circulates around the globe. Classes taught by the Fillmores grew into a seminary, Unity Worldwide Spiritual Institute, with about 600 churches and study groups worldwide.

      The Unity focus on health and wealth could also be found in the New Age Movement and, in January 1987,  Rev. Blaine Mays, president of the International New Thought Alliance (INTA) stated that Unity was a New Age organization.