Father George Hurley, for example, eschewed programmatic solutions for the urban black poor, urging his followers to counter racism with prayer and positive thinking.

adherents, acting in accordance with divine principles, relied on their minds to transform thought and speech into heaven-sent blessings

In it, he folded Christian and psychological categories into a New Thought theme: God’s power could be harnessed by “a spirit and method by which we can control and even determine” life’s circumstances.

Sweeping generalities buried the specifics, allowing New Thought to move beyond its sectarian heritage and into a blurry—but powerful—collection of religious beliefs inextricable from American culture itself.

Black metaphysical Christianity entwined racial uplift with the power of the mind.

He urged believers to use spoken words, called positive confessions, to tap into this spiritual power. “Faith never rises above its confession,” he often repeated.33 Though Kenyon lambasted New Thought adherents for their proclamations of “I am well, I am well, I am happy, I am happy,” he chided their content, not their method. Kenyon advised them

Russell H. Conwell (1843–1925), Baptist minister and lawyer, became a prophet of the gospel of wealth with his famous sermon, “Acres of Diamonds.” The sermon, preached some 6,000 times, promised listeners that wealth lay within any American’s grasp, if they would only accept their Christian duty to work hard and see God’s hand through the workings

In the 1920s and 1930s, as the Great Migration pressed African Americans into Northern urban landscapes, a groundswell of alternative religious communities promised religious—and often metaphysical—answers to social and economic problems.

It focused on the individual rather than groups and emphasized the power of the individual’s mind.