Unity Church of Albany is an afiliate of the international church: Unity Church of Christianity.
Here is information about the international Church and what they do worldwide. Links are provided to visit Unity.org, where much more information is available.
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What We Do
Message of Hope is a Unity outreach program. Funded solely by donations, Message of Hope shares the assurance of God's love and grace by providing free spiritual materials to those in need. Unity
extends support to individuals in various care settings and to those experiencing hardship. Message of Hope also serves persons with blindness or visual impairments, offering free spiritual resources
in braille, on CD, in digital format, and an online braille library.
Chaplains, administrators, and volunteers often contact Unity to request spiritual materials that will inspire hope and encouragement in those they serve. After an application process, Message of
Hope offers nondenominational spiritual materials, at no cost, in English and Spanish.
http://www.unity.org/resources/message-of-hope
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Charles Fillmore
Born in St. Cloud, Minnesota, Charles Fillmore founded Unity, a spiritual organization within the New Thought movement, with his wife, Myrtle Page Fillmore, in 1889. He became known as an American
mystic for his intuitive guidance and his contributions to allegorical interpretations of Scripture.
An ice-skating accident when he was 10 broke Fillmore's hip and left him with longtime physical challenges. In his early years, despite little formal education, he studied Shakespeare, Tennyson,
Emerson and Lowell as well as works on spiritualism, Eastern religions and the occult.
He met his future wife, Myrtle Page, in Denison, Texas, in the mid-1870s. After losing his job there, he moved to Gunnison, Colorado, where he worked at mining and real estate.
Myrtle Fillmore
Myrtle was the eighth child (of nine) of an Ohio businessman-farmer. Born Mary Caroline Page, she adopted the name Myrtle in early childhood and used it the rest of her life. Her parents were strict
Methodists, but Myrtle rejected their puritanical teachings. She contracted tuberculosis at a young age.
At the age of 21, Myrtle enrolled in the Literary Course for Ladies at Oberlin College. After graduating in 1867, she taught in Clinton, Missouri. She spent the next 13 years there, with the
exception of 1877-78, when she spent a year in Denison, Texas, hoping to recover from tuberculosis.
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Introduction to New Thought
Charles married Myrtle in Clinton, Missouri, on March 29, 1881, and the newlyweds moved to Pueblo, Colorado, where Charles established a real estate business with the brother-in-law of Nona Lovell
Brooks, who was later to found the Church of Divine Science.
After the births of their first two sons, Lowell Page and Waldo Rickert Fillmore, the family moved to Kansas City, Missouri. Two years later, in 1886, Charles and Myrtle attended New Thought classes
held by Dr. E. B. Weeks. Myrtle subsequently recovered from chronic tuberculosis and attributed her recovery to her use of prayer and other methods learned in Weeks' classes. Subsequently Charles
began to heal from his childhood accident, a development that he, too, attributed to following this philosophy. Charles Fillmore became a devoted student of philosophy and religion.
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A Growing Movement
In 1889, Charles left his business to focus entirely on publishing a new periodical, Modern Thought. In 1890 they organized a prayer group that would later be called "Silent Unity" and in the
following year, the Fillmore's Unity magazine was first published. On December 7, 1892, Charles and Myrtle penned their Dedication and Covenant:
We, Charles Fillmore and Myrtle Fillmore, husband and wife, hereby dedicate ourselves, our time, our money, all we have and all we expect to have, to the Spirit of Truth, and through it, to
the Society of Silent Unity.
It being understood and agreed that the said Spirit of Truth shall render unto us an equivalent for this dedication, in peace of mind, health of body, wisdom, understanding, love, life and an
abundant supply of all things necessary to meet every want without our making any of these things the object of our existence.
In the presence of the Conscious Mind of Christ Jesus, this 7th day of December A.D. 1892.
Charles Fillmore
Myrtle Fillmore
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http://www.unity.org/about-us/history
Unity Worldwide Ministries
P.O. Box 610
Lee's Summit, MO 64063
816-524-7414