This book is designed to do more than scare and alarm us. Dougherty thoughtfully and fully explains a biblically grounded view of self, God, and the world as she unfolds the New Thought menace. And it’s a thought system that impacts more than just random individuals. Entire denominations and subcultures have fallen prey to it.  

What do Oprah, Norman Vincent Peale, and Ralph Waldo Emerson have in common? According to Melissa Dougherty’s new book, Happy Lies: How a Movement You (Probably) Never Heard Of Shaped Our Self-Obsessed World, they have all, knowingly or unknowingly, drunk the “New Thought” kool-aid and generously shared it. 

Is New Thought a new term for you? It’s had an enormous impact on Western culture, especially in recent times, and that’s true for people inside and outside of the church.   

Dougherty documents that many in the church have imbibed the “kool-aid” too, though most have little knowledge of doing so. Often, they believe they’re “going deeper” into Christianity. They mix a shallow, sometimes superficial, Christianity with things like positive affirmations, the latest social/sexual mores, numerology, tarot, astrology, transcendental meditation, karma, the zodiac, crystal energies, and other “trendy” belief systems. New Thought is a morphing, adapting infection, much like many viruses.  

New Thought is also a way of thinking that ultimately becomes all about self: my truth, my feelings, my power, my fulfillment. It claims that truth is already in us, we just have to unleash it. As such, it inevitably leads to an “I am God/God is me” view of “my reality.”

That said, if you think that New Thought and New Age are probably the same thing, you’re—mostly—wrong. There are some overlaps, though.  

New Age vs New Thought

“New Age is rooted in more Eastern mysticism, Buddhism and Hinduism and doesn’t identify as a Christian movement.” On the other hand, Dougherty professes that New Thought is a system of thinking with which virtually everyone is familiar but just doesn’t know it. She asserts that many authors and speakers—even composers and movie producers—use New Thought in their works, but never call it by that name.

“From the self-help movement, affirmations, and fancy prosperity teachings to the promotion of relativistic social causes, positive thinking, and more, all of these have a common philosophy as their ‘ancestor.’ They all are part of a toxic infection called New Thought.” 

It is not easily identifiable. “New Thought is much trickier, stealthier, and deceptive than New Age, particularly for Christians. And most Christians have never even heard of it before.” 

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