This was my favorite chapter, as Martin traces how this occultist and mystical movement so powerfully entered into American evangelicalism through key figures and books, to the point where we are all affected. She then outlines why this positive thinking movement is in conflict with orthodox Christianity. It raises some good questions about how we think about God, ourselves, and the Christian life. She unmasks the positive thinking movement in Christianity, exposing its lack of power to deal with real life suffering and our true need for redemption.

“Just think positive.”
“Sending positive thoughts your way.”

What is behind statements like these that are so often given in encouragement? Laura Martin has written a book showcasing how the New Thought movement has undermined Christianity. “New Thought believed in a mystical power of thoughts that could alter our outward reality” (xi). Martin highlights this movements roots in the occult, mystical, and Eastern religious beliefs.

Positively Powerless is an introductory book to the movement, written for a popular audience. The reader will learn the most about the roots of this movement and how it seeped into evangelical circles in Chapter One, “Thou Shalt Not Be Negative.” Martin pinpoints the Protestant pastor Norman Vincent Peale as a popularizer of positive thinking notions in the mid-twentieth century. But she then peels back the layers all the way to eighteenth century Europe to get to the origins of the movement. One interesting thing I learned is where we get the term mesmerized. Franz Anton Mesmer “theorized that all of life contained an invisible fluid—an unseen energy—that he called ‘animal magnetism’” (4). He worked to put people in a trance-like state to recalibrate this supposed energy imbalance. This is when it was observed that people in this trance-like state were susceptible to suggestion, leading to the practice of hypnosis.

This was my favorite chapter, as Martin traces how this occultist and mystical movement so powerfully entered into American evangelicalism through key figures and books, to the point where we are all affected. She then outlines why this positive thinking movement is in conflict with orthodox Christianity. It raises some good questions about how we think about God, ourselves, and the Christian life. She unmasks the positive thinking movement in Christianity, exposing its lack of power to deal with real life suffering and our true need for redemption.

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