Josephine Emma Curtis Hopkins (September 2, 1849 – April 8, 1925) was an American spiritual teacher and leader. She was involved in organizing the New Thought movement and was a theologian, teacher, writer, feminist, mystic, and healer; who taught and ordained hundreds of people, including notably many women. Hopkins was called the "teacher of teachers" and "mother of New Thought" because a number of her students went on to found their own churches or to become prominent in the New Thought Movement, including Charles and Myrtle Fillmore, founders of Unity Church; Ernest Holmes; and H. Emilie Cady, author of Unity's cornerstone text Lessons in Truth. According to Charles S. Braden, Hopkins influenced the development of New Thought "more than any other single teacher", and modern scholars have identified Hopkins as the founder of New Thought.
Early life Emma Curtis Hopkins was born Josephine Emma Curtis on September 2, 1849 in Killingly, Connecticut, to Rufus and Lydia ( Phillips) Curtis, and was the oldest of nine children. She attended the local Congregationalist church and graduated from the local high school, before going on to teach secondary-school as a math, science, and language teacher. She married George Irving Hopkins, another teacher, on July 19, 1874. The couple had one son, John Carver, who was born June 8, 1875, graduated from the merchant marine academy, and died in 1905. Hopkins and her husband were separated in the mid-1880s and divorced in 1900. Little else is known of Hopkins' early life.
Career Work in Boston with Eddy
Hopkins first encountered Christian Science in 1881 and, according to J. Gordon Melton, experienced healing of some sort at that time although the details are not known. In 1883, Hopkins heard Mary Baker Eddy speak, and her ideas on spiritual healing interested her, so in December of that year Hopkins joined one of Eddy's classes at the Massachusetts Metaphysical College in Boston for a one-week basic course. Hopkins' name appeared in The Christian Science Journal as a practitioner in February 1884, where it would remain listed until August of that year, when she apparently became too busy with other duties. Her first article in the Journal appeared around the same time. Notably, Eddy never made Hopkins a teacher, nor did Hopkins take the normal class at the Massachusetts Metaphysical College to become one. According to Eddy, Hopkins was not permitted to go farther than the primary class.
In September 1884, Hopkins was invited to become editor of The Christian Science Journal, which around the same time moved from a bi-monthly publication to a monthly one. According to Robert Peel, an article by Hopkins even before her editorship began suggested a trend away from Christian Science and towards a more "indiscriminate eclecticism", drawing from such sources as Buddhism, Upanishads, Islam, Avesta, and Baruch Spinoza. Some writers have claimed that it was only Hopkins' interest in other writers than Eddy, which was expressed in this article, that caused the split between them, but Peel notes that it was after Hopkins had published this article that Eddy made her editor. Hopkins was good at editing according to Peel, and notably opposed former students of Eddy who thought they could teach metaphysics better than she could, writing September 1885: "No student (I speak from knowledge of facts) has ever yet been qualified to teach Christian Science, except rudimentarily... To me... the words of my teacher on the theme of Spiritual Being were first as the gentle touch of a mother lifting the world-weary form of her wayward child to her bosom. ... I was made to know Him face to face of whom I had heard by the hearing of the ear as a name only. ... I know that every single student that has ever studied under "this teacher sent from God" has realized it all. How great, then, the folly of falling back to earthly ambitions and earthly ends by claiming to work the same miracle — for the pottage reward of a little publicity and a few hundred dollars."
Peel notes that there was a "wry coincidence in the fact that the very month in which these words were published brought to Mrs. Hopkins the irresistible temptation to set herself up in rivalry to the teacher she had so eulogized." Eddy taught a class that September which among its students included Mary H. Plunkett, who had already studied with A. J. Swarts of Chicago, an opponent of Eddy. Upon joining the class, Plunkett began looking for someone to help her set up a rival movement to Eddy, at first trying and failing to win over fellow student Laura Lathrop before moving on to Hopkins. Plunkett and Hopkins quickly became friends, but according to Plunkett it took some time to fully bring Hopkins over to her side and turn her against Eddy. Eddy was apparently aware of the influence Plunkett was having on Hopkins, and removed Hopkins from the editorial position, replacing her with Sarah H. Crosse. She was also asked by Eddy's assistant Calvin Frye to vacate her room at the Massachusetts Metaphysical College; and on November 4 she resigned from the Christian Science Association, although she said she was still devoted to Christian Science. According to Melton, Hopkins broke with Eddy on "ideological and financial grounds." Hopkins wrote to Eddy: "Oh, if you could only have been mental enough to see what I might be and do — and given me time to work past and out of the era through which I was passing when Mrs. Crosse suddenly ordered me to leave."
Work in Chicago with Plunkett
By early 1886, Hopkins had moved with Plunkett to Chicago to set up their headquarters and begin teaching. Hopkins' husband, who she later described as having occasional psychotic episodes which could turn violent, also moved to Chicago with her, but she separated from him soon afterwards. At first Hopkins joined up with Plunkett's teacher A. J. Swarts in Chicago (whom she had previously attacked as editor of The Christian Science Journal for plagiarizing Eddy and perverting her writings) and became editor for his magazine, the Mind Cure Journal, until she started work with Plunkett full time. The two women set up their own journal called Truth: A Magazine of Christian Science. They founded the Emma Curtis Hopkins College of Christian Science, with Hopkins acting as teacher and Plunkett as president and business administer. Her College was modeled after Eddy's Massachusetts Metaphysical College; and the first class of thirty-seven students, which included journalist Helen Wilmans, publisher Ida Nichols, and teachers Mabel McCoy and Kate Bingham who would influence the founding of Divine Science, graduated in June 1886 and formed the Hopkins Metaphysical Association.
As word spread, students began traveling to Chicago for classes with Hopkins, and Hopkins traveled with Plunkett to cities such as Milwaukee, San Francisco, Kansas City, New York, and Boston to teach and lecture. These classes would often be large, such as a class in San Francisco with around 250 students, or in Boston, where she apparently had around one thousand students. In 1887, there were already twenty-one Hopkins Associations stretched across America. The same year a building was purchased in Chicago's South Side to serve as their headquarters. In addition to the interest in Chicago for Hopkins' metaphysical ideas, the city also offered a vibrant women's movement dating back to the mid-1800s for her to be involved with. Eddy was a supporter of women's rights, and Hopkins had experienced the predominantly female environment of the Christian Science movement, and found this trend repeating itself with her own students and patients in Chicago. She did not want her movement to be dominated by men like the medical profession was, so she took steps to align herself with the women's movement in Chicago.
Hopkins and Plunkett also joined forces for a time with Ursula Newell Gestefeld, another former Christian Scientist and student of Eddy. Hopkins, Plunkett, Swarts, Gestefeld, and others all wanted to set up their own healing methods without so much of a focus on Christianity as Eddy had, either wanting to combine it with eastern religions, or reject it all together. According to Gillian Gill, these groups both opposed Eddy and copied her: "They set up institutes in imitation of her Massachusetts Metaphysical College, founded periodicals comparable to the Christian Science Journal, gave lecture courses modelled on her own, plagiarized shamelessly from her written work, and prominently featured Science and Health in their reading lists. The term Christian Science was used constantly by them." In 1887, Luther Marston organized a convention of these groups in Eddy's home turf of Boston, which in addition to Hopkins and the others in her circle included Julius Dresser, an important figure in the early history of New Thought, and although the participants often disagreed and were in many ways in competition with each other, they were all united by their opposition to Eddy. Reporting on the event in the Truth magazine, a supporter of Hopkins called her "the star that rose in the East and has spread its glory through the West," and Plunkett referred to her as "our beloved leader."
Since at this point so many individuals and groups were claiming to represent Christian Science, some of whom had never even read Eddy's work, she was becoming increasingly concerned over what she saw as false teachers, of which Hopkins was one of the most notable and successful. Eddy had begun teaching Normal classes in 1884 to train her students to teach Christian Science to others, and in 1885 taught four Chicago-based students to teach where Hopkins was. These authorized teachers were encouraged to start their own Christian Science "institutes" and form student associations, and by 1887 there were twenty-three small authorized Christian Science institutes around the country. In the April 1887 issue of The Christian Science Journal, Eddy responded to a question from a reader regarding Hopkins' teaching: "If one half of what I hear of Mrs. Hopkins teaching on the subject of Christian Science is correct she is deluding the minds she claims to instruct. She took a Primary Course at my College but was not permitted to go farther. She never entered my Normal Class, is not qualified to teach Christian Science and is incapable of teaching it."
Break with Plunkett and reorganization Hopkins' organization began experiencing internal problems around 1888, which cost Hopkins the support of many of her students and institutes around the country, and led Hopkins to rethink her strategy and reorder her organization. Plunkett left Hopkins to go to New York and set up a rival organization. When she left, she also took with her the mailing list and other files associated with their work in Chicago. Plunkett renamed their Truth magazine to the International Magazine of Christian Science, setting up the headquarters in New York and absorbing the magazines of two other New Thought publishers at the same time.
While in New York, Plunkett, who by this point already had two children outside of her marriage, met Arthur Bentley Worthington, with whom she had a very public affair. Worthington was a bigamist and embezzler and had several other wives around the country, and the resulting scandal led Hopkins to sever ties completely with her former ally, effectively ending Plunkett's career in the United States New Thought community. Plunkett and Worthington traveled to New Zealand with their children where they established a movement known as Students of Truth, later renamed Temple of Truth, but Worthington later expelled her from the movement and she committed suicide in 1901.