Asking Challenging Questions

I recently completed my second student chapel service at Unity  Village, Missouri and I continue on my journey to Unity ministry. In my message I explored the concept of the edge of faith.  Faith is a spiritual faculty and may also refer to a spiritual path.  In addition to being a student, I also serve as Archivist in the Unity Library and Archives.  That means that I live in this world of questions about the past and wonder what is to be.  Who am I to be?  Where am I to serve?  How do I explain a historical change?  How do I live on the edge of my faith?

Many people have contacted the Archives with reference questions.  Some people want to know “The answer!” People are not always pleased with me when they get a suggested reading list or a variety of Unity “answers!”  Maybe that is true of all of us.  What is the answer to my challenge?  As I have researched historical documents, my admiration for Myrtle and Charles Fillmore, Unity’s founders, has never dimmed, but all my reading and classes have led me to sometimes confront what I read and explore my own challenging questions.

Eric Butterworth made it his life’s work to ask challenging questions and encourage people to explore their own answers.  Sunday after Sunday, broadcast after broadcast, class after class, retreat after retreat; he called on his students to realize their own potential.  He wanted them to realize their own divinity. 

In the introduction to The Creative Life (2001) he describes the Internet as a great accomplishment and compares it to accessing the mind of God. Anyone may connect to the mind of God and “realize the answers to all of his or her needs.”  Butterworth, who was raised in a Unity household, seemed never to have understood the Divine in an anthropomorphic way.  Instead of a human-like God looking down on humanity in judgment, Butterworth understood Spirit to be activity itself, in and through all, life behind all life.  In his most famous book, Discover the Power Within You, he outlines how Jesus’ unique concept of God.  He gave a new and radical answer to questions about the Divine. The writer of the book of John suggests that Jesus said “The Father and I are one (10:30).”  Butterworth writes “The Father in me is me on a higher dimension of living (34).”  May we all choose a “higher dimension of living!”

Who was Eric Butterworth?



Eric Butterworth (Unity Library and Archives)

 Eric Butterworth (1916-2003) demonstrated stability and resolve throughout his life. Daily he shared his message of individual divinity and the process for making enlightened choices.  He was a profound philosopher, a thoughtful theologian, an inspiring speaker and a gifted writer of sixteen books. 

Butterworth did not seek notoriety – it sought him.  The 40th anniversary edition of his book, Discover the Power Within You, was recently printed with a foreword by Maya Angelou.  Oprah Winfrey shared “This book changed my perspective on life and religion.”  The late Norman Vincent Peale told readers “This book really does release the power within us all."

Butterworth’s life began in an agricultural capital: Winnipeg,  Canada.  In his youth, the city suffered from reduced use of the nearby canal and rail traffic when business began to use the new Panama Canal more frequently.  Strikes followed a postwar recession.  He experienced childhood in Southern California.  His college education included time at Fresno State University in Fresno, California, at the foot of the imposing Sierra Nevada mountain range.  He also attended the Lutheran based Capital University in Columbus,  Ohio.  During World War II he served in as an army lieutenant in the Medical Corps.  He trained medical personnel while helping as a chaplain.   He attended the Unity Training School near Kansas City, Missouri and was ordained as a Unity minister in 1948.  His mother, a longtime Unity student, had been ordained in 1941.

Butterworth first served Unity centers in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania and Detroit, Michigan.  His career peaked in the financial capital of the world: New York  City.  For many years he held Sunday morning services in large lecture halls including Avery Fisher Hall in Lincoln Center.  He embraced his students with encouragement.  He expected them to live their best.  He referred to sin as “self-inflicted nonsense.”  If sin is a mistake, “missing the mark,” or feeling separate from God, it is based on personal choices.  We have all inflicted some circumstances on ourselves.  As Eric Butterworth encouraged, our task in life is to rise above our limitations and our embedded theology, to explore life and enjoy doing it!