The Gospel of Creativity
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4918149 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Jason De Stefano (corresponding author) |
| Year | 2022 |
| Volume | 53 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 241-263 |
| Publication date | 2022-03-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | New Literary History (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0028-6087 • E-ISSN: 1080-661X |
| Publisher | Project MUSE (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1353/nlh.2022.0011 |
| OpenAlex | W4293382233 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
This essay is about the New Thought movement, a spiritualist trend at the turn of the twentieth century which taught that human creativity is the very substance of divinity. It focuses on the career of New Thought's most famous preacher, a popular philosopher named Ralph Waldo Trine, who encouraged readers to see that "thoughts are forces," and "through them we have creative power." New Thought's faith in the power of creative thinking helped turn creativity into the popular obsession it remains today. Creativity has become a term of art for the tech industry, and more broadly, it has come to be seen as an economic asset; the history of New Thought helps explain how this happened. Trine and his colleagues preached a gospel of creativity, but in doing so they heralded what one commentator has called our current "gospel of work."
Aesthetics · Art · Creativity · Divinity · Epistemology · Faith · Gospel · Literature · Power (physics) · Sociology · Theology · Paranormal Experiences and Beliefs · Philosophy · Psychology · Social Psychology
| Citations per year | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2025 - 2025 (1) |
| Highly cited | No |