Norman Vincent Peale

Norman Vincent Peale (1898-1993) was a religious leader who developed a blend of psychotherapy and religion based on the idea that nearly all basic problems are personal. He spread this message through his radio and television programs and through his popular book The Power of Positive Thinking and other writings.

Norman Vincent Peale was born in the small Ohio town of Bowersville on May 31, 1898, son of the local Methodist minister. The family moved frequently, in the Methodist itinerant tradition. They were not wealthy, and young Peale earned money delivering papers, working in a grocery store, and selling pots and pans door-to-door.

Graduating in 1920 from Ohio Wesleyan, a Methodist-founded college, Peale worked as a reporter on two newspapers, the Findlay (Ohio) Morning Republican and the Detroit Journal, for about a year before deciding that his life work lay elsewhere. Ordained to the Methodist ministry in 1922, he took a master's degree and an S.T.B. (Bachelor of Sacred Theology), both in 1924, from the theological school at Boston University. Faculty members at BU were religious liberals, many interested in the relationship between psychology and religion—a life-long concern of Peale's.

After serving from 1922 to 1924 as pastor in Berkeley, Rhode Island and then from 1924 to 1927 in Brooklyn, New York, Peale crowned his Methodist career with an appointment to University Methodist Church in Syracuse, New York. He married Loretta Ruth Stafford, herself an active church worker, in 1930.

In 1932 Peale changed his denomination from Methodist to Dutch Reformed, when he moved to the 300-year-old Marble Collegiate Church in New York City. This church traced its parish life back to Dutch New Amsterdam and was to be Peale's home church for the next half-century.

Peale and Smiley Blanton, a psychoanalyst, established a religio-psychiatric outpatient clinic next door to the church. The two men wrote books together, notably Faith Is the Answer: A Psychiatrist and a Pastor Discuss Your Problems (1940). In 1951 this blend of psychotherapy and religion grew into the American Foundation of Religion and Psychiatry, with Peale serving as president and Blanton as executive director.

Peale started a radio program, "The Art of Living," in 1935. Under sponsorship of the National Council of Churches he moved into television when the new medium arrived. In the meantime he had begun to edit the magazine Guideposts and to write books: The Art of Living (1937), A Guide to Confident Living (1948), and most notably, The Power of Positive Thinking (1952).

Peale's books enjoyed only a modest circulation until the great religion boom after World War II, a movement of which Peale was both a maker and a beneficiary. By the early 1950s the publishing climate for books like Peale's was highly favorable. Publisher's Weekly noted (January 23, 1954) that "the theme of religion dominates the non-fiction best-sellers in 1953," including such gems as The Power of Prayer on Plants and Pray Your Weight Away. The most successful such book, The Power of Positive Thinking, was on the New York Times best-seller list for three years and was translated into 33 languages.

If Peale had his ardent admirers, he had also his vocal detractors. He was accused of watering down the traditional doctrines of Christianity, of stressing materialistic rewards, and of counseling people to accept social conditions rather than reform them. Also, his best-known book was replete with "two 15-minute formulas," "a three-point program," "seven simple steps," "eight practical formulas," and "ten simple rules." Some readers found his message too easy to be plausible.

Asked to compare Peale with St. Paul, the two-time presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson of Illinois quipped that he found Paul appealing and Peale appalling. That remark perhaps reflected political bias. Boston University's liberalism may have loosened Peale's theology, but it did not seem to influence his politics. For a time Peale was chairman of the ultraconservative Committee for Constitutional Government, which lobbied vigorously against New Deal measures. In 1960 Peale, as spokesman for 150 Protestant clergymen, opposed the election of John Kennedy as president. "Faced with the election of a Catholic," Peale declared, "our culture is at stake." The uproar resulting from that pronouncement caused the pastor to back off from further formal partisan commitments, possibly to avoid offending part of the mass audience for his primary religio-psychological message. He was, however, politically and personally close to President Nixon's family. In 1968 he officiated at the wedding of Julie Nixon and David Eisenhower. He continued calling at the White House throughout the Watergate crisis, saying "Christ didn't shy away from people in trouble." It has been argued that even his "positive thinking" message was by implication politically conservative: "The underlying assumption of Peale's teaching was that nearly all basic problems were personal."

In 1984 Peale was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Ronald Reagan. In that same year, after 52 years at the pulpit, Peale retired from preaching at Marble Collegiate Church. For the next seven years he spoke to an average of 100 groups a year (a live audience numbered in the millions) and made frequent television and radio appearances. During this time he also produced more than a dozen books.

Peale died at his home in Pawling, New York on December 24, 1993, at the age of 95. He was survived by his wife Ruth and their three children.

Further Reading

Autobiographical anecdotes and fragments are scattered throughout Peale's books, especially his later ones. Arthur Gordon wrote a biography, Norman Vincent Peale: Minister to Millions (1958), a book sufficiently romanticizing its subject that it was readily transformed into a Hollywood movie, One Man's Way (1963); the book was revised and retitled One Man's Way in 1972. Douglas T. Miller described the context of Peale's literary success in the article "Popular Religion of the 1950s: Norman Vincent Peale and Billy Graham," in Journal of Popular Culture (Summer 1975). Donald Meyer has placed Peale in his longer-range historical context in The Positive Thinkers: A Study of the American Quest for Health, Wealth and Personal Power from Mary Baker Eddy to Norman Vincent Peale (1965). See also George, Carol V.R., God's Salesman: Norman Vincent Peale and The Power of Positive Thinking (1993). □

PEALE, NORMAN VINCENT 1898-1993

Author and minister

Simple Style

A country boy from Ohio, Norman Vincent Peale trained at Boston University Seminary and began his full-time ministry at a church in Brooklyn in 1924. He married Ruth Stafford on 20 June 1930 and two years later accepted a call to the Dutch Reformed Marble Collegiate Church in New York, where he was soon attracting large crowds with his simple preaching style. He appealed to middle and upper-middle-class Americans struggling to survive a Depression and two world wars.

Mid 1940s

Before World War II Peale wrote The Art of Living (1937), which sold poorly but which announced the theme to which he would return in later books: "applied Christianity helps people to tap [the] reservoir of power within themselves." In the mid 1940s Peale began a newsletter called Guideposts, which offered anecdotes and inspirational accounts of faith in action. It soon achieved a circulation of more than 800,000. With New York psychiatrist Smiley Blanton he established the Blanton-Peale Institute of Religion and Health, which focused on the relationship of faith and mental health. In 1940 Peale and Blanton had published Faith Is the Answer, an interesting mix of religious truisms and distorted psychoanalysis. They argued that religious faith unlocked the unconscious mind, a position exactly opposite to what Sigmund Freud had argued in Civilization and Its Discontents (1930). In 1948 Peale published A Guide to Confident Living, which established his anecdotal style for inspirational messages. Its how-to messages—such as "How to Get Rid of Your Inferiority Complex" and "How to Think Your Way to Success"—proved popular, as did the repetitious feel-good "Spirit Lifter" phrases studding his 1950 Inspiring Messages for Daily Living.

Positive Thinking

Peale became the country's leading apostle of "mind cure" and self-confidence, or, as he called his next book, The Power of Positive Thinking (1952). It opened with the advice "Believe in yourself !" It remained on the best-seller lists for more than two years and sold more than one million copies during that period. Peale also was a regular guest on radio and television. According to him, spiritual difficulties derive primarily from mental attitudes. He recommended healthy doses of prayer to improve mental attitudes and energize the individual.

Last Years

Often criticized by some for distorting Christianity into a gospel of success and belief in oneself rather than in God, Peale was named one of the "Twelve Best U.S. Salesmen" in 1954. He published an autobiography, The True Joy of Positive Living, in 1984. He died on Christmas Eve 1993 at age ninety-five.

Sources:

Allan R. Broadhurst, He Speaks the Word of God: A Study of the Sermons of Norman Vincent Peale (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1963);

Carol V, R. George, Gods Salesman: Norman Vincent Peale and the Power of Positive Thinking (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993);

Arthur Gordon, Norman Vincent Peale: Minister to Millions—A Biography (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1958);

Donald B. Meyer, The Positive Thinkers: A Study of the Quest for Health, Wealth, and Personal Power from Mary Baker Eddy to Norman Vincent Peak (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1965).

Peale, Norman Vincent (1898–1993), minister, author, public speaker.Born in central Ohio to a Methodist minister and his wife, Peale received divinity training from Boston University and was ordained by the United Methodist Church in 1922. He left Methodism in 1932, however, to become a minister of the Reformed church in America's Marble Collegiate Church in New York City, serving there for more than fifty years. While in this post, Peale expanded his ministry to nonchurchgoers through books, journalism, radio programs, speaking engagements, and television.

Peale preached a distinctive brand of popular Christianity, using a straightforward, anecdotal style and emphasizing the practical qualities of religion and the power of affirmative prayer. In his sermons, lectures, and numerous published works, including most notably the best‐seller The Power of Positive Thinking (1952) and Guideposts magazine (founded 1944), Peale stressed that a positive attitude along with a strong commitment to Christian morality and love of God would lead to an improved life.

This philosophy generated attacks from some Protestant ministers and theologians, who believed that Peale's simplified theology and utilitarian focus on religion as merely a means to materialistic ends, namely a vaguely defined “success,” inappropriately promoted individual agency over God's saving grace. Despite these critiques, Peale remained extremely popular throughout his life, reaching millions annually via his lectures and writings and playing a leading role in the religious revival of the 1950s. Although indeed simplistic, Peale's ideas clearly resonated with many Americans, who discovered through them a new commitment to and appreciation for personal religion.
See also Fifties, The; Protestantism.

Bibliography

Carol V.R. George , God's Salesman: Norman Vincent Peale and the Power of Positive Thinking, 1993.

Margaret A. Hogan

PEALE, NORMAN VINCENT 1898-1993

Author and minister

Marble Collegiate

Norman Vincent Peale came to the Marble Collegiate Church in New York City in 1932, leaving his Methodist background for this Reformed Church in America congregation. He revitalized that congregation, turning it into one of the largest congregations in the city. One of Peak's most important innovations for Marble Collegiate was what became the American Foundation for Religion and Psychiatry, a psychological counseling program affiliated with his congregation. another aspect of his ministry was the creation of the magazine Guideposts, a periodical that focused on stories of religious faith in action.

Best-Seller

In 1948 Peale published The Power of Confident Living and followed it with The Power of Positive Thinking (1952), which stayed on the Best-Seller list for years. He revised his sermons into other books assuring his readers that religion would improve their personal lives, Stay Alive All Your Life (1957) and Amazing Results of Positive Thinking (1959).

Stevenson's Put Down

While Peale was one of the most beloved ministers of the postwar world many people, particularly intellectuals, found his piety shallow and his religiosity offensive. Adlai Stevenson, the Democratic candidate for president in 1952 and 1956, remarked that while he found Saint Paul appealing, he found Peale appalling.

Sources:

Carol V. George, God's Salesman: Norman Vincent Peale and the Power of Positive Thinking (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992).