Preaching

New Thought, which started in the early 19th century, consists today of loosely allied groups of religious denominations which share a set of beliefs concerning metaphysics, positive thinking, healing, life force, creative visualizations, and personal power. Peale was heavily influenced by New Thought's philosophical religious system, which emphasizes the power of the mind to create our own reality of good or evil, health or sickness, prosperity or poverty, etc.

Peale believed that the unconscious mind has the power to turn wishes into realities. He used “positive imaging” to change and create reality and taught that one had to visualize what they wanted to obtain in order to make it a reality. The New Age Movement, which became popular in the 1970's in response to the perceived failure of Christianity and Secular Humanism to provide their followers with spiritual and ethical guidance for the modern world, took up on Peale's ideas.

During the 1980's and 90's, the movement came under criticism from a variety of groups. Seminar and group leaders who taught New Age philosophies were criticized for the fortunes that they made from their followers. Practices such as channeling were ridiculed, and their uncritical belief in the "scientific" properties of crystals was exposed as groundless.