Movement founded in the U.S. by Ernest Holmes (18871960).
After publishing his major work, The Science of the Mind (1926), Holmes established the Institute of Religious Science and Philosophy (1927). In 1949 Religious Science was established as a denomination; it soon split into two groups. It teaches that the individual mind and the Universal Mind are one and that the universe is the material manifestation of the Universal Mind. Like New Thought , it teaches that evil stems from ignorance of humanity's true higher identity and that prayer can bring about healing not only of spiritual but of physical ailments.