A Teacher
Terry Cole-Whittaker
Self-worth independent of others’ opinions
The transmission
Terry Cole-Whittaker was born on 3 December 1939 in Los Angeles, California. She became an ordained minister in the United Church of Religious Science, the New Thought denomination founded on Ernest Holmes’s teaching, and built a large ministry in Southern California.
In 1979 she began a weekly television program that, at its height in the early 1980s, was syndicated to numerous stations and reached a reported audience in the millions, making her one of the most visible New Thought figures of the era and a notable woman televangelist.
Her best-known book, What You Think of Me Is None of My Business (1979), argued that self-worth must rest on one’s own self-acceptance rather than on the approval of others, and combined this with New Thought teaching on prosperity and self-creation.
She later founded Adventures in Enlightenment and continued to write and teach, with her interests broadening over time toward Eastern spirituality. Her 1980s broadcast ministry remains a landmark instance of New Thought reaching a mass television audience.
What they gave
Televised New Thought: Brought Religious Science teaching to a mass television audience in the early 1980s, demonstrating the medium’s reach for mind-power ideas.
- What You Think of Me Is None of My Business (1979): Popularised the principle that self-worth is internally generated and not contingent on others’ opinions.
- Prosperity and self-acceptance: Fused New Thought prosperity teaching with a psychology of self-esteem aimed at a popular audience.
- Meaning as self-assigned: Taught that the significance one grants to others’ judgments is a choice, locating power in the individual’s own interpretation.
The line they stand in
Taught by / Influenced by: Ernest Holmes’s Religious Science, in which she was ordained, and the wider New Thought prosperity tradition.
- Taught / Influenced: The 1980s televangelist self-help culture and prosperity-oriented New Thought audiences who absorbed her message of self-generated worth.
Revelations they taught
Essential Works
- What You Think of Me Is None of My Business1979
- How to Have More in a Have-Not World1983