Williamson, Marianne
(1952– ), lecturer, author, activist.

Marianne Williamson is a New Age lecturer and author in the fields of spirituality and politics and a humanitarian activist. She was born in Houston, Texas, to a middle-class Conservative Jewish family. In high school she studied drama and then attended Pomona College in Claremont, California, for two years. From 1972 to 1978, Williamson traveled, experimented with drugs, developed her interests in spiritualism, metaphysics, and Eastern philosophies and meditation practices, attended twelve-step programs, and worked as a cabaret singer in nightclubs. In 1978 she began studying the "channeled" document A Course in Miracles (Foundation for Inner Peace, 1975) and from 1979 to 1982 ran a New Age bookstore in Houston. After recovering from a nervous breakdown during this period, she moved to Los Angeles in 1983 and began lecturing on the Course at the Philosophical Research Society and other venues, as well as counseling persons with AIDS. In 1986 she added a monthly lecture in New York City and from 1987 to 1989 founded the Los Angeles and Manhattan Centers for Living and Project Angel Food, organizations providing services to people with life-threatening illnesses. Williamson's first book, A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of "A Course in Miracles" (1992), promoted by media celebrities such as Oprah Winfrey, met with popular acclaim. Following A Return to Love, she published A Woman's Worth (1993), Illuminata: A Return to Prayer (1994), Emma and Mommy Talk to God (1996), Illuminated Prayers (1997), and The Healing of America (1997) and produced numerous lecture audiocassettes. She also led spiritual pilgrimages to various sites around the world, spoke with political and religious leaders such as Hillary Rodham Clinton and the Dalai Lama, and by 1999 had founded the Global Renaissance Alliance, a political and spiritual organization.

Williamson's use of A Course in Miracles as the foundation of her teaching and social activism locates her within the eclectic sphere of the New Age movement. The New Age emphasizes personal spirituality over institutionalized religion, but Williamson has combined its psychotherapeutic individualism with a focus on humanitarian service. Williamson's interpretation of the Course teaches the illusoriness of the material world and the ultimate reality only of "love," which is God, an energy that pervades the universe and connects all things. Through "surrendering" the ego to God in prayer and meditation, an individual is able to change his or her perception and experience of the world. As thinking shifts—termed a "miracle"—a person moves from feelings of separatedness and fear to those of connectedness and love and is empowered to "heal" oneself and others, emotionally and physically. For Williamson, who teaches personal responsibility for one's experiences and actions, the realization of God's love generates nonviolent activism to promote the creation of an "enlightened society," that is, one committed to spiritual values and social justice. Williamson's self-identification as a baby boomer who thoroughly embraced the revolutionary culture of the late 1960s and early 1970s and her energetic dissemination of the principles of New Age spirituality have elicited the following of many spiritual seekers of her generation. Believing that many Americans in the late 1990s have become disillusioned with materialistic culture, inept government, and problematic social issues such as crime, public education, and welfare, she has adopted a millennialist vision of America as a nation in crisis. Arguing that the United States is in the midst of a turbulent transition that will inevitably result in the transformation or disintegration of the nation. The Healing of America uses Course principles to call people to prayer vigils and political activism in grassroots "citizen circles." In 1999 the Global Renaissance Alliance reported that there were circles in Canada, the Netherlands, and Austria, as well as in thirty-four states in the United States, with California (thirteen circles) and Florida (fourteen circles) representing the most activity.

See alsoDalai Lama; Generation X; Health; Meditation; Miracles; New Age Spirituality; Spirituality; Twelve-Step Programs.

Bibliography

Oumano, Elena. Marianne Williamson: Her Life, HerMessage, Her Miracles. 1992.

Williamson, Marianne. The Healing of America. 1997.

Williamson, Marianne. Illuminata: A Return to Prayer. 1994.

Williamson, Marianne. A Return to Love: Reflections onthe Principles of "A Course in Miracles." 1992.

Martha Finch-Jewell