Christian Fellowship Organization

Edward Lewis Hodges, a physician in San Diego, California, claimed to be the earthy representative of the Secret Order of the Christian Brotherhood and School of Christian Initiation. Similar to what has been elsewhere termed the Great White Brotherhood, the Secret Order of the Christian Brotherhood was seen as consisting of those evolved beings who in ages past had so spiritualized their bodies and perfected their under-standing that they had been given the keys to the Kingdom Universal. Their present task is to guide the Earth. As an initiate, Hodges was given the order's teachings and told to propagate them. He founded the Christian Fellowship Organization as an instrument for the order and in 1938 published their teachings in a book, The Teachings of the Secret Order of the Christian Brotherhood.

The order taught a means of achieving liberation through the restoration and spiritualization of the body. Jesus headed the order during his earthly ministry and taught the means of spiritualization. The great secret of life was God, expressed through Jesus, the mortal man. We must look beyond Jesus to the Christ within. Christ within the human form is the saving potential. The first step on the path of initiation is realizing oneness with the Christ within.

The organization taught a process of liberation from death through spiritualization of the body. Students were asked to place themselves under the "cultural condition of the Christian brotherhood," by invoking its presence. They were also given a set of affirmations (positive prayers) to bring about conditions of health, prosperity, and spiritualization. Eventually, the individual should be able to take his or her body to heavenly worlds and return as he or she sees fit.

The organization functioned into the 1950s, but appears to have become defunct.

Sources:

Hodges, Edward Lewi. Be Healed… A Remedy That Never Fails. San Diego: Christian Fellowship Organization, 1949.

——. Teachings of the Secret Order of the Christian Brotherhood. Santa Barbara: J. F. Rowney Press, 1938.

——. Wealth and Riches by Divine Right. San Diego: Christian Fellowship Organization, 1945.