Norman Vincent Peale Popular Books

Norman Vincent Peale Biography & Facts

Norman Vincent Peale (May 31, 1898 – December 24, 1993) was an American Protestant clergyman, and an author best known for popularizing the concept of positive thinking, especially through his best-selling book The Power of Positive Thinking (1952). He served as the pastor of Marble Collegiate Church, New York, from 1932, leading this Reformed Church in America congregation for more than a half century until his retirement in 1984. Alongside his pulpit ministry, he had an extensive career of writing and editing, and radio and television presentations. Despite arguing at times against involvement of clergy in politics, he nevertheless had some controversial affiliations with politically active organizations in the late 1930s, and engaged with national political candidates and their campaigns, having influence on some, including a personal friendship with President Richard Nixon. Peale led a group opposing the election of John F. Kennedy for president, saying, "Faced with the election of a Catholic, our culture is at stake." Theologian Reinhold Niebuhr responded that Peale was motivated by "blind prejudice," and facing intense public criticism, Peale retracted his statement. He also opposed Adlai Stevenson's candidacy for president because he was divorced, which led Stevenson to famously quip, "I find Saint Paul appealing and Saint Peale appalling." Following the publication of Peale's 1952 best seller, his ideas became the focus of criticism from several psychiatric professionals, church theologians and leaders. Peale was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor in the United States, on March 26, 1984, by President Ronald Reagan. He died at age 95, following a stroke, on December 24, 1993, in Pawling, New York. He was survived by Ruth Stafford, his wife of 63 years, who had influenced him with regard to the publication of The Power in 1952, and with whom he had founded Guideposts in 1945; Ruth died on February 6, 2008, at the age of 101. Early life and education Peale was born in Bowersville, Ohio on May 31, 1898, the eldest of three sons of Charles and Anna (née Delaney) Peale. Charles was a physician-turned-Methodist minister in southern Ohio, and as such, his three sons were raised as Methodists. Peale graduated from Bellefontaine High School, Bellefontaine, Ohio in 1916. He attended and earned a degree at Ohio Wesleyan University, where he became a brother at the Phi Gamma Delta fraternity. He also began to attend Boston University School of Theology. Career Beginnings Serving as a pulpit replacement in a subsequent summer break (for an Ohio church pastor that had fallen ill), the Boston theology trainee was persuaded by his father to abandon the formal preaching style of his training for one of simplicity, which led Peale to talk about "Jesus Christ... relat[ing him] to the simplicities of human lives," and which led, he would later recollect, to a "good reception" and "look[s] of gratitude and goodness" on the faces of congregants. Leaving school thereafter to earn needed funds, Peale would work in journalism at The Detroit Journal, after a year of reporting in Findlay, Ohio at The Morning Republican. Leaving journalism, Peale returned his focus to ministry, and in 1922 was ordained a pastor in the Methodist Episcopal Church. After a first assignment in Rhode Island, at an unknown church in Berkeley, he accepted a call to Brooklyn, where, in 1924, his work from the pulpit, and in general, boosted its membership more than twenty-fold within a year, leading the small congregation to build a new church. He received a call to Syracuse, New York and in 1927 took the pulpit at the University Methodist Church; it was also while there that he became one of the first American clergymen to bring his sermons to the emerging commercial technology of radio, a media decision that added to his general popularity, and that he would later extend in the same way to television. During the Depression, Peale teamed up with J.C. Penney & Co. founder James Cash Penney, radio personality Arthur Godfrey, and IBM founder and President Thomas J. Watson, forming (and sitting the first board of) 40Plus, an organization aimed at helping unemployed managers and executives. On June 20, 1930, Peale married Loretta Ruth Stafford. In 1932 or 1933 he was called to the Marble Collegiate Church in New York City, a call which required that he "switch his denomination"—for a clergyman, transfer his ordination—to the Reformed Church in America, "a transfer made... with no apparent problem for him". His tenure at Marble Collegiate Church, which dated to 1628 and was "said to be the oldest continuous Protestant congregation in the country", began with an attendance at service of 200, but which would grow to thousands, as a result of his "spirited sermons". Peale would remain at Marble until his retirement from pastoral work, in 1984. His theology was controversial, and prominent theologians such as Ronald Niebuhr and William Miller spoke out publicly against it. They contended that Peale's theology falsely represented Christianity and that Peale's writings and sermons were factually false as well. Niebuhr said "This new cult is dangerous. Anything which corrupts the Gospel hurts Christianity. And it hurts people too." William Miller Wrote that Peale's theology is "hard on the truth," full of undocumented claims, and after reviewing Peale's entire library of books, said "the later ones are worse." Early association with psychiatry Following the 1929 market crash, and being presented with congregants with "complex problems" (as Peale would later recount), his wife, Ruth Stafford Peale, counseled him to "fin[d] a psychiatrist who could help parish members," which he did through consultation with his physician, Clarence W. Lieb. Peale was introduced to a Freudian who had trained in psychiatry in Vienna, Smiley Blanton, who Peale later recalled as saying, "I've been praying for years that some minister would see that psychiatry and religion... should work together" (in response to being asked about his believing in the "power of prayer"). The two men wrote books together, notably Faith Is the Answer: A Psychiatrist and a Pastor Discuss Your Problems (1940). The book was written in alternating chapters, with Blanton writing one chapter, then Peale. Blanton espoused no particular religious point of view in his chapters. In 1951 this clinic of psychotherapy and religion grew into the American Foundation of Religion and Psychiatry, with Peale serving as president and Blanton as executive director. Blanton handled difficult psychiatric cases and Peale, who had no mental health credentials, handled religious issues. When Peale came under heavy criticism from the mental health community for his book The Power of Positive Thinking (1952), Blanton distanced himself from Peale and refused to publicly endorse the book. Blanton did not allow Peale to use his name in The Power of.... Discover the Norman Vincent Peale popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Norman Vincent Peale books.