Joseph Denis Murphy (May 20, 1898 – December 16, 1981) was an Irish author and New
Thought minister, ordained in Divine Science and Religious Science. Murphy was born in
Ballydehob,
County Cork,
Ireland, the son of a private boys' school headmaster and raised a
Roman Catholic. He joined the
Jesuits. Murphy was enrolled in the National School and was encouraged to study for the priesthood and was accepted as a Jesuit seminarian. However, by the time he reached his late teen years, he began to question the Catholic orthodoxy of the Jesuits, and he withdrew from the seminary. His goal was to explore new ideas and gain new experiences—a goal he could not pursue in Catholic-dominated Ireland—he left his family to go to America. In his twenties, before being ordained a
priest, an experience with healing prayer led him to leave the Jesuits and emigrate to the
United States in 1922. He journeyed as a steerage passenger on board the
RMS Cedric, sailing from Liverpool, England, to the Port of New York; on the ship's passenger manifest, his occupation was listed as chemist, the British term for pharmacist. He became a professional
pharmacist in
New York City (having a degree in
chemistry by that time). Here he attended the
Church of the Healing Christ (part of the
Church of Divine Science), where
Emmet Fox had become minister in 1931.[1]
Career
Murphy traveled to
India and spent a lot of time with Indian sages, learning
Hindu philosophy. He later on formed a new church in America with Hindu ideologies.
In the mid-1940s, he moved to
Los Angeles, where he met
Religious Science founder
Ernest Holmes, and was ordained into
Religious Science by Holmes in 1946, thereafter teaching at
Rochester, New York, and later at the Institute of Religious Science in Los Angeles. A meeting with Divine Science Association president Erwin Gregg led to him being re-ordained into Divine Science, and he became the minister of the Los Angeles Divine Science Church in 1949, which he built into one of the largest
New Thought congregations in the country.[citation needed]
When the United States entered World War II, Murphy enlisted in the Army and was assigned to work as a pharmacist in the medical unit of the 88th Infantry Division. At that time, he renewed his interest in religion and began to read extensively about various spiritual beliefs. After his discharge from the Army, he chose not to return to his career in pharmacy. He traveled extensively, taking courses in several universities both in the United States and abroad.
A person who had a particularly strong influence on Murphy was
Thomas Troward, who was a judge as well as a philosopher, doctor, and professor.[citation needed] Troward became Murphy's mentor. From him he not only learned philosophy, theology, and law, but also was introduced to mysticism and particularly, the
Masonic order. He became an active member of this order, and over the years rose in the Masonic ranks to the 32nd degree in the Scottish Rite.
Murphy chose to become a minister and bring his broad knowledge to the public. As his concept of Christianity was not traditional and ran counter to many of the Christian denominations, he founded his own church in Los Angeles. He attracted a small number of congregants, but it did not take long for his message of optimism and hope rather than the “sin-and-damnation” sermons of so many ministers to attract many men and women to his church.
Murphy was a proponent of the New Thought movement. This movement was developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by many philosophers and deep thinkers who studied this phenomenon and preached, wrote, a
After his first wife died in 1976, he remarried to a fellow Divine Science minister who was his longstanding secretary. He moved his ministry to
Laguna Hills, California, where he died in 1981. His wife, Dr. Jean Murphy, continued in this ministry for some years afterwards.
^Gale Group "Joseph Murphy" Religious Leaders of America, 2nd ed. Gale Group, 1999. Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Mich.: Gale, 2009.
http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/BioRC