Nona Lovell Brooks, described as a "prophet of modern mystical Christianity", was a leader in the New Thought movement and a founder of the Church of Divine Science.
Brooks was born on March 22, 1861 in Louisville, Kentucky, the youngest daughter of Chauncey and Lavinia Brooks. At a fairly early age, her family moved just outside Charleston, West Virginia, where Brooks graduated from the Charleston Female Academy. Due to the collapse of her father's salt mining business, the family moved again, this time to Pueblo, Colorado where he entered the metal mining business, He died shortly after the move, when Brooks was 19.
In 1887, encouraged by her sister, Althea Brooks Small, Nona Brooks attended classes taught by Kate Bingham, proponent of the New Thought philosophy. While attending these classes, Brooks "found herself healed of a persistent throat infection" and shortly thereafter Brooks and Small began to heal others.
In 1890, with the aim of becoming a teacher, Brooks enrolled at Pueblo Normal School, which was followed by a one year stay at Wellesley College. In December 1898, Brooks was ordained by Malinda Cramer as a minister in the Church of Divine Science and founded the Denver Divine Science College. Shortly thereafter, she inaugurated the Divine Science Church of Denver, holding its initial service on January 1, 1899 at the Plymouth Hotel in Denver, in the process becoming the first woman pastor in Denver.
In 1902, Brooks founded Fulfillment, a Divine Science periodical. During this period, she also served on several Denver civic boards, including the Colorado State Prison Board.
After World War I Brooks succeeded her sister Fannie James as head of the College and in 1922 Brooks aligned the growing Church of Divine Science with the International New Thought Alliance. In the early 1930s she moved to Australia, where she established several Divine Science organizations, returning to Chicago in 1935 and then back to Denver in 1938. She died March 14, 1945 in Denver, Colorado.
Nona was described by many who knew her as warm, gentle, and "motherly", but with "a strength that came from conviction"
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