Dr. Julia Seton (Sears), the founder of the Church and School of the New Civilization, was an important figure in the development of the New Thought movement from the esoteric- metaphysical point of view, and exercised a considerable influence over Fenwicke and Ernest Holmes, founder of the Religious Science movement. She brought the Ancient Wisdom into practical use in the new age. The philosophy and secret doctrines of Egypt, India and Greece were as well known to her as though she had been an initiate in the ancient temples and schools of philosophy like those of Zoroaster, Osiris, Orpheus, Pythagoras and Plato.
Julia Seton was born in 1862 in Decatur, Illinois. She trained to be a medical doctor in Boston, and returned to Colorado to practice medicine. (She had visited Colorado as a sickly child and was healed of tuberculosis.) She was a dynamic attraction at the San Francisco World Fair. She set up several New Civilization Centers all over the world. For twelve years between 1902 and 1914 she was married to Franklin Warren Sears whom she instructed in New Thought philosophy. He later branched out as a New Thought teacher and writer in his own right after which the couple divorced and went their separate ways. In 1937 she started the New Civilization Center in Ocala, Florida. Seton was actively creating a New Civilization City Foundation, a non-profit association for all humanity.
Dr. Seton twice lectured her way around the world, speaking in America, England, Australia, New Zealand and other English-speaking countries or communities. Everywhere, the masses followed her. She rented the Strand Theater in Los Angeles and filled it to capacity night after night. She was instrumental in bringing Fenwicke Holmes to the New Thought Alliance in Boston, where he gave a speech, and through her influence he found himself a special lecturer at the League for the Larger Life, an organization of New York and Brooklyn leaders and writers. Julia Seton liked to write poetry and she encouraged Fenwicke in this area also.
Julia Seton wrote a number of book including Freedom Talks (1906); The Science of Success (1914); Destiny, a New Thought Novel (1917); Fundamental Principles of the New Civilization (1914), The Key to Health, Wealth and Love (1917); Songs for the New Day (1953). Seton died in Ocala, Florida on April 25, 1950.