Catherine Ponder (born February 14, 1927) is an American minister and founder of Unity Church Worldwide, affiliated with the Unity Church, and author of several New Thought books on mainly focused on the theme of prosperity.^[1]

Early life

Ponder was born in Hartsville, South Carolina.

After studying business she enrolled in the Unity Ministerial School, receiving a Bachelor of Science in Education in 1956.

Career

She was ordained as a Unity Church minister in 1958, with an initial ministry in Birmingham, Alabama (1958–61). She founded ministries in Austin, Texas (1961–69), San Antonio (1969–73) and Palm Desert, California in 1973, where she remains minister.

Ponder has written more than a dozen books, which include such bestsellers as her Millionaires of the Bible series.

Ponder wrote her first prosperity book The Dynamic Laws of Prosperity in the early 1960s while living in Birmingham, Alabama.

She has given lectures on the universal principles of prosperity in most of the major cities of America, as well as in smaller ones. Ponder has given interviews on television and radio, as well as numerous interviews by the print media.^{[citation needed]}

Ponder's The Dynamic Laws of Prosperity was included among 50 'success classics' in an eponymous book ^[2] by personal development scholar Tom Butler-Bowdon. Her Open Your Mind To Prosperity was separately featured in his book 50 Prosperity Classics.^[3]

Personal life

While finishing The Dynamic Laws, she married and moved to the southwest, where her husband taught at the University of Texas. Following her husband's death,she moved to San Antonio in the early 1970s. She remarried and wrote a sequel to the first book, entitled Open Your Mind to Prosperity.