Marianne Williamson
Marianne Deborah Williamson (born July 8, 1952) is an American author, speaker, and politician. She began her professional career as spiritual leader of the Church of Today, a Unity Church in Warren, Michigan. Williamson has written several self-help books, including A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of A Course in Miracles in 1992, which became a New York Times Best Seller. She was launched into prominence by Oprah Winfrey, being a frequent guest on her daytime talk show and becoming known as her "spiritual advisor".[1]
Marianne Williamson
Williamson ran unsuccessfully as an independent for California's 33rd congressional district in the United States House of Representatives in 2014, finishing fourth with 13.2% of the vote.[2] She ran for the Democratic nomination for president in 2020, eventually dropping out and endorsing Bernie Sanders.[3][4] She runs in the 2024 Democratic Party presidential primaries, challenging incumbent President Joe Biden.[5] Williamson's presidential platform calls for an end to the war on drugs, a federal minimum wage increase, reparations for racial injustice, addressing climate change, and creating a U.S. Department of Peace. On February 7, 2024, she announced she had suspended her campaign after receiving 2.9% of the vote in the Nevada Democratic primary,[6] but on February 28, 2024, Williamson re-entered the presidential race after placing third in the Michigan Democratic primary, receiving 3% of the vote.[7]
Williamson has been actively involved with charity work, founding such organizations as Center for Living in 1987, Project Angel Food in 1989, and the Peace Alliance in 1998. She sits on the board for RESULTS, a nonprofit group which is dedicated to finding long-term solutions to poverty.
Early life and education[edit]
Williamson was born in Houston, Texas in 1952. She is the youngest of three children of Samuel "Sam" Williamson, a World War II veteran and immigration lawyer, and Sophie Ann Kaplan, a homemaker and community volunteer.[8][9]
Williamson was raised in an upper-middle class family that practiced Conservative Judaism.[8][10] Her family attended Congregation Beth Yeshurun.[11] She learned about world religions and social justice at home and became interested in public advocacy when she saw her rabbi speak against the Vietnam War.[11]
In 1965, after Williamson came home from school in the seventh grade, she recounted to her parents that her teacher supported the Vietnam War. Her father reacted by taking the family to Vietnam to help explain to Marianne why he thought that the war was wrong.[12] She has said that through travel she "had an experience, at a young age, that people are the same everywhere."[13]
Williamson attended Houston ISD's Bellaire High School.[14] After graduating, she spent two years studying theater and philosophy at Pomona College in Claremont, California, where she was a roommate of future film producer Lynda Obst.[9]
In 1973, Williamson dropped out of college and lived "a nomadic existence" during what she calls "her wasted decade".[9][11][15]
Williamson moved to New Mexico, where she took classes at the University of New Mexico and lived in a geodesic dome with her boyfriend.[15][13] The couple broke up a year later. Marianne then moved to Austin, Texas, where she took classes at the University of Texas.[13] After leaving Texas, she went to New York City, intending to pursue a career as a cabaret singer; however, she has stated that she was distracted by "bad boys and good dope".[9][16] Vanity Fair wrote that Williamson "spent her twenties in a growing state of existential despair."[17] In New York, Williamson suffered from deep depression following the end of a relationship.[8] She has said that this experience gave rise to a desire to spend the rest of her life helping people.[17]
A Course in Miracles[edit]
Although initially uninterested due to her Jewish faith, Williamson developed an interest in Helen Schucman's book A Course in Miracles in 1976.[11][18][19] She explored spirituality, metaphysics, and meditation as she began reading the Course "passionately".[16] She also reconciled the Course with her Jewishness; in her view, "A conversion to Christ is not a conversion to Christianity. It is a conversion to a conviction of the heart".[17]
Williamson said the book was her "path out of hell", as she had been "mired in a series of unhappy love affairs, alcohol and drug abuse, a nervous breakdown, and endless sessions with therapists."[20][21][22] The Course has often been described as a religion or pseudoreligion.[23][24] Williamson disagrees, describing it as a "spiritual psychotherapy" instead of a religion.[25]
Political positions[edit]
Abortion rights[edit]
As a candidate for 2024 U.S. President, Williamson has stated her strong support for abortion access, services, and choice.[84] She has spoken in favor of the abortion rights that were guaranteed under the now-overturned 1973 Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade.[85]
Williamson has shared her belief that it is good to expand women's understanding of alternatives; however, eradicating or limiting women's options would not reduce the number of terminations sought. Instead, it would result in wealthier women having access to safe abortions while poorer women face risks to their health.[86]
Black American reparations[edit]
Williamson supports the distribution of $200-$500 billion in reparations for slavery, spread across 20 years for "economic and education projects", to be disbursed based on the recommendation of a selected group of black leaders.[87][88][89]
Climate change and energy[edit]
Williamson deems climate change to be "the greatest moral challenge of our generation." She claimed support for the Green New Deal, immediate re-entry into the Paris Climate Accords, and has stated that she would be willing to support the Trans-Pacific Partnership if it included greater protections for workers and the environment.[90][91][92]
Williamson also supports the U.S. directing subsidies from fossil fuels, including coal, and re-investing them in the development of renewable energy, both in the U.S. and abroad, particularly in developing countries.[90]
Gun control[edit]
Williamson supports gun control, and has described the issue as one personal to her. On November 4, 2018, she gave a keynote address to several hundred Muslim and Jewish women at the Sisterhood of Salaam-Shalom conference in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, eight days after 11 Jewish people were murdered at Pittsburgh's Tree of Life synagogue. A Jewish woman, she argued against fear being used as a political force and advocated for love in its place.[11]
Health care and vaccinations[edit]
Williamson supports universal health care under a "Medicare for All type of plan".[1] Williamson also supports independent regulation of the pharmaceutical industry to prevent what she has called "predatory practices".[93]
A "both-and" approach (both prayer and medicine) to physical and mental health has been attributed to Williamson.[94] Williamson has said, "People who are prayed for get out of the emergency room faster," and "people who have been diagnosed with a life-challenging illness, who attend spiritual support groups, live, on average, twice as long after diagnosis".[8][95][96]
Williamson has stated her support for the necessity and value of vaccinations and antidepressants,[97][98] but has been criticized for her skepticism about the pharmaceutical industry's influence in setting guidelines for how they are administered, citing her belief that their profit motive could result in harm to patients.[99][100][101]
She has also criticized overprescription of antidepressants,[93][102] questioning whether antidepressants play a role in suicide, saying that the prescriptive definition between sadness and clinical depression is "artificial", and having called the process by which clinical depression is diagnosed "a scam".[103][98]
During Williamson's presidential campaign, several excerpts of her past comments have conflated her skepticism of the pharmaceutical industry's trustworthiness with an embrace of anti-vaccination dogma. As a result, she has been accused of being "anti-medicine" and "anti-science". She denies such accusations, saying they "could not be further from the truth."[104] Williamson has expressed frustration that her skepticism of the pharmaceutical industry has been equated with skepticism of the science of vaccines.[93][94][66][97][98][105] She has said, "Skeptical about vaccinations I have not expressed. Skeptical about Big Pharma in general I have expressed. And there is a big difference."[66]
Immigration[edit]
Williamson does not support open borders, but calls for what she describes as a more humane approach to border policy.[106] In June 2019, Williamson criticized then-President Donald Trump on his immigration policies after reports of children being separated from their families and being put in a detainment center; she called these acts "state-sponsored crimes".[107] After Trump's announcement that ICE would begin mass-deportations, she said it is "no different" than what Jewish people faced in Nazi Germany.[108]
Williamson also supports Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and expanding protections and naturalization to undocumented immigrants who were brought to the United States as children, regardless of their current age.[109]
Other domestic issues[edit]
Williamson supports The Equality Act[110] and an increase of the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour,[111] and has called religion a map in which "the route isn't important. It's the destination that matters."[112]
International relations and national security[edit]
Williamson supports the creation of a United States Department of Peace to aid in her proposed redesign, which also includes a plan to establish a Peace Academy modeled after military academies.[113]
Williamson supports military engagement when a NATO ally is threatened, when the United States is under threat of attack, or "when the humanitarian order of the world is at risk".[66]
Williamson supported safe withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Afghanistan as soon as possible and would consider the use of a peace-keeping force, such as the United Nations, to assist with the transition.[90] Williamson has said she supports the U.S. vigorously using its position, i.e., through CFIUS, to prevent China from buying strategically important companies, which she believes will help defend U.S. economic interests and human rights, as in the cases of the Uighurs and residents of Hong Kong.[90] Williamson supports rejoining the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).[90] Williamson criticized the Trump administration for elevating tensions with Iran.[114] Williamson supports a two-state solution to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.[90][1]
Personal life and family[edit]
Williamson's older brother, Peter, became an immigration attorney like his father. Her late sister, Elizabeth "Jane," was a teacher.[9][127] Her father and her maternal grandparents were Russian Jewish immigrants.[13] Her grandfather changed his surname from Vishnevetsky to Williamson after seeing "Alan Williamson Ltd" on a train.[17] Williamson described herself as a "Jewish woman" in a 2022 interview.[10]
She was briefly married in 1979 to a Houston businessman. She said the marriage lasted "for a minute and a half".[8]
In 1990, she gave birth to a daughter.[9][128]
In 2006, a Newsweek poll named her one of the 50 most influential baby boomers.[129]
In 2013, Williamson reported having assets estimated to be valued between $1 million and $5 million (not including personal residences).[45]
