What is Swedenborgianism?

Swedenborg—who died in London in 1772–never established a separatist church organization himself, and over the centuries many have felt his vision of an unfolding “new church” or “new Christianity” was something deeper, wider, and more profound than simply another variation of Protestant denominationalism. Nevertheless, in the years following his death, in the very English city where he died, the first Swedenborgian church was registered as a dissenting tradition in 1787, and counted the great Romantic poet and painter William Blake among its early members. The U.S. church was organized in 1817 with the founding of the General Convention of the New Church, also known as the Swedenborgian Church of North America, and expanded in the nineteenth century through the work of missionaries such as Johnny Appleseed. Since then, the Church has grown, with spiritual communities across North America.

The Swedenborgian Church of North America, with which the Center for Swedenborgian Studies is affiliated, is but one of three Swedenborgian church traditions in North America that take their cue from the Swedish seer and the original church in England (the other two are known as the “General Church of the New Jerusalem” and the “Lord’s New Church which is Nova Heirosolyma”). These traditions vary widely in both how they interpret Swedenborg’s writings as well as their according different stances on issues such as LGBTQ rights and gender equality. The Swedenborgian Church of North America ordained their first female minister in 1975, and their first openly gay minister in 1997, proudly showing its commitment to social transformation through efforts towards equality and justice. There are other Swedenborgian or New Church movements in other parts of the world, and centers of theological education can be found in England, Australia, and South Africa.

In spite of this denominational diversity, the Swedenborgian churches have never been very numerically large—at least in contrast to some of their Protestant dissenting kin, such as the Methodists and the Baptists—and Swedenborg’s works have arguably made a broader impact within the more diffuse realm of culture and alternative spiritualities than as a separatist sect. His writings about the spiritual worlds that we inhabit before and after death very significantly shaped nineteenth century Spiritualism and later related New Religious Movements, such as Theosophy; his alternative models of mind-body relationships also profoundly marked a number of alternative spiritual healing currents, from the so-called “New Thought” Movement to homeopathy, to even early radical vegetarianism: the Bible Christian Church, established in 1809 by Rev. William Cowherd, regarded by many as the forerunner of modern Vegetarian and Vegan movements in the west, was explicitly based on ideas drawn from Swedenborg.

In thought and culture, Swedenborg’s concepts of a constant spiritual influx, or “flow”, into the natural world, as well as his idea of correspondences—that everything in nature could function as a kind of sacred language, allowing us access to spiritual truths through the perception of natural beauty—have remained important sources of inspiration for a number of poets, writers, and artists. Swedenborg was central, essential for earlier Transcendentalist philosophers like Ralph Waldo Emerson, and continued to influence twenty and twenty-first figures ranging from the poet Jose Luis Borges, to the Nobel Prize Japanese novelist Kenzaburo Oe. Beyond the work of William Blake, Swedenborg’s aesthetic legacy can be found in the landscape paintings of George Inness and William Keith; the visionary canvases of Hilma af Klint (perhaps the first modern abstract artist); the sculptures of Hiram Powers and Carl Milles; as well as in the late films of Ingmar Bergman. To name but a few.

These various cultural, philosophical, and artistic inflections demonstrate the vitality and ongoing significance of Swedenborg’s ideas for the twenty-first century, and the Center for Swedenborgian Studies (CSS) at the Graduate Theological Union (GTU) in Berkeley, California, continues to serve as an academic hub which brings and braids these different strands of Swedenborgian thought together: from the spaces of the church, to the realm of world thought and culture, to the interreligious pluralism that lies at the heart of the GTU.