Introduction to the Center

The Center for Swedenborgian Studies has been a graduate school for religious training and scholarship since 1866 and today functions as a think-tank for Swedenborgian studies globally and also as the official seminary of the Swedenborgian Church of North America. Providing courses and programs supporting academic, vocational, and personal growth journeys for students who want to or are required to take Swedenborgian Studies, the Center’s offerings are multidisciplinary with strengths in theology, Bible and its interpretation, history of ideas, spiritual formation, literature, art and architecture, eighteenth-century studies, nineteenth-century studies, New Religious Movements, Western esotericism, and mysticism studies.

After continuously operating as a graduate school program for religious training and scholarship across 150 years in four successive locations in Boston and recently Berkeley and known variously as the New Church Theological School, the Swedenborg School of Religion, and the Swedenborgian House of Studies, the school became the Center for Swedenborgian Studies as an affiliate center of the GTU on July 1, 2015.

The mission of the Center for Swedenborgian Studies is

• to prepare qualified individuals for ministry in the Swedenborgian Church and world
• to serve as a center on the leading edge of Swedenborgian scholarship
• to share its resources of scholarship, leadership, and people with the wider church and community