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| Swedenborgians | |
|---|---|
| Name | Swedenborgians |
| Founder | Emanuel Swedenborg |
| Founded | 18th century |
| Theology | Christianity-based New Church (Swedenborgian) thought |
| Scripture | Arcana Cœlestia, Heaven and Hell (Swedenborg), Divine Love and Wisdom |
Swedenborgians are adherents of a religious movement originating in the writings of Emanuel Swedenborg that developed into organized communities such as the New Church (Swedenborgian), influencing religious, philosophical, and artistic circles across Europe, North America, and beyond. The movement produced distinct denominational bodies, theological writings, and cultural networks that intersected with figures from the Enlightenment, the Romanticism of the 19th century, and modern religious pluralism. Swedenborgian ideas circulated among intellectuals, clergy, and artists, prompting institutional foundations, missionary activity, and literary engagement.
The movement traces to the revelations and publications of Emanuel Swedenborg in the early 18th century in Stockholm and London, whose mystical visions were recorded in works such as Arcana Cœlestia and Heaven and Hell (Swedenborg). Early dissemination occurred through printers, patrons, and correspondents across Sweden, England, Germany, and The Netherlands, leading to societies and reading circles in Paris, Boston, and Philadelphia. In the 19th century, organizational consolidation produced institutions like the New Church (Swedenborgian) in England and the General Convention of the New Jerusalem in the United States in Philadelphia, fostering missionary efforts, theological schools, and publishing houses. Encounters with movements such as Unitarianism, Transcendentalism, and Spiritualism shaped both collaboration and rivalry in contexts like Boston and Cambridge. The movement’s history also intersects with legal and cultural episodes involving print censorship, charitable foundations, and debates in parliaments and municipal councils in cities like Stockholm and London.
Swedenborgian doctrine centers on Swedenborg’s interpretation of Christianity through correspondential exegesis, asserting a spiritual sense of scripture in works such as Arcana Cœlestia and Divine Providence (Swedenborg). Key theological claims include a particular anthropology and soteriology articulated in Heaven and Hell (Swedenborg), an understanding of the afterlife with gradations of heaven and hell, and a metaphysical framework linking the natural world to a spiritual world as developed in The New Jerusalem and Its Heavenly Doctrine. Swedenborgians engaged with theological debates involving figures and movements like John Calvin, Martin Luther, John Wesley, Charles Wesley, Joseph Priestley, and Immanuel Kant, arguing distinctives about Trinity doctrine and the nature of divine revelation. Theological education and debates occurred in seminaries, lectures, and periodicals alongside interactions with theologians from Oxford University, Yale University, Harvard University, and Uppsala University.
Liturgical life in Swedenborgian congregations drew on elements of Protestant worship while emphasizing Swedenborg’s sacramental interpretation, hymns, and preaching informed by texts such as Heaven and Hell (Swedenborg) and Doctrine of Sacred Scripture. Congregational rituals, Sunday services, and pastoral care in churches from Stockholm to Boston incorporate readings, sermons, and music shaped by hymnwriters like John Wesley-era influences and local composers. Practices extended to educational programs, Sunday schools, charitable outreach, and publishing ventures associated with institutions such as the Swedenborg Society (London), the General Church of the New Jerusalem (General Church), and local parishes in cities like New York City, Philadelphia, and San Francisco. Devotional life often included small-group study, spiritual counseling, and funerary rites referencing Swedenborgian anthropology and eschatology.
Organizationally the movement diversified into bodies including the General Church of the New Jerusalem, the General Convention of the New Church, the Swedenborg Society (London), and independent societies and trusts in countries such as Sweden, England, United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Denominational differences involved governance, liturgical form, and the role of Swedenborg’s literal versus spiritual exegesis, with seminaries, publishing houses, and missionary boards in locales like Manchester, London, Boston, and Chicago. Institutional life linked to cultural venues and universities including Oxford University, Cambridge University, Harvard University, and Yale University through lectures, archives, and academic studies. Administrative developments featured conferences, ecumenical dialogues with bodies such as Unitarians and Anglicans, and legal incorporation within municipal and national frameworks in capitals like Stockholm and Washington, D.C..
Swedenborgian thought influenced a range of cultural and intellectual figures, with known readers and admirers including William Blake, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry James Sr., Nathaniel Hawthorne, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lord Byron, John Keats, Thomas Carlyle, Mary Shelley, Herman Melville, Edgar Allan Poe, Friedrich Schleiermacher, August Wilhelm Schlegel, Friedrich von Hardenberg (Novalis), Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Robert Browning, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, William Wordsworth, John Ruskin, James Clerk Maxwell, Anders Celsius, Carl Linnaeus, Alexander Graham Bell, Gustave Doré, Édouard Manet, Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Igor Stravinsky, Franz Liszt, Felix Mendelssohn, Johannes Brahms, Gustav Mahler, Anton Bruckner, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Edward Elgar, Anton Chekhov, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Leo Tolstoy, Max Müller, Ernest Renan, Alfred North Whitehead, William James, Bertrand Russell, Karl Popper, Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, Simone Weil, Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr, Marie Curie, Émile Durkheim, Herbert Spencer, John Stuart Mill, Alexis de Tocqueville, Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas, Gustave Flaubert, Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, George Bernard Shaw, T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, W.B. Yeats—manifesting in literature, art, science, and religious scholarship. Reception included admiration, critique, parody, and scholarly analysis across journals, newspapers, and academic presses in London, Paris, Berlin, Moscow, New York City, and Boston.
Central figure: Emanuel Swedenborg, author of major works including Arcana Cœlestia, Heaven and Hell (Swedenborg), Divine Love and Wisdom, Divine Providence (Swedenborg), and The New Jerusalem and Its Heavenly Doctrine. Important institutional leaders and writers include founders and ministers associated with the General Convention of the New Church, the General Church of the New Jerusalem, the Swedenborg Society (London), and scholars at Harvard University, Yale University, Oxford University, Cambridge University, Uppsala University, Lund University, University of Copenhagen, and University of Edinburgh. Literary carriers and interpreters encompassed William Blake, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry James Sr., George Eliot, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Wordsworth, and Mary Shelley, while modern academic studies have been produced by scholars connected to institutions such as Harvard Divinity School, Yale Divinity School, University of Chicago, Princeton University, Columbia University, King's College London, University College London, Stockholm University, and Uppsala University.
Category:Christian denominations