CHURCH OF THE NEW JERU SALEM, a body of Christians founded on the writings of Emanuel Swedenborg (q.v.), and often called Swedenborg was a public officer of Sweden who became in tensely interested in religious matters and, re tiring from office in 1747, devoted himself thereafter till his death in 1772, in London, to receiving and writing his revelations, as they are called. From his voluminous works are drawn the system of religion held by the New Church, his followers believing that he was a °divinely illuminated seer and revelator.* He never preached a sermon and no societies were formed until after his death. Public services were first held in 1788, in Londoh, and the first church of the order in America was organized in Baltimore, in 1792. The name is taken from the Revelation of John, who beheld the °New Jerusalem coming down from God out of heaven.°The doctrines are set forth in Swe denborg's books and briefly formulated in a creed in the 'New Book of Worship.' A dis tinctive idea is that material things have cor respondences in the spiritual world, and that the word of God has an outward and also an inward or spiritual meaning. His views of the Trinity do not contemplate three persons, but distinctions in essence and existence, in love, wisdom, power. Jesus is directly worshipped as God,. in whom is the Father, the Son _and the Holy Ghost. Christ is creator and redeemer, the word and the revelation. The Father is the divine inmost, the divine love; the Holy Ghost is the divine proceeding in and for man. Thais the New Church reverses the usual trinitarian view of approach to God through Christ. As to Christ's second coming, Swedenborg held that it occurred when the interior meaning of the Scriptures was revealed to himself in 1757, and that universal judgment accompanied this advent in which the religious beliefs of man kind were overturned and recast. In other words, the New Church means a new dispensa tion following the apostolic as the apostolic fol lowed the Jewish, and embraces all who ac knowledge these three essentials: (1) The di vinity of our Lord; (2) the holiness of the Word; (3) the life of love; and unite with the New Church. The ritual is similar to that of
the Anglican Church, except that it is all ad dressed to Christ as God, and not through Christ to another of the Trinity. Two sacra ments are observed, baptism, through which angelic association is formed, and the Lord's Supper, in which the Lord is not present ma terially but really in the divine good and truth, which are his body and blood.
Societies of the New Church exist in Eng land and many other foreign countries. There are two divisions of the body in the United. States, one known as the General Convention, the other as the General Church.
1. The General Convention of the Jerusalem in the United States was organized in 1817 and is composed of delegates from State and Territorial associations. The conven tion meets annually. There are general pastors who preside at the meetings, and ordained pas tors and ministers. Local churches and asso ciations have power to conduct their own af fairs; the polity is a modified episcopacy.
2. The General Church of the New Jerusa lem originated in the Academy of the New Church which was formed in 1876 for a stricter adherence to Swedenborg's revelations and for the development of the religious and social life of the Church. Twelve principles were enun ciated, among which was the declaration that the government of the Church belongs to the priesthood of three degrees, the highest of which is bishop. The General Association of Pennsylvania supported the Academy and, find ing itself out of with the General Con vention, organized anew in 1897 as the General Church of the New Jerusalem and elected a bishop. The General Church had in 1916 1,272 members, 22 churches and 38 ministers. Its publishing house is at Bryn Athyn, Pa. The General Convention had in the same year 8,500 members, 128 churches and 102 ministers. Its publishing house is at 3 West 39th street, New York. Consult Swedenborg's works; Dole's 'New Church— What? How? Why?' (New York 1906).