This is the introduction to a book that is yet to be birthed from the folds of my mind and reading notes. I got the idea for it a few months ago on one of my many plane trips around the country and wrote the introduction and a brief purpose/outline, both of which I share with you below.
I had meant to keep this under wraps, afraid of what the response to it might be, until I had developed more of the text. I chose to share the current content with a much-trusted New Church pastor, in order to gauge his response, and he, in turn, became quite smitten with the idea. He encouraged me to post it here for you all to read and consider. So, with that endorsement, I am braving the scrutiny and (hopefully constructive) feedback of the very learned and exacting New Church society at large in hopes of developing ideas and direction for the book.
As you will hopefully be able to see, I’m trying to aim the book at a wider audience than just the New Church while also attempting to help Swedenborgians understand the potential thought processes of other Christians. So the target audience and voice may be a bit varied chapter to chapter, but the theme throughout will be an attempt to “bridge the gap” [in understanding; I won’t be trying to blend all doctrine into one]. Seeing, however, as I will be starting a PhD program in the fall in a subject quite different than New Church doctrine, as interesting as it is, I can’t promise that anything will come to fruition soon. Perhaps your feedback will encourage this project along though! Please enjoy and provide any comments you feel so inclined to contribute. Thanks, -Lauren Dale
I checked a heavy internal sigh from brandishing its blade of boredom on my face and chose a seat next to a new member in the University Choir. Hopefully he might provide a new flavor to the weekend-long singing retreat that I had attended for the past three years. To my delight, he bowed his head and folded his hands together over his burger as I set my own down on the picnic table beside him. I waited patiently for the blessing, muttered my own “Amen,” and wondered if I had found a fellow Christian at this secular school, someone who might not start most conversations with, “oh man, I was wasted last night, it was hilarious.” The new transfer student in the bass section confirmed he was a Christian and, when probed as to what denomination, vaguely replied, “Well that’s a long story, but I’m Protestant, pretty much.” And there it was: the Swedenborgian Asterisk.
The significance of this moment was lost to me at that time as I had no idea the kind of friendship that would develop between this bass and I, or any understanding of what “Protestant, pretty much” meant. Up until then, I had grown up in a world where the second coming of Christ was yet to occur, and if you were a Christian and not Catholic, then you were one of many Protestant denominations that all seemed very different and all looked much the same. The world I was yet unaware of – the world of the cryptic “pretty much” to which my introduction would be delayed by almost two years – was the world of Emanuel Swedenborg and the New Church doctrine.
In a form very appropriate to my black-or-white, all-or-nothing personality, when I was introduced to the New Church faith, I didn’t just receive a polite handshake, I received a huge bear hug of doctrine and a parade of ministers to match. The bass, who had become my best friend and boyfriend very late in our senior year thanks to the Argentine tango, had a theology department for a family. His mother’s father, his father, two of his brothers, and a future brother-in-law who had not yet entered seminary, were all trained ministers. In addition, all three of the married siblings in the family had married children of other New Church pastors, and half of the other people my bass knew, it seemed, were – or had been – ministers, including his farming-town barber.
If I looked back along the branches of my own family lineage, I had one minister (that I knew of) to my name: a Thomas K. Anderson of Texas. He was my father’s paternal grandfather and a Methodist. I’m not sure which of my traits, undoubtedly endowed by the sheer grace of God, prevented me from immediately hitting the “Eject” button on this inundation of new doctrine. My bass claims it was a heaven’s worth of patience. More likely, it was a scientist’s inquisitiveness and a near-masochistic love of outliers. No matter what the reason, I found myself on a journey that would test my convictions as a nominal Christian torn between nurture and nature (training in earth science, to be exact), as a daughter torn between childhood and intellectual independence, and as an individual torn between faith and belief (a distinction I will elucidate later).
About a year after my immersion in New Church thought, I was sitting around the Easter Sunday dinner table with the Smith’s (the theology department-family) and the topic of my current New Church perceptions was breached. I welcomed the opportunity to muse over the past year of my experiences and did my best to answer them with a fair and honest assessment of my thought-progression. The honest answer was by no means a short one, however, and a truly fair response would require an extensive comparison of the Christian convictions that had been nurtured in me since birth and those that the Lord was potentially planting in my mind and heart. This was the point I tried to convey over the salmon, unleavened bread, and honey that afternoon.
One observation I let go unspoken, for the sake of time and courtesy, was a persistent awareness of “us” and “the others” within the New Church congregation. I wish to do no injustice in representing the people of New Church faith because all of those whom I have met are some of the kindest and most enjoyable people I’ve encountered in my early 20’s life-experience. I did find, however, the society to be small enough and isolated enough to have become victim to a very singular sense of Christianity. Be it what it may, an outsider’s inaccurate perception or a chronic subconscious New Church characteristic, the manifestation of such often created a barrier in understanding and communication. I have termed this behavior the “Swedenborgian Asterisk” to represent how it seems to modify the user’s belief or religion, and therefore the people with which they might connect.
In the case of my bass, when surrounded by a secular group of atheists, agnostics, or believers of indeterminate faith, the Swedenborgian Asterisk exhibited as an almost apologetic modifier on the title of “Christian.” Among a community of New Church members, it became an immediate question of “do you know the Lord?” if one didn’t attach a Swedenborgian Asterisk to their faith. I found this disconnect between New Church Christian believers and non-New Church Christian believers insulting to my own convictions at worst, but mostly unfortunate due to its hindrance of common fellowship in the Lord. I was bemused by the asterisk and intrigued to discover the cause of this “us-and-them” mentality in an otherwise very welcoming congregation of people. What was this Swedenborgian Asterisk on the name of their faith? What could they possibly believe or be hiding that prevented a more general, mutual understanding between followers of Christ? The answers that I would find to these questions were indeed shocking, but not so much so to me as the reaction I would have to them in the end. And that is my story: the tale of the drag-in, if you will, that I impart to you now.
In this recount of my own experiences exploring the world of the New Church, I hope to introduce a wider audience to the Swedish renaissance man, the scientist, and the seer, Emanuel Swedenborg. In doing so, I also wish to enlighten the Christians of a Swedenborgian Asterisk-persuasion (i.e., members of the New Church) of an outsider’s perception of their religion in order to facilitate more frequent and productive conversations between non-intersecting believers in the Lord Jesus Christ. Beyond the research required for the content of this book and the wonderful discourses I have undertaken with the Smith family theology department, I claim no expertise or exceptional knowledge of the New Church or any other Christian doctrine.
My purpose here is to create a vehicle for dialogue that can be employed by the reader to explore one’s own perceptions and convictions; a dialogue that, optimally, will be shared with others. If this book does nothing more than leave the reader with one lasting impression, then I hope that message will be that exploring one’s religion and faith with the same probing inquisitiveness and passion as a scientist’s critical mind is a powerful and valuable road to faith and love. It is the very road, in fact, that Emanuel Swedenborg himself traveled.