Raised a Swedenborgian: A Personal Testimony
By Kurt Simons | February 18, 2008
My earliest memory of religious experience was atmospheric rather than explicit. It comprised in about equal parts the sphere of the dedicated older women teachers who were, to me, the soul and spirit of the church elementary school I attended, and the experience of the elegant cathedral where our family went to church, with its interplay of stained glass and organ music. Among the seeds planted in those early days, little though my peers and I realized it at the time, was the notion that we were different from and better than other churches, or what would now be termed faith traditions, out there. God and that solemn-looking man with a wig in the picture had given us this huge set of books that were so special that we were not allowed to place anything on top of them. They were also too hard for us to understand; we needed a clergyman to help us, laying groundwork for another pattern that would have ramifications later in life.
My first serious encounter with the explicit side of religious experience was the dreaded religion paper in the final year - 8th grade in those days - of elementary school. Yet again laying groundwork for things to come, the experience of rational reflection stimulated by composing that paper drove home, albeit in only a preliminary way, the idea of religion being primarily a rational experience. This idea was further reinforced by church and chapel experiences as well, all emphasizing that, no matter what your religious question, there was always a rational answer to it available and, by implication, that feelings and faith were second best to that rationality.
On the decidedly non-rational side of things there was, in that final year of elementary school, the other new phenomenon - girls. Most specifically, there were girls involved with that other dreaded ordeal, dancing class. One of my male classmates even attempted to hide under a table to avoid taking part. In retrospect, the angst of those classes seems almost poignant, a light year removed from the raw meat sexuality confronting today’s children. But those classes were nonetheless, in their own small way, significant, again laying groundwork. The groundwork in this case, however, was part of what I believe was the noblest undertaking of that church organization’s existence, the attempt to prepare us for the ideal of true marriage, that greatest joy of human life. The allegiance to this ideal was not lightly held, as demonstrated a half century earlier in a sensational court trial where the church, in what was perhaps its finest hour, had bravely defended that ideal in the face of ugly attack.
And so on to high school, where the explicit side of religion took center stage, as we learned in lawyerlike fashion how to interpret the codes of correspondence and construct thought frameworks able to interpret any moral or spiritual situation. Of great significance, in retrospect, was the strong orientation to the books, i.e. the 30 volumes of Swedenborg’s theological works. Those other books, of the Bible, were typically only mentioned in support of, or to complement, a point made from the theological works. The Source of both sets of books, Jesus Christ, was almost never mentioned at all. Primary allegiance was to “The Word,” or “The Writings,” i.e. to the books, not to a Person. (The logic behind use of the term “The Writings” is difficult to follow since, by definition, everything Swedenborg wrote on any subject is part of his writings.) Furthermore, what mention of Divinity was made was typically de-personalizing, using terms such as the Divine Love and Wisdom, the Divine Providence, the title “the Lord,” and the almost inscrutable abstraction of the “Divine Human,” which I can recall even clergymen saying they didn’t fully understand.
In high school the banner of conjugial love was held high and driven home. At the same time, perhaps predictably since the effects of the Victorian age were still pretty much in place in the 1950’s, the discussions of the subject were circumspect and theoretical. Meaning, to a teenager in the midst of sexual fantasies or pregnancy or promiscuity, that that teaching appeared to fall far short when it was needed most. The end result for many young women, I have since learned, was feelings of worthlessness, despair and an “Oh well, I’m going to hell anyway, it doesn’t matter now what I do, so I might as well have fun” outlook. In other words, the sad and ironic end result of this ideal as here taught was too often to get kids deeper into its opposite.
And then to college. Here I learned for the first time what a potent debate weapon my Swedenborgian ideational structure could be. In those late-night discussions with my dorm mates I found I could take on virtually any ethical or teleology issue and “win.” I thus fell into thinking an echo of what I had heard earlier in life, about our faith tradition being newer and better than the competition’s. It did not occur to me that, in the bigger picture, I lost. I had some subtle warnings, such as the fact that I “won” those discussions didn’t seem to attract anyone to my theology’s ideas. And then there was the girlfriend who told me that I had too many answers. But dominating one’s fellows is heady stuff for the male persuasion in that fiery time of life. Having my own classical DJ show on the college radio station Sunday evenings added to that brew, as did an in-group experience in a student government election campaign that tangled with the college’s administration. This was the ’60’s, after all. It took the caustic commentaries from a sophisticated roommate to begin and, many years later, a very patient wife, to reverse course in this area and, regrettably, I still fall into this trap in too many cases. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
After spending 5 years wandering across the curriculum in college, I finally graduated with a useless degree (”Arts & Letters”), but its limited prospects were bypassed by my being accepted into the Peace Corps for an educational television project in South America. It was one of the most memorable experiences of my life. My peers in El Cuerpo de Paz (in the Spanish of the country we were in training for) felt, under JFK’s magic, that the world’s problems could in fact be solved and we could help. For me what hit home was that this love of the neighbor stuff wasn’t just theology - it really felt great!
I was “unselected” - in plain English, kicked out - from the Peace Corp at the end of training, basically, I think, though I was never told in precise terms, because I was too brash. That superiority demon coming out again. I would have done well to reflect on the implications of that at the time, but was too busy going off to seek my fortune elsewhere in some neighbor-serving use. With the help of a cousin’s boyfriend, I ended up squeaking into a part-time job as a social worker, working with “predelinquent” boys, in a settlement house in the lower east side of New York City. I started thinking about going back to school for my MSW and doing this for real but, a few months later, it became clear that the US Army was interested in me, in a drafty kind of way, so I made an end run and enlisted myself. After which I had the second great experience of my life, basic training. It was a fascinating and exhilarating experience to be part of a disparate group of guys welded into a common use, a unit, our platoon, based on pitching right in - with rough and ready feedback if you didn’t get with the program! There was no issue here of somebody being better than somebody else. If your platoon was going to work and pass its tests, everybody had to get together. You passed as a unit or you didn’t pass. I still recall one overweight guy who just wasn’t making it around the track fast enough to qualify. So while the rest of us cheered and jeered, three guys from the platoon ran with him and all but pushed him around that track. He qualified.
After Basic I had a classic Army experience. I had been sent by my reserve unit to get trained in communications. So, what else, I was sent to the motor pool. If you ever need help changing a jeep oil filter at 2 AM (I was on the late shift), you know where to come.
After the Army my life spaced out. After the intensity, direction and clear purpose of the Peace Corps and Army, nothing in the typical workaday menu open to me seemed very interesting or meaningful. My dad wangled me a job with a company that installed cable TV systems. Though nobody said anything, I knew the guys I worked with resented my being there under those circumstances, and I didn’t see spending the rest of my life threading cable through conduit. It would have been a great opportunity to do some reflection on humility, but I never got further than a case of the blahs. But Jesus took pity on me and caused lightning to strike.
We were down in Delaware working on a new statewide educational TV setup. Their current studio setup was just 3 tractor-trailer trailers. I stopped at the end of one of them one day and fell into conversation with one of the system administrators working there. In what turned out to be a life-changing discussion, he convinced me that educational TV was the career path of choice and offered to help me apply to the program he had gone to at Michigan State. That fall, a few months later, after just squeaking my way in (since my C undergrad average didn’t exactly impress) I hopped in my old VW beetle and pointed north and west to MSU’s grad school. And no, it did not occur to me to thank God for giving me this opportunity. I hadn’t, after all, ever been taught to think of Him as a person you could thank, and it certainly didn’t occur to me spontaneously then.
I paid my way through MSU by writing manuals on pump operation for refinery employees. More significantly, on the social side of things, I ran into a very attractive young lady and one thing led to another. Basically, I pushed her around. A lot. We got engaged, since that was what one did when serious, or so I thought I had been taught. And as long as we had the external niceties, things like consideration, or even love, weren’t that big a deal, right? It sounds pretty harsh to say it like that but when you take the window dressing off, that in fact is how harsh it is - and was.
At this point I was starting to get itchy. Educational TV was interesting, but I started looking for something more fundamental, and fell into a fascination with the design of non-verbal communication, i.e. semiotics, and its possible application to allow educational material to reach a much larger group of people, notably in the Third World, than was possible when that material had to be translated into the myriad languages of this planet. I then ran into a small book by a man at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education that looked like it was pertinent and I decided to apply to work under him to see if I could make my idea go. With some more reading I realized that there were other people there, some of them famous, who also might have useful thoughts on all this. So, with what looks in retrospect like just total brass, I went to visit Harvard and talked to some of them. I don’t think I would have been as courteous as they all were if I had been in their shoes and this whippersnapper had come knocking all unannounced. But go I did. While there, at the critical moment of truth, as it turned out, Jesus reached down and helped me out yet again. When I went to talk to the prof whose book was my original reason for coming, he was out of the country. Only his secretary, or what looked like a secretary, was there. This was where Jesus must have reached down once more since I was, with her, for once in my life, not brash but respectful. I discovered later that she was anything but just a secretary; She was an administrator in the department, with a degree from Harvard herself. Another visitor showed up at the same time on a similar mission to mine (was that timing an accident, or occasion for reflection?). He was not respectful to her and was told goodbye in short order. In my case, she began what turned out to be a momentous process by giving me the phone number of one of their program’s grad students who, she said, could tell me more about the program. ”Tell me more” turned out to be a considerable understatement. The grad student didn’t just tell me about the department but gave me invaluable and patient advice on writing my application. (I spent 2 weeks, 8 hours a day, writing and - with her help - rewriting, and then again rewriting just the personal statement.)
I was accepted, once again just squeaking by, to their program at a Master’s level. Also once again, it never occurred to me to say thank you to the Man Who had arranged this. So, come September, I bid my fiancé good-by and drove that old Beetle, containing all my worldly possessions, 18 straight hours from East Lansing to Cambridge, Mass.
That fall had a dark spot in the midst of all my new challenges. In retrospect, I am sure my fiancé must have long had reservations about our relationship, as well she might, but it did not really come out till I had been gone a while. When she called me up with storm warnings I hopped the next plane and went out there unannounced. I tried to push her around some more in the one time I saw her. Then she simply disappeared, going to stay with a friend, her roommate later told me. I never saw her again, but got in the mail a week later a package with the copy of the Word I had given her and her engagement ring. But no note. I have the impression, after later reflecting on another comment her roommate had made, that she did not have a happy ending, at least at that time. While I see clearly in retrospect that she and I really didn’t fit with each other, it has been a source of lingering regret that I didn’t know, hadn’t been taught, didn’t have any more of a clue about charity in handling this most important subject, of relating properly with women. It was certainly primarily my fault, but things could have been very different if Marriage Love (sometimes titled Conjugial Love) had been shown to me as a practical manual and not just a theory.
My long search for what I wanted to do with my life continued through Harvard, first moving to an EdD program and finally to a PhD program at the regular grad school. To pay the rent, I went through several grad student type jobs until, Shazam!, I ran by accident (or was it?) into a department in the Medical School that did research on kids’ eye problems. I knew, at last, I had come home. Not long after that, I met a winsome young woman at a Swedenborgian church camp and found home for real. I proposed to her at Walden Pond on a lovely fall day and promised her we would never be rich but that she’d never be bored. She’s been a wise and patient partner and blessing through four children and many twists in the road since.
My religious story was far from done, however. I spent a good chunk of time in the next 40 years in writing for or editing Swedenborgian church publications, making me the most published layman in the history of my church a clergyman once told me. My main topic was almost always evangelization. For most of those years I never stopped to think about just what it was that I was trying to sell in that evangelization. Not that there was any lack of clues if I had stopped to look for them, most notably the remarkably tiny number of people that had ever been attracted to the Swedenborgian organizations despite a denominational history two centuries long. But all that came to sudden sharp focus when our son, an ordained Swedenborgian clergyman, resigned not only his pastorate but his church membership. At one of Pastor Rick Warren’s church growth seminars, he had had an epiphany and come to realize that he wasn’t really a part of the “Swedenborgian Church” or the “New Church - he was a part of the Christian church, the church of Jesus Christ, of which the teachings of the Second Coming were only the latest dispensation. He resigned his office and membership when it became clear that the leadership and culture of the church organization he was trying to serve was not supportive of the only way he felt free to teach the full gospel of Jesus Christ.
As you might expect, watching our son go through this transformation was a stunning experience for his mother and me. Here was this idealistic kid we’d raised, who had won every award the church high school had to give and who had looked forward for years to theological school and then to his ministry. To put the icing on the cake we had had the delight of seeing his clerical career start up with what looked like a smashingly successful roar in his first pastorate. Then, in a twinkling, it had all gone to pieces. Was he right? How could I, in all those years, have missed a problem with my church on a scale that would warrant such a dramatic and, apparently, career-ending response? I began to go back and look at the teachings involved from his new perspective. To make a long story short, one question led to another and much of my thinking and assumptions about the organized “New Church”came down like a collapsing house of cards. For those interested, I’ve spelled out some of my thoughts on my websites, most notably at
How Important is a Relationship with Jesus?
Do We Need Church Organizations?
Which Books Of Swedenborg are Divinely Inspired?
Swedenborg and Spiritualism and Spiritism
(You can find some of our son’s thinking online at his Second Advent Christian site.)
I also went back and re-read Marguerite Block’s seminal history of the Swedenborgian/New Church movement, The New Church in the New World (some sections of which are available online). With my newly opened eyes, her account sounded like just more of the same endless theological wrangles and power struggles that have troubled the Christian church since its inception millenia ago. Wouldn’t you expect a church based on the full teachings of Jesus Christ, including those of His Second Coming, to be different, “all thing new” (Revelation 21: 5) and better?
Block’s book was published in 1932. That not much has changed, however, is suggested in a recent talk by Frank Rose, an audio recording of which is available online. (Note the associated handout on the main page.) I also found food for thought here in a recent pungent column on Church Politics in Relevant Magazine.
From my new perspective, I feel like a total dope for not seeing the issue here myself for all those years. Why did I have to raise a son to adulthood and wait for him to complete all his training and experiences, and then tell me about them, before I could see the blatant truth here? It seems so obvious now: I am not “Swedenborgian” - I do not worship Swedenborg or the books he wrote. I worship Jesus Christ. For me this means that I am dedicated to developing a relationship with Jesus as a first priority and, following that, learning the teachings of His Word in all its dispensations, from Genesis to The True Christian Religion (see The Second Advent Christian Canon of Scripture). And, finally, instead of focusing on differences with other faith traditions, particularly with other Christians, I now try to find things we have in common, and build bridges of mutual charity.
“Suppose your assumptions about life are based on truth, such as that love to the Lord and charity towards the neighbour are that on which the whole law hangs and about which all the prophets speak, and so are the essentials of all doctrine and worship. With that assumptionthe mind [is] enlightened by countless things in the Word which would otherwise lie hidden within the obscurity of a false assumption. Indeed [if truth were the basic assumption, heresies would be dispelled and one Church would result from many, no matter how differing the doctrinal teachings and also religious practices might be flowing from that Church or leading into it.
“Such was the ancient Church, which extended through many kingdoms, namely, Assyria, Mesopotamia, Syria, Ethiopia, Arabia, Libya, Egypt, Philistia as far as Tyre and Sidon, and through the land of Canaan on both sides the Jordan. Among these peoples the doctrinal and ritual matters differed, but still the church was one, because to them charity was the essential thing. Then was there the Lord’s kingdom on earth as in the heavens, for such is heaven (see n. 684, 690). If the same situation existed now all would be governed by the Lord as though they were one person; for they would be like the members and organs of one body which, though dissimilar in form and function, still related to one heart on which every single thing, everywhere varied in form, depended. Everyone would then say of another, No matter what form his doctrine and his external worship take, this is my brother; I see that he worships the Lord and is a good man.” (Arcana Coelestia 2385)
Topics: Issues, Theology | 2 Comments »
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