Lord's New Church Which Is Nova Hierosolyma
| The Lord's New Church Which Is Nova Hierosolyma | |
|---|---|
| Classification | New Christian |
| Orientation | Swedenborgian |
| Polity | Episcopal |
| Founder | Former members of the General Church of the New Jerusalem |
| Origin | 1937 Bryn Athyn, Pennsylvania, U.S. and The Hague, The Netherlands |
| Branched from | General Church of the New Jerusalem |
| Congregations | Ministries or societies in the United States (Bryn Athyn, Pennsylvania), Lesotho, South Africa, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Ukraine |
| Members | Approximately 1,000, worldwide |
| Official website | http://www.thelordsnewchurch.com |
The Lord's New Church Which Is Nova Hierosolyma, usually referred to as the Lord's New Church, is an international, Christian church based on the Old Testament, the New Testament, and the theological writings of Emanuel Swedenborg, which its members view as the Third Testament.
It was founded in 1937 by former members of the General Church of the New Jerusalem, also a Swedenborgian church, after a doctrinal dispute led to the ousting of Rev. Ernst Pfeiffer of the The Hague Society, a branch of the General Church located in the Netherlands.
Headquartered in Bryn Athyn, Pennsylvania, U.S., the Church maintains an international congregation, with ministries or societies in Africa, Europe, and the United States, and has a total membership of approximately 1,000.
The Church was founded in 1937, under the principal leadership of Rev. Theodore Pitcairn (son of PPG Industries founder John Pitcairn) and the Rev. Ernst Pfeiffer of The Hague Society in the Netherlands, by former members of the General Church of the New Jerusalem who had left as a result of a doctrinal dispute.
The dispute in question centered on theological ideas proposed by a Dutch layman, H. D. G. Groeneveld, in De Hemelsche Leer (The Celestial Doctrine), a Dutch periodical started by Pfeiffer in 1929. Emanuel Swedenborg, whose writings compose the distinctive body of material used by the General Church, had proposed the idea that the Bible had, in addition to its intended material meaning, a spiritual meaning that had been revealed through the communications between Swedenborg and the angelic realm. The General Church placed paramount authority on the writings of Swedenborg, but Groeneveld went beyond this; he proposed that Swedenborg's theological writings themselves were nothing less than a Third Testament, and thus, according to Swedenborg's ideas, must also have an inner, spiritual meaning.
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