Lord's New Church Which Is Nova Hierosolyma

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. 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 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 1,500. 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. In the United States, Pitcairn emerged as an early proponent of Groeneveld's perspective. In 1927, he wrote a short book entitled The Book Sealed with Seven Seals to introduce the idea to the American church. In the 1930s, first the leadership of the General Church, and later, its Council of the Clergy, rejected the leading theses propounded in De Hemelsche Leer. Rev. Pfeiffer, whose Hague Society supported the periodical, was thus ordered to stop publication. When he refused, he was forced, in 1937, to leave the General Church by its leading Bishop, the Rev. George de Charms. This led other leading adherents of the theses, including Pitcairn, to resign that year as well. That same year, Pitcairn, Pfeiffer, and others proceeded to establish the Lord's New Church Which Is Nova Hierosolyma, centered in Bryn Athyn, Pennsylvania, and The Hague, The Netherlands. Hierosolyma is a Hellenized pronunciation of a Hebrew word for Jerusalem. In 1939, Rev. Pitcairn established a non-profit corporation for the purposes of promoting and maintaining the new church. The events of the Second World War delayed formalization of the new Church's organization. Finally, in March 1947, the Church's international governmental structure was drawn up by a provisional international council composed of the laymen Groeneveld and Anton Zelling, and the Revs. Pfeiffer, Pitcairn, and Philip N. Odhner, and approved by Church members in America and Holland later that year.