The New Church (Swedenborgianism)

Denomination·Founded 1787 CE·The organised New Church has never been large — the two North American bodies together count in the thousands, with additional congregations in Britain, Ghana, South Africa, Korea and Japan; growth is African rather than Western. No consolidated figure is published. Swedenborg's readership has always vastly exceeded the church's membership, which is the movement's standing peculiarity.

Judaism → Christianity → Catholicism → Protestantism → The New Church (Swedenborgianism)

The General Church of the New JerusalemThe Swedenborg Foundation

Branch
Overview Belief 3How to Live 1Practice 1Stories & Scripture 1Community 1 You × The New Church (Swedenborgianism) Discussion
Precept of The New Church (Swedenborgianism)

Charity is doing your job well.

The doctrine of use holds that the life of religion is to do good, that good means genuine usefulness to others, and that the primary form of it is the honest, skilled performance of one's ordinary occupation. Almsgiving is a small part of charity and can be a substitute for it.

Add to My Beliefs →
What it asksShun evils as sins against God, and do your work well — charity is competent useful work, not almsgiving
Who it bindsAnyone who accepts the doctrine; there is no vow
Where it bitesDaily, in ordinary occupation — the doctrine of use makes the job the arena
Understanding it — context, not catechism: how this passage is held

The doctrine of use is the New Church's ethic and its most portable idea. Charity, on Swedenborg's account, is not primarily giving to the poor; it is the sincere, just and faithful performance of the work of one's office and employment, because that is how a person is actually useful to the community and therefore how heaven operates through them. He calls the life of charity a life of uses, and holds that heaven itself is organised by function — every angel has a use, and the societies of heaven correspond to organs of a single Grand Man. The moral instruction that follows is unusually concrete: shun evils as sins because they are sins, then work well, and regeneration happens in that order and slowly. It has made New Church people historically prominent in education, craft and manufacture out of proportion to their numbers.

The same ground, other faiths

claims that share this one's ideas
The alms round. Buddhism · rite Go deeper →
Repairing the world is human work. Judaism · core tenet Go deeper →
The tithe. Christianity Go deeper →
The neighbour. Islam Go deeper →
Work honestly, and share what you earn. Sikhism · core tenet Go deeper →
Soup, soap and salvation — in that order, and the order is the doctrine. The Salvation Army · core tenet Go deeper →

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