By Rev. Sage Cole
When the nudge to make space for a new form of new church life first began to land in me back in 2018, it was Helen Keller’s image that quickly came to mind, in part, of course, because she’s amazing, but also because she is a she. Sitting in Cambridge amidst dusty volumes penned by men, in a building built by men, in a church designed by men, Helen was like a gentle breeze of possibility. Somehow, this deaf-blind woman, just by being her full, vivacious, curious, loving, self, had been a powerful vessel for the emergence of the new church. She gave me confidence that perhaps I could do the same.
It has become clear in 2026 that honoring the voice, the experience, the wisdom of women is desperately needed if our world is going to come back into alignment. The history of patriarchal control of this planet, once accepted, for a time tolerated, has now become an open wound that cannot be ignored. People of all genders are learning to heal from this history, to root out the patriarchal conditioning that has left us alienated from ourselves and each other. We are coming to remember our true shared identity as beloved children of God, and this remembering is causing us to challenge and question many of the long-standing structures designed with inequality in mind.
I feel honored to be able to lift up Helen as the first contribution to the Social Justice Committee’s new column, “Justice is the New Jerusalem.” She perhaps, more than any other devotee of Swedenborg, saw this to be true. Helen understood the invitation of the new church to be an invitation to an entirely new way to live together on this planet. She is known as the woman with the radical social vision. A radical social vision of equality, of peace, of mutual care and inclusion, of heaven on earth. She understood this to be not only possible, but inevitable, a new heaven and a new earth that was on its way.
My confidence in the final triumph of idealism over materialism does not spring from closing my mental eyes to the suffering of the evil-doing of men, but rather from a steadfast belief that good will climbs upward in human nature while the meanness and hatred drop into their native nothingness, and life goes on with unabated vigor to its new earth and heaven.
—Helen Keller, “My Luminous Universe,” 1956.
The new church that Helen was devoted to bringing into being, and that we are charged with making space for, is a community of mutual heavenly love, of equality, and of spiritual freedom. The structures of the Swedenborgian denomination also carry vestiges of patriarchal control that must be named and transformed. While we have been changing, thanks to the legacy of those women who have broken barriers into ordination and leadership, there is still more change to come. We, too, must allow ourselves to be remade, to be regenerated, to become not just an institution built by men that allows women, but an organization remade with equality and a respect for the feminine at its core. While much progress has been made since Helen’s time, there is still so much to do. May we carry the same trust and confidence in heaven’s invitation that Helen did, and not be disheartened by the work ahead. May we trust that the new heaven and new earth are descending, and this is but the work before us.
To continue this conversation, please join us for a special live virtual event: “Gender Equity & the New Jerusalem: A Be Honest Conversation,” Tuesday, March 24, 2026, at 7:00PM ET, co-sponsored by the Helen Keller Spiritual Life Collaborative and Deborah’s Tree, featuring Dr. Page Morahan. More information can be found at www.helenkellercollaborative.org.
Read the full issue of the March Messenger.
Meet Sage Cole
Rev. Sage Cole is the visionary founder of the Helen Keller Spiritual Life Collaborative. She publishes the Substack Worship Is life and produces the Be Love Podcast. Sage lives in Boston, MA with her husband Ted, sons Zachary and Theo, cat Miso, and dog Princess.
