By Rev. Dr. Jim Lawrence
Ecclesiastes 3 is not silent about the need sometimes to speak, and this is such a time. Over a year ago, I sent a presidential pastoral letter in an email blast on “The Current Political Tempest” with the subhead, “Swedenborg Argued against Authoritarianism in Government and In Favor of Justice and Compassion for Others” (http://tiny.cc/kk5y001). Within a half-hour, four people resigned from the denomination. They thought I should be silent on politics. Many others, though, shared appreciation that such a message could be aired. They valued that the church spoke up.
When researching where our church really was at on the slavery question in antebellum America for my essay “A World Apart: The American Antislavery Issue” published in The Moment Is Now: Carl Bernhard Wadström’s Revolutionary Voice on Human Trafficking and the Abolition of the African Slave Trade (2019, Swedenborg Foundation), I discovered that The Messenger had stayed silent on the slavery question before the Civil War broke out and continued to stay silent for more than a year after the war was engulfing the still young nation.
I found a letter by Rev. Chauncey Giles (Cincinnati) to Rev. J.R. Hibbard (Chicago) dated April 10, 1862, in which he writes: “I do not think a journal of the Church should be so strictly ecclesiastical or abstractly spiritual that it cannot notice current events. On the contrary, it seems to me to be one of its special duties. I would have it comment on events and books in the light of spiritual truth… the Messenger has kept itself almost criminally aloof from a word of sympathy or any expression of interest in this terrible crisis of our national life. I think it ought to have done all it could to sustain the members of the Church in this trying hour. Spiritual things are clothed with the natural in this world. I have no belief that teaching truth begins and ends with the generality of shunning evils and doing good. What evils shall we shun, and what good shall we do? Here are themes for discourses and illustration in endless variety. I must do good to the neighbor, but the country is more the neighbor than the individual, and cannot I express a word of sympathy for her when she is in the clutches of demons and is struggling for her very existence?”
Our national government controversy has continued to deepen and, in my opinion, has worsened from a year ago. I want everyone reading this to know that we do have two formal groups in our church that meet monthly where we do try to integrate spiritual perspectives and teachings with contemporary social issues and affairs: the Social Justice Committee (SJC) and Swedenborgians in Action Against Racism (SAAR) both meet monthly on Zoom. Rev. Shada Sullivan has been publishing a tri-weekly email blast for SAAR. If you would like to be on the email list for either the SJC or SAAR or the email blast, please write to our Central Office at manager@swedenborg.org or PO Box 380270, Cambridge, MA 02238.
—Rev. Dr. Jim Lawrence
Read the full issue of the January/February Messenger.
Meet Jim Lawrence
Rev. Dr. Jim Lawrence is the president of the Swedenborgian Church of North America. He was the dean of the Center for Swedenborgian Studies for 21 years prior to being elected President in 2022.
