New Church Perspective is 1 Year Old

A year ago, on January 1st, an online magazine called New Church Perspective (www.newchurchperspective.com) launched. The goal was to publish a new essay every Friday and now, 52 Fridays later, 52 essays have been published, by 36 different authors.

If you want to get a sense for the range of topics covered, I'd recommend looking at the digest posts that take 10 essays at a time and provide short blurbs about each of them. Here are the digests for essays 1-10, 11-20, 21-30, 31-40, and 41-52.

Towards the end of the year New Church Perspective expanded beyond just publishing weekly essays. On October 15th the editors announced the launch of a podcast called ChapmanCast and a column called Meditate. Here are the blurbs about each of these:

ChapmanCast – A New Church podcast about religion and life, featuring discussions and interviews. New episodes publish weekly on Wednesdays and last for about 15-20 minutes. The ChapmanCast is hosted by Pearse Frazier and guests. (Subscribe in iTunes)

Meditate – Meditating on the Word is a powerful way to expand your spiritual life and deepen your awareness of the Lord in your daily living. This column is updated weekly with passages I have chosen to meditate on and the insights that have resulted. I invite you also to meditate on the Word and share your insights with the readers of New Church Perspective.... What is here is shared with humility and I hope it may be a blessing to you. Chelsea Odhner, Editor

You can subscribe to any or all of these features for free by email or using a feed reader.

As Brian Smith, the Editor-in-Chief, puts it, New Church Perspective is intended to be “A Collaborative Adventure for the Sharing and Spreading of the Lord's Wisdom and Love” and there are lots of ways to get involved. One of the best ways is to submit an essay. The requirements are not too demanding (even very short articles are welcome) and the process can be pretty rewarding. Here's an excerpt from an invitation to write from Brian:

I'm writing to you now to invite you to commit to writing one (or more essays) in 2011. Writing is not always easy, but I believe it is always a valuable process. There is a value to the type of thought-leadership which trained priests can offer to spiritual communities. But there is also tremendous value in the musings, questions, conclusions, research and reflections which people from all walks of life come to in their efforts to understand God and live a heavenly life.

...

We only have three guidelines: be respectful of sacred scripture and the Writings of Emanuel Swedenborg, address spirituality/religion in some way and avoid commenting on individuals and current, specific decisions in the denominational organizations of the New Church.

Even if writing is not for you at this point, please share this invitation with anyone who you think may be interested by the opportunity. We are not looking for orthodoxy so much as we are looking for the heartfelt.

I hope that that whets your appetite to write, read, listen or otherwise participate in some form.

P.S. If you check back on Friday, you'll be able to read an essay that I wrote.

Something New Church for Earth Day

Tomorrow is Earth Day. In celebration of that I wanted to point you to an article recently published on New Church Perspective on an Earth Day related topic—land ethic. In 6 parts Edmund Brown outlines what a land ethic is and various arguments for it, concluding with some New Church arguments. Here are links to the 6 parts: Introduction; Instrumental Arguments; Utilitarian Arguments; Intrinsic Value Arguments; Theological Arguments; New Church Arguments.

It's lengthy but very interesting. Edmund has evidently given careful thought to a topic that I haven't really put much thought into and I'm grateful to have his research and conclusions to draw on. If you're short on time, you could just jump to the section on New Church Arguments for a land ethic but, if you have the time, read the other sections because they give useful context and a brief history of the debate and help you understand what he's referring to in the New Church arguments section.

Here's a bit from his introduction to get you started:

Faced with the huge, daunting ecological challenges our technological society has created, what is an appropriate Christian response? More specifically, do the Writings of Emanuel Swedenborg justify developing an intimate relationship with the land that supports us a la “The Land Ethic” so eloquently envisioned by Aldo Leopold

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If you haven't heard of New Church Perspective you could read my post about New Church Perspective.

New Church Perspective on Clothing

I wrote an article titled "Clothing" for New Church Perspective about, you guessed it, New Church perspective on clothing.

If you haven't heard of New Church Perspective you might want to read my post about it.

A New Online New Church Magazine

I've been really meaning to tell you all about New Church Perspective (www.newchurchperspective.com) and now I'm finally getting around to it. It's a really exciting, New Church online magazine project.

Here's a bit from the About page:

New Church Perspective is an online magazine celebrating the understanding and application of New Church ideas with weekly essay publication.

More than a discussion forum, New Church Perspective is based on essays from a wide variety of writers on a wide variety of topics. However, this is a two-way conversation. Discussion and response to the weekly essays are warmly encouraged. We ask only that people are respectful of each other, the Bible, and the theological writings of Emanuel Swedenborg referred to as the Heavenly Doctrines.

(For more about the idea behind New Church Perspective I recommend reading the launch day post from Brian Smith, the Editor-in-Chief.)

Every Friday morning a new essay is published with some perspective on the New Church or New Church perspective on some topic. It was launched on January 1st and so far 10 essays have been published. I'm now going to list them and give a summary of what they're about to give you the flavor of New Church Perspective so far.

• "4 Reasons Most New Year's Resolutions and Other Habit Changes Fail and What You Can Do to Succeed" by Derrick Lumsden - The title pretty much says it. I particularly recommend the "Further Reading" at the end.
• "Growing Up in The Park: Reflections on My Sub-Culture" by Freya Henry - Using the theories of various developmental psychologists, Freya analyzes her development growing up in a New Church congregation.
• "Even as We are One" by Isaac Synnestvedt - This is my favorite article so far. If you only have the time to read one article, make this one it. It is an impassioned and humbling exploration of who is part of the New Church and an exhortation to try to see the Lord in all people.
• "Meaning-making and the Power of Writing" by Chelsea Rose Odhner - This is a chapter from Chelsea's undergraduate thesis and so it incorporates a number of scholarly sources. But don't let the word scholarly make you think it's boring; it's a fascinating, well written, careful exploration of the act of writing.
• "Are You Happy?" by Ronald Schnarr - Ronnie looks at what can keep us from being happy and encourages us to ask the Lord for real happiness.
• "Spiritual Body Image" by Pearse and Taryn Frazier - This article looks at the spiritual meaning of being human.
• "Buddhism and the New Church" by Ian Chapman - Ian's article is a short and interesting comparison of a couple of Buddhist teachings with New Church teachings.
• "Marketing the Writings" by Coleman Glenn - In this article Coleman imagines what could happen if someone launched a huge, year-long marketing campaign for the Writings.
• "Protecting Ideals and the Reality of the World in which We Live" by Stephanie King - In this heartfelt article Stephanie expresses both her strong ideals and her desire to understand and love people who don't. She raises a lot of good questions with no easy answers.
• "We, Distinct from Our Teachings" by Derek Rose - In this article Derek encourages us to think carefully about what we mean when talk about the New Church—the teachings, the organization, or the culture?

Hopefully this makes you want to read some of these articles and subscribe to receive updates every Friday and, most importantly, inspires you to submit an article yourself.