Location: Bryn Athyn, Pennsylvania (optional remote attendance)
Dates: April 23-24, 2022
Schedule: View schedule
Keynote: Jim Lawrence
Registration: Closed (tickets for keynote address available at the door starting at 7:15pm, $10)
This two-day interdisciplinary seminar invites scholars to consider the many prismatic
intersections between Emanuel Swedenborg’s paradigm of spirituality and spiritual
movements, thought, and applications. Swedenborg’s contribution to spirituality has
captured the attention of many important thinkers since his writings first revealed
his contact with the spirit world in the late eighteenth century. The concept of spirituality
he laid out, at once mystical and profoundly pragmatic, continues to have rippling
implications in many fields. Papers will address a variety of topics, including the
following:
- Relationships between spirituality and religion
- Relationships between spirituality and religious traditions
- Mystic, devotional, or spiritual practices
- Interpretive models and practices
- Relationships between psychological models and the spiritual mind
- Swedenborg’s metaphysics and physics
Seminar participants may attend in person or remotely.
Keynote
Those who wish to attend the keynote portion only may do so in person or virtually.
Tickets available at the door starting at 7:15 p.m.
Jim Lawrence, A Daily Spiritual Practice Based on Swedenborg’s Rules of Life
Rev. Dr. Jim Lawrence grew up an every-Sunday kid in a Disciples of Christ church
in Houston. During college he majored in developmental economics for impoverished
countries due to an overwhelming concern for suffering in the world. It was also during
these young adult years that he lost his faith due precisely to the world’s massive
misery index. He concluded the universe is heartless and pointless. That perspective
changed, however, through a spiritual renewal that opened up a new sense for meaning
and purpose. Becoming immersed in the post-Reformation scientist and theologian Emanuel
Swedenborg provided one impetus toward interpreting life as meaningful again. His
vision shifted toward spiritual renewal as the world’s greatest need, so after rapidly
finishing his degree in economics at the University of Texas, he dove into studies
at a Disciples of Christ seminary. The “Swedenborg bug,” however, would not go away,
and so he committed what many of his colleagues felt was professional suicide by jumping
ship to the Swedenborgian seminary in Boston. After graduation and ordination, he
found tremendous satisfaction working during the next 17 years in the congregational
leadership in three church ministries spanning small town, suburban, and urban settings.
During these years he also earned the Doctor of Ministry degree focusing on the performative
practice of writing as a communications ministry strategy. To date he has been author,
editor, contributor, or publisher of more than 150 bound works and author of dozens
of ministry and spirituality articles for the lay public. In 2001 he was called to
return to the academy, complete a Ph.D. degree in Christian Spirituality, and become
Dean of Convention’s theological school, for which he led the effort to relocate to
Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley as the Swedenborgian House of Studies, which
in 2015 became a Center of Distinction at the Graduate Theological Union as the Center
for Swedenborgian Studies, where he is still Dean. He has remained on the faculty
at Pacific School of Religion directing the Doctor of Ministry degree program. He
is currently President-Elect of the Swedenborgian Church of North America.
Schedule
Saturday, April 23, 2021 |
9:00 am |
Session 1 Models of Spirituality
|
- Spirituality, Religion, and Swedenborg | Dan Synnestvedt
- ‘One God’ and the ‘Love of God’: Swedenborg’s influence on Balzac | Saori Osuga
- A Swedenborgian Theology of Social Justice | Shada Sullivan
|
10:30 |
Break |
11:00 |
Session 2 Realms of Spirituality and Science |
- How is quantum physics really connected to consciousness? | Ian Thompson
- Swedenborg’s Prism and Goethe’s Theory of Color | Angela Rose
- Swedenborg, Space Humanities, and Exoplanets | Vincent Roy-Di Piazza
|
12:30pm |
Lunch Break |
1:30 |
Session 3 Concepts of Psychology and Spirituality |
- Learning to Hear Again: James Fowler, Paul Ricoeur, Emanuel Swedenborg, and the Stages
of Faith | Ray Silverman
- Metaphor and Spiritual Meaning | Stephen D. Cole
|
3:00 |
Optional Activities* |
5:00 |
Break |
6:00 |
Catered Dinner* |
7:30-10:00 |
Keynote and Reception |
Sunday, April 24, 2021
|
9:00 am - 10:30 |
Session 4 Swedenborg’s Influence on Thought Movements |
- William Blake and Swedenborg: A Poet-Painter’s Delightful Response to Passages from
Heaven and Hell | Martha Gyllenhaal
- Structuring Samuel Wilderspin’s Infant School Pedagogy 1823-1825: The Dynamics of
Culture and Conformity | Sarah Odhner
- Math and Metaphysics in an Age of War and Deconstruction: Introducing Prof. Dr. C.
H. van Os | Elly Mulder
|
*Available for in-person attendees only