History
History of the Library in Chicago
In Chicago, members of the Swedenborg Library included architect and city planner Daniel H. Burnham, initiator of the first Parliament of the World's Religions Charles Bonney, lyricist George F. Root, and Chicago History Museum founding board member Jonathan Scammon, whose son Jonathan founded a law firm with Robert Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln's son, that lasted into the 2000s. Joseph Sears, founder of the Chicago suburb of Kenilworth, was also a Swedenborgian.
At right, the monument to Emanuel Swedenborg in Lincoln Park (at Diversey) in Chicago.
To view Dr. Kristen Schafffer's lecture, "The Plan of Chicago as a Map of Heaven: Daniel Burnham's Swedenborgianism," which she delivered at the ACS 5 Symposium: Urbanism, Spirituality, and Well-Being in June 2013, click on this link to YouTube, where it is found: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7rcK0S7HZvw.
Dr. Schaffer is the Associate Professor of Architecture at North Carolina State University.
Dr. Schaffer is the Associate Professor of Architecture at North Carolina State University.
The Swedenborg window in the Kenilworth Union Church.
Swedenborgian Joseph Sears founded Kenilworth, IL, after selling his Chicago wholesale business.
Other notable Americans who read and wrote about Swedenborg include Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry James Sr., and his sons William and Henry, John Chapman (Johnny Appleseed), Helen Keller, and artist George Innes.
Ralph Waldo Emerson included a chapter on Swedenborg in his book, Representative Men, titled "Swedenborg: The Mystic."
Helen Keller, deaf, mute, and blind from the age of two, was comforted by Swedenborg’s statement that disabilities do not continue into the next life; she wrote about her faith in her autobiography, My Religion.
Author Henry James and the father of Pragmatism, William James, were raised on Swedenborg theology by their father, Henry Sr.; artist George Innes was inspired by Swedenborg and sought to paint the spiritual in nature; in England, Elizabeth Barrett Browning and William Blake are among those whose works show familiarity with Swedenborgian concepts.