Hillside Community Church (Swedenborgian) in El Cerrito, CA

A spiritual community open to all—join us in worship and  celebration

Pastor Douglas Moss

Home - Who Are We?

“All people who live good lives, no matter what their religion, have a place in Heaven.”

Emanuel Swedenborg

 

Based on the Bible as illuminated by the writings of the 18th century philosopher, scientist, inventor and theologian Emanuel Swedenborg, the Hillside Community Church is first and foremost a community church.  All are welcome to join us in worship; our beliefs embrace everyone, just as God's love embraces everyone. As Christians, we do turn for guidance to our Holy Bible. On a literal level, the Word tells an old. and still surprising story, but our church looks for a deeper, spiritual story as well – the letter and the spirit, an outer and an inner meaning.  Emanuel Swedenborg compared this to the soul inside the body.  To reveal this inner, spiritual meaning, we believe, is to have the Lord come to us again… in the Spirit.

 

Swedenborg's ideas were espoused by American Transcendentalist thinkers (Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry James Sr., Bronson Alcott) and English Romanticists (William Blake, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Thomas Carlyle). American folk hero Johnny Appleseed was a follower of Swedenborg. In the 20th century, Helen Keller, D.T. Suzuki, Jorge Luis Borges and William Butler Yeats are among dozens of significant minds who have drawn explicitly upon Swedenborg's religious insights.

 

We are associated with the Swedenborgian House of Studies at Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley and our sister church, the Swedenborgian Church of San Francisco.

 

What distinguishes the Swedenborgian faith from other Christian traditions?