New Church, The

Emmanuel Swedenborg had spoken of a "New Church" that would be founded on the theology in his works, but he himself had never tried to establish an organization.

At the time of his death, few efforts had been made to establish an organized church, but on May 7, 1787, fifteen years after Swedenborg's death, the New Church movement is founded in England, a country that Swedenborg had often visited and where he died.

A number of New Churches had sprung up around England by 1789, and the first General Conference of the New Church had been held in Great Eastcheap, London, in April of that year.

New Church ideas are carried to United States by missionaries.

One famous missionary will be John Chapman, known as Johnny Appleseed.

Early missionaries of the New Church will also travel to parts of Africa.

Swedenborg himself believed that the "African race" was "in greater enlightenment than others on this earth, since they are such that they think more "interiorly", and so receive truths and acknowledge them." (A Treatise concerning the Last Judgment, n. 118)

At the time these concepts of African enlightenment are judged highly liberal; Swedenborgians had accepted freed African converts to their homes as early as 1790.

Several of them are also involved in abolitionism.

Johnny Appleseed meets Abraham Lincoln on April 3, 1840, and plants apple trees in New York City.

There are stories of Johnny Appleseed practicing his nurseryman craft in the area of Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, and of picking seeds from the pomace at Potomac cider mills in the late 1790s.

Another story has Chapman living in Pittsburgh on Grant's Hill in 1794 at the time of the Whiskey Rebellion.

The popular image is of Johnny Appleseed spreading apple seeds randomly everywhere he went.

In fact, he planted nurseries rather than orchards, built fences around them to protect them from livestock, left the nurseries in the care of a neighbor who sold trees on shares, and returned every year or two to tend the nursery.

He planted his first nursery on the bank of Brokenstraw Creek, south of Warren, Pennsylvania.

Next, he seems to have moved to Venango County, along the shore of French Creek, but many of these nurseries were in the Mohican area of north-central Ohio.

This area includes the towns of Mansfield, Lisbon, Lucas, Perrysville, and Loudonville.

According to Harper's New Monthly Magazine, toward the end of his career he was present when an itinerant missionary was exhorting an open-air congregation in Mansfield, Ohio.

The sermon was long and severe on the topic of extravagance, because the pioneers were buying such indulgences as calico and imported tea.

"Where now is there a man who, like the primitive Christians, is traveling to heaven barefooted and clad in coarse raiment?" the preacher repeatedly asked until Johnny Appleseed, his endurance worn out, walked up to the preacher, put his bare foot on the stump that had served as a podium, and said, "Here's your primitive Christian!"

The flummoxed sermonizer dismissed the congregation.

He would tell stories to children and spread The New Church gospel to the adults, receiving a floor to sleep on for the night, and sometimes supper, in return.

He preached the gospel as he traveled, and during his travels he converted many Native Americans, whom he admired.

The natives regard him as someone who has been touched by the Great Spirit, and even hostile tribes leave him strictly alone.

He cares very deeply about animals, including insects.

The historian Henry Howe, who had visited all the counties in Ohio in 1838 and 1839, has collected several stories of Johnny Appleseed from the 1830s.

In a story collected by Eric Braun, he had a pet wolf that had started following him after he healed its injured leg.

More controversially, he also planted dogfennel during his travels, believing that it was a useful medicinal herb.

It is now regarded as a noxious, invasive weed.

According to another story, he heard that a horse was to be put down, so he bought the horse, bought a few grassy acres nearby, and turned it out to recover.

When it did, he gave the horse to someone needy, exacting a promise to treat it humanely.

During his later life, he is a vegetarian.

He will never marry.

He thinks he will find his soulmate in heaven if she does not appear to him on earth.