186 Happy Birthday New Church History Fun Facts!

Today marks the one year anniversary of the launch of New Church History Fun Facts, a project of NewChurchHistory.org. The “fun facts” have appeared every ten days (on average) since August 23, 2006. An index appears online here, or you can read a complete list of past “fun facts” at the bottom of this page.

We would like to take this opportunity to thank our subscribers for their support over the past year. Some of their comments appear below. Your feedback is very important to us. Please hit reply to this message or write us at info@newchurchhistory.org and tell us what you think about New Church History Fun Facts or how we can improve!

We would also like to thank the Paul Carpenter Fellowship Fund, Academy of the New Church, which recently awarded NewChurchHistory.org a grant that will allow us to continue publishing the “fun facts” and adding new articles, books, and photo albums to the site. Continue reading » » » »

182 The Importance of Hebrew in the Early Academy and General Church

“Bishop Pendleton had been requested to open the Theta Alpha meeting [at the 1910 Assembly] with a religious service as nearly as possible to what it had been fifteen years ago, when we made much of the Hebrew. He had been very much surprised to see how well they remembered the Commandments in the Hebrew. They were repeated by a large number of ladies without any halting or error. He was still more surprised to see in the singing of the Hebrew anthem how well they remembered, the affection with which they sang, and the great volume of the singing. He had never heard the like before” (New Church Life 1910, 508; emphasis added).

From the earliest days of the Academy of the New Church there has been ongoing discussion about the importance of the Hebrew language to the New Church and its place in the curriculum of New Church schools. Continue reading » » » »