Intro to the New Church Doctrines Journal #1
CONTENT WARNING: The religious/spiritual opinions on this blog post are mine based on my own experiences and do not reflect the opinions and experiences of everyone. Commentaries published on my First Former Buddy Club President influencer page represent diverse viewpoints. If you would like to submit a commentary, please contact me for more information. All perspectives and experiences are welcome here.
In my first trimester at Bryn Athyn College, I was required to take a religion course along with eventually some other religion courses since it is a religious school. Bryn Athyn practices the New Church religion of Swedenborg so the required religion course that I took this trimester was Intro to the New Church Doctrines. For the class, one of the required assignments was to write daily journals based on readings from "You Can Believe!: An Introduction to the New Christianity" written by Grant Schnarr (The author was actually my professor for the class! He is a minister in the church!) and we students had to apply what we read to our lives. So, since some of the content mentioned in this short essay that I wrote is related to the content that I post on my disability advocacy influencer page, I have decided to upload it is a blog post. Here is Journal #1.
Prompt: "'As I look behind me...what I see about my past spiritual life.' Write a journal entry about your spiritual or religious path, or your experience with religion over the years. It may be that you grew up in a church or have had no exposure to religion. What was that like?".
My culture has had a major influence on my education. I was raised in the Catholic religion since birth by my parents and I made the religious sacraments of Baptism, Holy Communion, and Confirmation. From first to third grade, I was also enrolled in a Catholic school and after third grade, my parents enrolled me in a public school at the Lower Moreland School District. At that time, my parents had enrolled me in our church's Confraternity of Christian Doctrine (CCD) program, which is Catholic education program for students from first to eighth grade enrolled in public schools. When I went to public school, I met many people of different religions. Through attending Lower Moreland High School, I had the opportunity to meet other people in the New Church religion. I have a lot of connections to the Bryn Athyn community so I have had some exposure to what their religion is like and that is how I have gained an interest in learning more about this religion. The New Church religion community appears to live by the quote from the bible, "Love your neighbor as yourself - Mark 12:31." This is how I see the people in this religion through my experiences of volunteering in the Bryn Athyn community and being around them. I have observed that there is a strong sense of community and kindness in the New Church religion. I also participate in a lot of community service starting althroughout high school to present and the Bryn Athyn community is about service. Through meeting the people from the New Church religion at Lower Moreland, I was asked to become a volunteer for Horizons, which is a social support group for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities who are part of the Bryn Athyn community. All of these character traits represent true Christian behavior.
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