About the New Church

Ten Religious Goals

The main purpose of New Church education is to help students learn, live and love the teachings of the Lord God Jesus Christ as revealed in the Old and New Testaments and the Heavenly Doctrines of the New Jerusalem.

The following are 10 core spiritual topics and related goals to help students bring New Church teachings into their lives.

1. The Lord Jesus Christ
   To assist students in building an ongoing and developmentally appropriate affection and understanding of who the Lord Jesus Christ is in their own lives.

   "[A]n acknowledgment of God produces a conjunction of God with a person and of the person with God."

   Divine Providence 325

2. The Lord's Word
   To foster in students an affection for, a knowledge of, and a belief in, the Lord's Word and an ability to read it with understanding and delight.

   "The Word must be taught mediately through parents, teachers, books and especially through the reading of it. Nevertheless, it is not taught by these, but by the Lord through them."

   Divine Providence 172.6

3. Heaven and Hell
   To foster in students a delight in and a knowledge of the reality of the spiritual world and its divisions.

   "That there is a hell and a heaven, and that the life after death is eternal."

   Arcana Caelestia 5135.3

4. Marriage
   To foster in students an affection for and a knowledge of true marriage.

   "[I]nternal conjunction, which is that of souls and constitutes marriage itself, can be provided on earth...in the case of those who from early youth had loved and desired and asked of the Lord a legitimate and lovely companionship with one."

   Conjugial Love 49

5. Charity
   To foster in students a developing knowledge of how to live a life of charity and morality and to give them opportunities to practice it.

   "These truths, that relate to charity toward the neighbor and to love to the Lord, must be learned before it is possible for a person to be regenerated. They are first implanted through parents and teachers; next from the Word of the Lord: and afterwards through the person's own reflection of them."

   Arcana Caelestia 2831.1

   "Everyone learns from parents and teachers to live morally...and as he grows in years, to add a rational appreciation to these and so to perfect his moral character."

   True Christian Religion 443

6. Worship
   To foster in students an affection for and a knowledge of the important role public and private worship play in their lives.

   "The first commandment is 'You shall worship the Lord your God.'"

   Arcana Caelestia 1798.3

7. Prayer
   To foster in students an understanding and delight in the forms and uses of prayer.

   "[T]hat they ought to pray daily and this with humility."

   Arcana Caelestia 5135: 3

8. The Church
   To foster in students a knowledge of the church and its role in their lives, and an understanding and appreciation for those of the universal church.

   "The Lord's Church is diffused through the whole world, but its inmost is where the Lord is known and acknowledged, and where the Word is."

   Apocalypse Explained 313: 3

9. Spreading the Good News
   To foster in students a desire and an ability to spread the Lord's Word.

   "[F]or what is the use of knowing, unless what is known to one be also known to others?"

   Influx 18

10. Trust in Providence
    To foster in students a sense of their place in the stream of Providence and an awareness of the Lord's continual provision of their needs.

    "Peace has confidence in the Lord in it, that He directs all things, and provides all things and that He leads to a good end."

    Arcana Caelestia 8455

from the 1998 General Church Religion Curriculum