Famous Swedenborgians
Notable, Influential, Celebrity Adherents of Swedenborgianism
and members of the New Church

• Emanuel Swedenborg - founder of Swedenborgianism and the New Church
• Johnny Appleseed - American folk hero; tree planter; Swedenborgian missionary
• Robert Frost - influential American poet; received four Pulitzer Prizes
• Helen Keller - deaf and blind American author, activist and lecturer; subject of movie Miracle Worker (wrote Light in my Darkness which advocated Swedenborgianism)
• William Blake - influential British artist, poet and writer
• George Inness - famous American painter
• Stephen Gyllenhaal - film director whose credits include: Exit 10 (1979); Certain Fury (1985); Waterland (1992); A Dangerous Woman (1993); Losing Isaiah (1995); Homegrown (1998); father of actors Maggie Gyllenhaal and Jake Gyllenhaal
• Anders Leonard Gyllenhaal - Swedish-American journalist (member of the Swedenborgian New Church)
• Leonard Gyllenhaal - entomologist and early leading Swedenborgian
• Bill Wilson - founder of Alcoholics Anonymous
• Robert Carter III - American Founding Father; plantation owner who released more than 500 slaves after he became a Swedenborgian in 1787 (after his wife died)
• Henry James Sr. - theologian and lecturer; devout Swedenborgian; father of philosopher William James and novelist Henry James
• Daniel Burnham - influential American architect and urban planner
• William Page - prominent American painter and portrait artist
• Coventry Patmore - British poet and critic
• Solomon Keal - solo piano artist and composer from Pennsylvania; New Age music or NeoClassical
• Lucius Lyon (1800-1851) - surveyor, politician and statesman from Michigan; Democrat; U.S. senator (1935-1839)
• John Hyde - Swedenborgian minister and prominent anti-Mormon/anti-Semitic polemical writer

Other people influenced by Swedenborgianism, Swedenborg's writing and/or the New Church include: Carl Jung (psychoanalyst and founder of Jungianism), Honore de Balzac (influential French novelist), Henry Ward Beecher (Congregationalist clergyman and religious reformer), Elizabeth Browning (British poet) and Robert Browning (British poet, playwright), Thomas Carlyle (Scottish essayist and historian), Samuel Taylor Coleridge (English poet, essayist and philosopher; author of the poem "Kubla Khan"), Ralph Waldo Emerson (essayist, founder of Transcendentalism), Fitz Hugh Ludlow (author, journalist, explorer), Walt Whitman (American poet, essayist).

Swedenborgian Politicians

- Ebenezer Mattoon Chamberlain (1805-1861) - of Indiana. Born in Orrington, Penobscot County, Maine, August 20, 1805. Democrat. Member of Indiana state house of representatives, 1835-38; member of Indiana state senate, 1839-42; district judge in Indiana, 1843-52; Presidential Elector for Indiana, 1848; candidate for delegate to Indiana state constitutional convention, 1850; U.S. Representative from Indiana 10th District, 1853-55. Swedenborgian. Died in Goshen, Elkhart County, Ind., March 14, 1861. Interment at Oak Ridge Cemetery, Goshen, Ind.

- William Rainey Marshall (1825-1896) - also known as William R. Marshall - of St. Croix Falls, Polk County, Wis.; St. Anthony, Hennepin County, Minn.; St. Paul, Ramsey County, Minn. Born near Columbia, Boone County, Mo., October 17, 1825. Member of Wisconsin state assembly, 1848; member of Minnesota territorial House of Representatives 5th District, 1849-50; general in the Union Army during the Civil War; Governor of Minnesota, 1866-70; member of Minnesota railroad and warehouse commission, 1874, 1876; appointed 1874, 1876. Swedenborgian. Succeeded in removing the word "white" (race) from the Minnesota state constitution. Died in Pasadena, Los Angeles County, Calif., January 8, 1896. Interment at Oakland Cemetery, St. Paul, Minn. Marshall counties in Minn. and S.Dak. are named for him.

- Malcolm E. Nichols (1876-1951) - of Boston, Suffolk County, Mass. Born in Portland, Cumberland County, Maine, May 8, 1876. Son of Edwin T. Nichols and Helen J. G. (Pingree) Nichols; married, December 16, 1915, to Edith M. Williams (died 1925). Newspaper reporter; lawyer; member of Massachusetts state house of representatives, 1907-09; member of Massachusetts state senate, 1914, 1917-19; mayor of Boston, Mass., 1926-29; defeated, 1933, 1937, 1941. Swedenborgian. English ancestry. Member, Freemasons; Shriners; Elks. Died, of a heart attack, in Jamaica Plain, Boston, Suffolk County, Mass., February 7, 1951. Burial location unknown.

- Charles Rittenhouse Pendleton (b. 1850) - of Georgia. Born in Effingham County, Ga., June 26, 1850. Great-grandnephew by marriage of John Adam Treutlen. Newspaper editor; member of Georgia state legislature, 1882-83. Swedenborgian. Burial location unknown.

- Arthur Sewall (1835-1900) - of Bath, Sagadahoc County, Maine. Born in Bath, Sagadahoc County, Maine, November 25, 1835. Father of Harold Marsh Sewall. Democrat. Shipbuilder; delegate to Democratic National Convention from Maine, 1876; member of Democratic National Committee from Maine, 1888-96; candidate for Vice President of the United States, 1896. Swedenborgian. Died in Small Point, Sagadahoc County, Maine, September 5, 1900. Interment at Oak Grove Cemetery, Bath, Maine.