Historic church opens to public this month

AMANA — A neat, white church, half hidden by trees, sits on a hilltop four miles south of Norway, Iowa or two miles north and three miles west of Amana on the corner of 110th Street and T Avenue.

It is a monument to one of Iowa’s little known religious faiths and to an early day religious communal society that thrived briefly in the early 1850s.

The church is on the National Register of Historic Places. Its doctrines are based on the teachings of the Swedish theologian Emanuel Swedenborg. The communal society was the Jasper Society, founded by German Swedenborgian settlers in 1850.

Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772) was a Swedish nobleman who had a distinguished career as a scientist and inventor before he turned his attention to theology when he was 56.

He wrote volumes on theological subjects until his death in London at the age of 84. He never founded a church or preached a sermon. His writings were revealed to him by God.

A number of German families who had become receivers of the Swedenborg doctrines immigrated to the United States in the late 1840s, coming by sailboat (a voyage that took about three months) to New Orleans and up the Mississippi to St. Louis. They dreamed of utopia and were lured by the rich farmland of Iowa “Paradise on Earth.”

The trip from St. Louis to Muscatine was made by boat, and from there to Iowa City by oxen drawn carts or wagons.

They walked to a point where Willow Creek entered Price Creek, a tributary of the Iowa River. There they selected the site in Iowa County because it is near a spring of good water and close to timber which could be used for building and fuel.

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Communal society

Ten families set to work and erected five house, each to be occupied by two families. These pioneers landed in August, so they planted turnips. They ate frozen turnips, rabbit, squirrel and deer the first winter.

They built a community hall where meals were to be served and services were held. The new settlement was named the Jasper community, a name taken from Revelations 21:19: “And the foundation was jasper; the second, sapphire; the third, a chalcedony; the fourth, an emerald.”

This settlement was built before the Amana Society members came to Iowa.

By 1852, the community owned 1,000 acres of land in Iowa County in Lenox Township and in bordering areas and seemed headed toward prosperity.

However, the members had been too accustomed to the system of individual enterprise to be completely happy. The next year, communism was voted out and the property divided on the basis of the original contributions of the families.

The log community building was retained for a church. When the Excelsior school was built in 1859, the services were held there.

It was not until 1880 that the present church edifice was erected at the cost of $1,500. Each member of the congregation helped in building the new church.

During the 1870s and 1880s, the colony was at the height of its activity. Then gradually, interest and membership declined.

Since 1904, there has been no resident pastor. A minister does come at various times to hold special services. These services always bring a big attendance. Homecoming Sunday is the fourth Sunday of August. People bring covered dishes for a picnic on church grounds following the service.

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Many of the founders of the Lenox Society and their descendants are buried in the Lenox Cemetery across the road from the church.

And so draws to a close the story of a pioneer Iowa German church of a denomination founded by an Englishman and based on the doctrines of a Swedish theologian who wrote in Latin.

On Sunday, Aug. 17 at 2 p.m. at the Lenox Township Church of New Jerusalem a presentation will be given and the tour by Ellen McVey about the history of the New Jerusalem Church. Drinks and snacks will be served.

(Reprinted by permission from the Iowa County Historical Society.)