The 98-year old Swedenborg Chapel on the corner of Quincy and Kirkland streets has been for sale for years, but in the last month a $3 million offer from a Somerville developer has thrown its future into doubt.

Since that offer, a variety of initiatives aimed at stopping the developer--and his plans for an 11-story apartment building on the site--have complicated the proposed sale.

Harvard has tentatively entered the fray--the University "did not oppose" a petition to have the building's facade legally protected as a historical landmark. The University is also considering the possible purchase of the site.

The developer will only buy the site if he is allowed to build an 11-story building. If community pressure makes that plan impossible--through a proposed change in the zoning code--he will pull out

The one thing that remains certain, however, is that the church building will be sold.

That makes the two most prominent would-be buyers the church's own 50-person congregation and Harvard. The congregation has the will, but perhaps not the money; and Harvard has the money, but perhaps not the motivation to buy a plot of land that in all likelihood it could not develop.

The chapel is owned by the Swedenborg School of Religion, a Newton-based seminary teaching the doctrines of a Christian sect. The congregation using the chapel is called the Church of the New Jerusalem.

Congregation leaders have hinted in the past that the school is in debt and is seeking to sell the chapel in order to put itself back in the black.

However, congregation leaders say, the school is not supposed to sell the church, provided that the congregation is still viable--which they claim they are.