“We believe that people of other faiths are all trying to do the same kind of thing, and become the same kinds of people,” she says.

Prominent Harvard affiliates who were involved with the Swedenborgian church include psychologist William James, philosopher Henry James, Sr., University President James Bryant Conant ’13, and Langford Warren, the father of the Design School.

Many turn-of-the-century Harvard philosophers attended the church or wrote about Swedenborgian beliefs, but few considered themselves full-fledged members of the church.

“The men talked about Swedenborgianism [but they] went to church because the women dragged them there,” says Taylor.

The religion found a home in Cambridge when the chapel at 50 Quincy Street was completed in 1901, just in time for Hellen Keller, a Swedenborgian of the class of 1904, to worship there.

These days, the chapel serves as common grounds for multi-ethnic, interfaith groups Cambridge groups, ranging from Alcholics Anonymous to the Peace Corps, as well as the services of two congregations from very different denominations—Anglican and Russian Pentecostal.

One Sunday, the Tibetan Association of Boston was dancing in the basement while the local choral group Orianna Consort was singing upstairs, according to Buteux.

“I came here and met a three-year-old Tibetan girl,” she says. “I asked her if she was a dancer, and she led me upstairs to the choir rehearsal and told me she wanted to be a choral singer…[It was] a perfect snapshot of all these different cultures and faiths and modes of expression meeting.”

—Staff writer Michael A. Mohammed can be reached at mohammed@fas.harvard.edu.