New Christian
New Christian (Spanish: cristiano nuevo; Portuguese: cristão-novo; Catalan: cristià nou) was a law-effective and social category developed from the 15th century onwards, and used in what is today Spain and Portugal as well as their New World colonies, to refer to Sephardic Jews and Muslim Moors who had converted to Roman Catholicism, often by force or coercion. It was developed and employed after the successful reconquest of the Iberian Peninsula by the Catholic Monarchs.
By law, the category of New Christian included not only recent converts, but also all their known baptized descendants with any fraction or quantum of New Christian blood up to the fourth generation, and then in Phillip II's reign it included any person with any fraction of New Christian blood "from time immemorial".
In Portugal, it was only in 1772 that Marquis of Pombal finally decreed an end to the legal distinction between New Christians and Old Christians.
New Christian as a legal category
Although the category of New Christian is theologically meaningless in Christian doctrine, since all Christians are equal before God, it was nevertheless introduced by the Iberian so-called Old Christians of pure unmixed Spanish European bloodlines.
The New Church
The New Church (or Swedenborgianism) is the name for several historically related Christian denominations that developed as a new religious movement, informed by the writings of Swedish scientist and theologian Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772). Swedenborg claimed to have received a new revelation from Jesus Christ through continuous Heavenly visions which he experienced over a period of at least twenty-five years. In his writings, he predicted that God would replace the traditional Christian Church, establishing a 'New Church', which would worship God in one person: Jesus Christ. The New Church doctrine is that each person must actively cooperate in repentance, reformation, and regeneration of one's life. The movement was founded on the belief that God explained the spiritual meaning of the Scriptures to Swedenborg as a means of revealing the truth of the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. Swedenborg claimed divine inspiration for his writings and followers believe that Swedenborg witnessed the Last Judgment in the spiritual world, along with the inauguration of the New Church.
