I’ll be dealing mostly with the history of the Transcendental movement and its influence on the Unitarian Church.
Are you a Transcendentalist and don’t know it?
Transcendentalism? This is 2015. Why are we discussing Transcendentalism, a 19th Century movement within the Unitarian church? The Rev. John Buehrens, who served as intern in our Unitarian Church in Summit, New Jersey, said: It matters how we understand our past, even as we try to shape a more vibrant future for our faith.
For years, I have grappled to find an even modest understanding of “Transcendentalism.” It has defied me any simplistic definition. Understanding the seemingly otherworldly concept of Transcendentalism is a challenge best met by mulling over a quote from the Unitarian minister Theodore Parker, 1810-1860.
The books [or ideas] that help you most are those which make you think the most. The hardest way of learning is that of easy reading; but a great book [idea] that comes from a great thinker is a ship of thought, deep freighted with truth and beauty.
Thus begins our voyage into the realm of Transcendentalism.
Philosophically, Transcendentalism is defined as surpassing experience but not human knowledge. Theologically, it means supernatural, mystical, or relating to a spiritual or nonphysical realm: “the transcendental importance of each person’s soul”.
Transcendentalism is, actually, a very formal word that describes a very simple idea. We have knowledge about ourselves – and the world around us that “transcends” or goes beyond what we can see, hear, taste, touch or feel.
This knowledge comes through intuition and imagination – not through logic or the senses. People can trust themselves to be their own authority on what is right. A Transcendentalist is a person who accepts these ideas – not as religious beliefs – but as a way of understanding life relationships.
Transcendentalism was not so much a formal movement as it was a cluster of ideas in European and American social and intellectual revolution.
In 1781, Immanuel Kant’s complex ideas and insights were published in Critique of Pure Reason. Western philosophy was greatly influenced over the subsequent decades by what became known as Kantian or Transcendental Idealism. His doctrine maintains that human experience of things is similar to the way they appear to us — implying a fundamentally subject-based component, rather than being an activity that directly comprehends the things as they are in themselves.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Thomas Carlyle were the two most important contemporary influences on Ralph Waldo Emerson’s intellectual development as were Madame de Stael, Frederic Henry Hedge, Margaret Fuller and scientists and British romantics who exerted a degree of inspiration. These were the primary channels through which the outpouring of literature and philosophy streaming from Germany flowed into the mind of Emerson.
Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote about the “self-reliant soul”. Henry David Thoreau’s “different drummer” led to modern ideas about individualism and democracy.
Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass introduced the “free verse” style of poetry, reflecting the individualistic tone of Transcendentalism.
As the nineteenth century came to its mid-point, the Transcendentalists’ dissatisfaction with society became focused on policies and actions of the United States government: the treatment of the Native Americans, the war with Mexico, and, above all, the continuing and expanding practice of slavery.
Social reformers, for example – Theodore Parker, were calling for the remaking of society: the abolition of slavery, equal rights for women, freedom of religious thought and practice, educational reform. Nineteenth century Parker was a powerful, reforming Unitarian preacher who rejected the authority of the Bible and of Jesus. His words and quotations, which he made popular, would later inspire speeches by Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King, Jr. A political theorist, Parker defined democracy as “government of all the people, by all the people, for all the people” – words that inspired Abraham Lincoln.
We might heed those words today! Parker had more influence than anyone except Ralph Waldo Emerson in shaping Transcendentalism in America.
We don’t fully appreciate how much the radical, revolutionary thinking of Transcendentalism contributed to reforms and ways of thinking that are still with us today – and which had an important role in the history of the Unitarian Church.
Although the ideas of the Transcendentalists were being formed in the early 1830s, it was the publication of the essay “Nature,” by Emerson that proved to be the catalyst for the movement. The Transcendentalist Club in Cambridge, Massachusetts, opened in 1836. Among the Transcendentalists were: Ralph Waldo Emerson; Margaret Fuller, an early ardent advocate of women’s rights; a foremost Unitarian preacher William Ellery Channing, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry David Thoreau, educational activist Bronson Alcott (Louisa May’s father) and Emily Dickinson.
Emily Dickinson expressed a profound, but impish, reaction to formal religion when she wrote:
Some keep the Sabbath going to Church —
I keep it, staying at Home —
With a Bobolink for a Chorister —
And an Orchard, for a Dome —
Some keep the Sabbath in Surplice – (surplis)
I just wear my Wings —
And instead of tolling the Bell for Church,
Our little Sexton — sings.
God preaches, a noted Clergyman —
And the sermon is never long,
So instead of getting to Heaven, at least —
I’m going, all along.
Transcendentalism dominated the thinking of the American Renaissance, the period before the Civil War when new literary and philosophical forms flourished, and resonated through American life well into our contemporary era. In one way or another our most creative minds were drawn into its thrall, attracted not only to its real-world messages of confident self-identity, spiritual progress and social justice, but also by its aesthetics, which celebrated, in landscape and mindscape, the immense grandeur of the American soul. The basic tenets are: that the spark of divinity lies within each of us; that everything in the world is a microcosm of existence; that the individual soul is identical to the world soul, or Over-Soul, as Emerson called it. This belief in the Inner Light led to an emphasis on the authority of the Self—to Walt Whitman’s “I”, to the Emersonian doctrine of Self-Reliance, to Thoreau’s civil disobedience, and even to the unsuccessful Utopian communities at Brook Farm and Fruitlands. By meditation, by communing with nature through work and art, one could transcend her/his dimmed senses—reach a heightened state of intuition—and attain a true understanding of beauty and goodness and truth.
As a group, the Transcendentalists led the celebration of the American experiment as one of individualism and self-reliance. They took progressive stands on women’s rights, abolition, reform, and education. They criticized government, organized religion, laws, social institutions, and creeping industrialization. They created an American “state of mind” in which imagination was better than reason, creativity was better than theory, and action was better than contemplation. They had faith that all would be well because human beings could transcend limits and reach astonishing heights.
… Action is better than contemplation!
The answer to my quest to understand Transcendentalism was within me all along. I’ve nurtured Transcendentalist beliefs and didn’t know it.
How about you???
Notes:
- The congregational reading was from “The Over Soul” by Ralph Waldo Emerson, #531 in the Unitarian Hymnal.
- The lay leader, Peter Thexton, read from Emily Dickinson:
“Hope is the Thing with Feathers”
By Emily Dickinson
“Hope” is the thing with feathers –
That perches in the soul
And sings the tune without the words
And never stops at all.
And sweetest in the Gale is heard
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm.
I’ve heard it in the chillest land
And on the strangest Sea
Yet – never – in Extremity
It asked a crumb – of me.