A Look at Transcendentalism

Rev. Amy Russell - 2008-08-10

“Our Faith comes in moments…” So said Emerson, speaking of moments of direct unmediated experience in which the human soul feels its place inextricably in the universe. Emerson, as one of the founders of the “transcendentalist” school of thought believed that one’s religious nature was an inherent part of our self and did not rely on institutions of religion or doctrines created by humans to understand that faith. At a time when Unitarianism was a brand new faith, the thinkers talking about transcendentalism were bringing a whole new view of liberal thought into a religion just founded on the idea of one God. But this new thought emphasized not just one God, but the unity of all. This new idea was that God or the sacred was a part of everything and was therefore not far away and removed from humanity but an inherent part of each person.

This was a radical new idea when you consider the time. Many of the Puritans who founded the faith, out of which Unitarianism came, were Calvinists. Calvinists believed in the preordained selection of certain individuals to be saved by God, and the inevitable decline of all others. Calvinism emphasized the sin of humanity; not the sacredness of humanity. The Transcendentalists in emphasizing that humans have within them a religious impulse placed there by God emphasized that humans were therefore all equal in goodness.

This doesn’t sound very radical to us, does it? What does it remind you of? Well, I think immediately of our very first principle – the inherent worth and dignity of each person. When you think about it, while this principle is the “humanist” version of transcendentalism, it nonetheless, embodies the original principle that Emerson spoke of – as he put it – “There is one mind common to all individual men.” He said that all humans have similar minds and souls and therefore we are equal and have a common view with which to communicate.

But the Transcendentalists were also rebelling against another influence. These young thinkers were also moving away from the heavy staid intellectualism of the Unitarian ministers at Harvard and in the Boston pulpits at the time. The older established ministers stood for the “reason” that was important in religion. They emphasized the intellectual understanding of the Bible and of faith. Emerson and other young transcendentalists emphasized the soul within humanity. Bronson Alcott, you may know as Louisa May Alcott’s father, said that transcendentalism means “that there is more in the mind than what enters it through the senses.” He was talking about what is perceived by the soul. He also said, “Truths which pertain to the soul cannot be proved any external testimony whatsoever.” This theory of the soul recognized that the innate ideas of the spirit “transcend” all sensory experience. Therefore, the soul is not about what you can read in a book or hear from the pulpit, but relates to that inner light that many ancient religions such as Hinduism and Buddhism described.

The older traditional Unitarians were basically still Christian while celebrating the unity of God as one. Unitarianism denied the trinity and denied the need for Christ’s sacrifice as the salvation of humankind; it still spoke of the miracles of Christ. While people like William Ellery Channing still preached on these miracles, the new thinkers who were studying philosophers from Germany like Goethe, began to speak of all of nature as a miracle. The miracles described in the New Testament were not denied, they just took on less importance as all of life was depicted as a miracle.

This transcendentalist movement which started with a group of thinkers and writers began to influence much thought during this period around the early to late 1800’s. It wasn’t just a theological debate. The ideas not only permeated literary development, philosophy, and religion, but also social and political movements. During this time when science was blossoming as the major contributor toward new understanding of the universe and how it worked, transcendentalists represented a view that the world of objective knowledge always had a subjective side that was the result of humanity’s view of the universe. Thoreau said, “…the purest science is still biographical”.

The religious spirit was seen as an inherent part of human nature by the traditional Calvinists – but something that had to be drilled into naturally sinful humans with catechisms, hours of prayer, and religious dogma. Transcendentalists recognized the innate goodness and spiritual nature of humans. Theodore Parker, another later Transcendentalist emphasized that too much importance had been placed on the religious doctrines and forms, and “too little stress has been laid on the divine life of the soul, love to God, and love to man.” Parker said that we should not accept the doctrines of man as the doctrines of God.

Emerson, while respecting the spiritual guidance of the gospels, took reverence to a new level by recommending that all books could be potential spiritual material, because the spiritual impulse is within one not from outside. He read such sources as the Bhagavad Gita, the Hindu scripture and found resonance with the idea of the oneness of all. He could see the merit of this scripture as equal to that of the Bible.

Emerson said that his own mind was the “direct revelation” of God. He said, “God builds his temple in the heart, on the ruins of churches and religions.” This was blasphemous to many. To suggest that one could feel the impulse of God directly within one was so against what the Puritans of the previous generations taught that had Emerson lived fifty years earlier, he might have been burned for blasphemy. Emerson said that “The one thing of value in the universe is the active soul.”

Emerson and many of the other Transcendentalists saw God as nature or nature as a direct embodiment of God’s soul. God was within all things, much as Pantheism describes God. God was immanent – meaning throughout all things. Everything was made of the same “stuff”, Emerson said. We have God within us and therefore our soul has the innate ability to feel the religious sentiment. “As long as the soul seeks an external God, it can never have peace. It always must be uncertain what may be done and what may become of it. But when it sees the Great God far within its own nature, then it sees that always it is a party to all that can be, that always it will be informed of that which will happen and therefore it is pervaded with a great Peace.”

Sort of sounds kind of New Age, doesn’t it. The ideas that Emerson and his friends discussed were the birth of our truly liberal religion today. The ideas that so many of us resonate with – the ideas the universe as being one – are the ideas of mystics in all religions.

Humans were seen by this view as naturally spiritual – but spiritual in a natural way. Emerson and Thoreau, as naturalists, did much to introduce the view that nature is sacred, in fact, that nature in a way is God. The transcendentalists also point to truth as being self-evident, not true because of a biblical or religious authority. They pointed to theological truth as being able to stand the same tests as scientific truths although one could test it with one’s soul as well.

How did these transcendentalists come together? A Transcendental Club was formed in 1836 which was a discussion group of like minded intellectuals in and around Boston. It’s members included Emerson, Bronson Alcott, George Ripley (the founder of the utopian community, Brook Farm), James Freeman Clarke (a Unitarian minister who later was the first minister in Louisville, KY), Theodore Parker, just graduated from Harvard Divinity School and future abolitionist, and Margaret Fuller, the young woman who became close friends with Emerson and later edited the Transcendentalists’ magazine, The Dial.

These intellectuals came together around their dissatisfaction of the present state of intellectual thought in philosophy, religion, and literature. They enjoyed reading and discussing some of the same European authors such as Goethe, Kant, and Schleiermacher. They were romanticists, not classicists. They were liberal or radical in politics and this often led them into social action in areas such as abolition and women’s rights. This group of thinkers was not interested in founding a new religion or school or institution. As a group of confirmed individualists, they were simply interested in the ideas that they could share.

Sounds familiar, huh? Sounds a lot like our churches and our members today. Groups of liberal thinkers, true individualists who don’t want to conform to modern society but want to get together to discuss new ideas about philosophy, religion, and society’s problems.

Modern political thought in the 1800’s placed value on the state and the individual citizen’s contribution and sacrifice to the state. This was the time in America of finally having a stable, reliable government after the colonial period and then the revolution. But with a solid, democratic government, the state had become idealized. These new thinkers, such as Emerson, were placing value on the individual over the state. The individual need is more important than the state; freedom is everything. Emerson is often credited or accused with the inception of the concept of the “rugged individual”. In his essay, “Self-Reliance”, Emerson says, “Trust thyself, every heart vibrates to that iron string,” However, Emerson was not talking about being totally removed from others. He saw the soul as universal; therefore through the understanding of one’s soul, one understood the universe. “…to believe what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men; that is genius.”

Transcendentalism touted the necessity of communication with others and self-expression as a conduit for self-development. The principle that the individual soul develops with other souls through association or community and thereby fulfills its own self-actualizing was not a new idea but in fact, an ancient Greek idea. Plato and Socrates certainly demonstrated in their teaching methods the importance of discussion in education. Many of the Transcendentalist’s ideas were reflections of ancient Greek philosophy.

Emerson’s teaching was about self cultivation, about seeking out one’s own spiritual beliefs and practices. His own spiritual practice consisted of writing daily in a journal, reading, contemplation, walking in nature, and conversation with friends. His spiritual practice reminds me a lot of my own spiritual practice. His emphasis on experience in life as the mainstay of one’s faith is the mainstay of much of Unitarian Universalism today. Emerson said that “God is clothed in the flowing robes of events.” The actions that one takes as being an evidence of one’s faith have become the foundation of our social justice programs.

Emerson recognized the sacredness of all things, especially of humanity. He reminds us that we are God. He says, “…in certain moments I have known that I existed directly from God, and am as it were, God’s organ. And in my ultimate consciousness Am God.” Walt Whitman reflected these themes in his “Song of Myself”. “ I know that the hand of God is the promise of my own. I know the spirit of God is the brother of my own.”

When we find ourselves lost in the mundane chores of life, the commuting to work, the endless meetings one attends, the buzz of the television – sometimes you’ll find yourself all of a sudden aware – aware that life in all its mundaneness is still sacred. You may look up from your newspaper one morning and see the sun coming through the window and realize it. Or you may see it when you’re at the grocery and all of a sudden think of your kids and realize how wonderful they are. You may realize that they are God and that you are God, all sacred in your unique ways.

This is a spiritual revelation that I had as a teenager when I read Franny and Zooey. Salinger describes a young boy, Buddy, walking to school with his older brother, Seymour. Every day they had to walk by the house of a woman they called the Fat Lady. She would sit on her porch everyday in the heat, swatting at flies with a fly swatter, and sweating in the morning sun. Seymour, who was somewhat of a living room prophet, said to Buddy one morning. “You know that Fat Lady, Buddy? She’s Jesus, man. She is Jesus.” He meant that even a person who is unattractive and seemingly unimportant is sacred – is God. We are all God.

Transcendentalists were seekers. They sought a spiritual practice that would lead them to a certain kind of wisdom - inner wisdom which to them was divine wisdom. Robert Fulghum, UU minister, found after a period of study in a Buddhist monastery that he had been searching for wisdom like a “thirsty man” while in fact he was standing in the middle of a “flowing stream”.

I think UU’s are seekers as well perhaps because of the early influence of the Transcendentalists. We seek the worth of each person, the beauty of nature, and the wisdom we find within our own hearts.