THE TRANSCENDENTALISTS AT ALL SOULS

This seems to be the year of the Transcendentalists at All Souls. There are times when one topic suddenly seems to spring up without conscious coordination and dominates the thought of different groups. This seems to be one of those times.

This winter, one of the Lifelines Center lectures was presented by Prof. Philip F. Gura of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill on the topic of “American Transcendentalism: A History,” based on his groundbreaking book Critical Essays on American Transcendentalism. In his lecture, he traced the development of the movement from its historical philosophical European roots to its importance in the growth of Unitarian Universalism in the United States during the early 19th century.

On March 2, the All Souls Historical Society presented its 25th Annual Henry Whitney Bellows Lecture delivered by Prof. Judith Ann Giesberg, titled “Civil War Sisterhood: The U.S. Sanitary Commission and Women’s Politics in Transition.” Prof. Giesberg spoke about the important role Nineteenth century women played in national reform, cultural and benevolent institutions, particularly during the Civil War and in its aftermath. Margaret Fuller was editor of the The Dial, the journal of the transcendentalists, where her first version of her feminist manifesto, Woman in the Nineteenth Century, appeared and became the founding document of the women’s movement.

In February, the Women’s Reading Group read and discussed American Bloomsbury by Susan Cheever, a group biography that deals with the lives of major figures comprising the transcendentalist movement and their influence on American literature. In March, the Emerson Circle presented a talk by Ms. Cheever (see: “The Emerson Circle”) about the cluster of transcendentalists living in close proximity to each other in Concord, MA and how they influenced one another’s philosophy and ideas through their interaction and writings.

In January, Mary-Ella Holst, All Souls’ RE Director emerita, spoke three times during the 11:15AM Adult Education time slot on the topic of Unitarian and Universalist Women and their ideas about independence, equality and individualism, and how some of them were associated with or influenced by Transcendentalism through the work of Margaret Fuller. Women like Julia Ward Howe, Olympia Brown, Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Susan B. Anthony pioneered ideas almost commonplace in today’s world but certainly considered radical in their own time.

For those of you who have only a sketchy idea of how Transcendentalism has influenced Unitarian Universalist thought and development, here is a short primer:

Transcendentalism, as generally defined, proposes that spirit transcends the material and empirical and that individual inspiration and intuition transcends orthodox religious doctrine.

Transcendentalism was a philosophical movement, originally inspired by the English philosopher John Locke and the German philosopher, Immanuel Kant that flourished in the United States during the early 19th century until the Civil War. It started in this country within Unitarianism as a protest at the Harvard Divinity School against the orthodox doctrinal teachings of the time. Ralph Waldo Emerson in particular angered the Divinity School faculty with a sermon attacking historical Christianity that got him banned from the school for decades. Early Transcendentalists, led by Emerson included such towering figures as Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Louisa May Alcott, and Margaret Fuller.

Transcendental beliefs with their emphasis on individual responsibility spread beyond strictly religious application into the realms of literature, the women’s movement, education, social work and social action. They still echo today in our modern Unitarian Universalist beliefs in “Deeds not Creeds” and individual religious credos.

To bring the movement up-to-date and to indicate its long-standing influence within liberal religion, in the third volume of Liberal Theology (1950-2000), the author Gary Dorian identifies Forrest Church, as a “neo-transcendentalist.”
 

The Angie Henry Utt
Lecture