“A NEW TRANSCENDENTALISM: 1) ROOTS”

This is the day the Lord hath made. Let us then rejoice in it and be glad, and let us count our many blessings. Let us be grateful for the capacity to see, to hear, to feel, to understand. Let us be especially grateful for the ties of love which bind us together, giving dignity, meaning, worth and joy to all our days.^¹

When Man and Woman may regard one another as brother and sister, able both to appreciate and to prophesy to one another.

What Woman needs is not as a woman to act or rule, but as a nature to grow, as an intelligence to discern, as a soul to live freely and unimpeded, to unfold such powers as were given her.

Man does not have his fair share either; his energies are repressed and distorted by the interposition of artificial obstacles.

We would have every arbitrary barrier thrown down. We would have every path laid open to Woman as freely as Man.

Were this done, we believe a divine energy would pervade nature to a degree unknown in the history of former ages.

I sang this hymn countless times before the question that ought to be obvious finally dawned on me: What is “It?” What, exactly, is It that sounds along the ages? What breathed from Buddha’s tree and hallowed Galilee? What calls new justice and speaks new truth? To what does “It” refer?

Once the question dawned on me, I searched high and low in the hymn for an antecedent for “It.” There is none. The writer of the hymn, the second generation Transcendentalist Unitarian minister William Channing Gannett, does not provide us one. The “It” the hymn celebrates goes completely undefined.

I guess it’s up to us to figure out what “It” is! In fact, I believe that is precisely Gannett’s point. Figure “It” out for yourself! This is a very Transcendentalist thing for him to do! Transcendentalism is all about the “It” in Gannett’s hymn, and about how each of us must seek and contemplate and try to understand the “It” in our own unique way. There’s no One, True understanding or definition of “It,” at least that is available to us merely human beings. So come up with your own understanding!

The Transcendentalists themselves provided a variety of definitions for It, including Soul, the Oversoul, God, Universal Being, Spirit, and Universal Mind. The Holy is another common name for It. My childhood minister, a modern Transcendentalist, sometimes called It the “ties of love that bind us together,” as you heard in the Call to Gather. The greatest and most influential of the Transcendentalists, Ralph Waldo Emerson, used a dizzying variety of words to name It, including most of the ones I’ve already mentioned. In using many names for It, Emerson suggests that this It is pretty complex, that we can only get brief and incomplete glimpses of It. Each definition names just a small piece of the complex reality of It.

Where is It, whatever It is? Transcendentalists had a succinct answer to this question: Everywhere. That’s another point of Gannett’s hymn. It is everywhere: in nature, in the Bible and other sacred scriptures, in poetry, in music, in art, in the ties of love and connection between us, and maybe most powerfully in each of our minds and souls. “What is a farm,” Emerson asks, “but a mute gospel?”^⁴ Every part of creation is a gospel containing It.

The Transcendentalists were pantheists: they believed the It is in everything. Here’s a wonderful expression of pantheism from Scott Russell Sanders, a contemporary writer whom I would describe as a new Transcendentalist:

I believe there is only one power, one shaping urge, but I also believe that it [there’s that It again!] infuses everything—the glistening track of the snail along with the gleaming eye of the fawn, the grain in the oak, the froth of the creek, the coiled proteins in my blood and in yours, the mind that strings together these words and the mind that reads them. I am reassured to feel one juice flowing through my fingers and the branches of the maple and the flickering grass.^⁵

All we have to do to see It, the old and new Transcendentalists tell us, is open our eyes and look! Emerson famously pictured himself in one of his essays as a “transparent eyeball: I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or parcel of God.”^⁶ One of Emerson’s Transcendentalist disciples drew a wonderful image of Emerson as a transparent eyeball: his skinny little body is topped with a huge eyeball instead of a head, the optic nerve tied into a ponytail behind. The eyeball with legs wears tails and a hat.^⁷

Transcendentalism is itself just about as hard to define as the It in Gannett’s hymn. Certainly the Transcendentalists couldn’t agree on a common definition. The name was given to the movement by its detractors, who were hoping the name would be so confusing and confounding that people would do everything in their power to stay away from it. I suspect this was a pretty effective move: the murkiness and sheer length of the word “Transcendentalism” repels people to this day!

But the label contains at least a kernel of truth: the roots of the word go back to the eighteenth century philosopher Immanuel Kant, who suggested that some of the most significant human knowledge transcends our senses. In other words, Kant believed that we gain some of our most important knowledge through intuition rather than through sensory awareness. This is a viewpoint embraced by the Transcendentalists: in matters of the spirit, listening to the intuitions of the heart can be more important than listening to the brain or the senses.^⁸

Historically, Transcendentalism was a small but influential avant-garde^⁹ American intellectual movement from the 1830’s to 1860’s. It was related to and inspired by the Romanticism movement that was prevalent in Europe at the time. Transcendentalism expressed itself in a wide variety of ways: most notably in literature, but also in art, public lectures (Emerson was the most famous lecturer in American history), and the Transcendentalists’ favorite activity: parlor discussions. Key figures in Transcendentalism include Emerson, Margaret Fuller (the author of today’s Reading), Henry David Thoreau, Bronson Alcott (the father of Louisa May Alcott), and Theodore Parker. I first approached Transcendentalism in the same way most of you did, I suspect: reading Emerson and Thoreau in high school English.

At its core, though, Transcendentalism was more than anything else a religious movement. And it was specifically a Unitarian religious movement. This we didn’t typically learn in high school! Some seventeen Unitarian ministers and ex-ministers formed the heart and soul of Transcendentalism.^¹⁰

In truth, Transcendentalism was a reform movement within Unitarianism, which itself had been formerly launched only a few years earlier. The central Transcendentalist critique of conventional Unitarianism was that too many Unitarians were overly reliant on the head, disconnected from real experience and the intuitions of their hearts.

No one expressed this critique more powerfully than Emerson, who had himself been a Unitarian minister. In one famous passage in his address to the graduating class of Harvard Divinity School (given several years after he left the ministry), Emerson describes how worthless the Unitarian church becomes when it disconnects itself from heart and from experience:

A snow-storm was falling around us. The snowstorm was real, the preacher merely spectral, and the eye felt the sad contrast in looking at him, and then out of the window behind him into the beautiful meteor of the snow. He had lived in vain. He had not one word intimating that he had laughed or wept, was married or in love, had been commended, or cheated, or chagrined. If he had ever lived and acted, we were none the wiser for it…Not one fact in all his experience had he yet imported into his doctrine…Not a line did he draw out of real history. The true preacher can be known by this, that he deals out to the people his life,—life passed through the fire of thought.^¹¹

Perhaps the best way to describe Transcendentalism is to consider some of its most important ideas. I’ve already named one of those key ideas: the importance of intuition. Another foundational idea is related: if each of us has the power of intuition within them, then none of us needs a sacred book or teacher or anything else to tell us about the It referred to in Gannett’s hymn. Don’t stake your faith on Jesus’ word, or Buddha’s word, or your minister’s word, or for that matter Emerson’s word, either. Your relationship with It needs no such intermediary. Emerson’s cherished Self-Reliance is all about finding the truth—the It—within yourself and all around you without needing someone or something more powerful than you to reveal it to you. All of us have access to truth. All of us have access to It.^¹²

It strikes me that we give illustration to this idea at just about every service we do with the Congregational Response. Having a Congregational Response tells us that Truth is not automatically going to emanate from the minister’s mouth into our waiting souls, but that we can and should contemplate the words we hear and then evaluate whether they contain truth (with a small “t”) for us. In the visioning work the Crystal Ball is currently leading, the interactive nature of our services—as evidenced in particular in the Congregational Response—has been repeatedly lifted up. Whether you ever share a response aloud, that time in our services tells each one of us that it is our job to find meaning and truth in our lives. Congregational Response is a wonderful symbol of this truth.

A related idea in Transcendentalism is the freedom of the individual search. One of Emerson’s biographers writes that his central project was “the unchaining of human minds.”^¹³ Indeed, this was Transcendentalism’s central project. If each of us has access to It, then we each need the freedom to follow our individual path. Our affirmation of the “free and responsible search” is rooted at least in part in this Transcendentalist understanding.

Also related is our recognition that there is a pluralism of paths and beliefs. The free search inevitably leads to different perceptions and beliefs. Certainly it did for the Transcendentalists, who for example came to very different conclusions about Christianity. Some, like Emerson, Thoreau and Fuller, moved beyond Christianity,^¹⁴ while others—Theodore Parker, for example—stayed firmly grounded in Christianity. Transcendentalism was never about a specific philosophical or theological viewpoint, but was rather about the principles of a free and responsible search.^¹⁵

Emerson concluded that Jewish and Christian scriptures—like all scriptures—contain only fragmentary glimpses of truth. Look for other teachers to augment the fragmentary truths of these scriptures, he recommends. “Make your own Bible (from) all those words & sentences that in all your reading have been to you like the blast of trumpet.”^¹⁶ And by “reading,” he meant not just reading books, but also “reading” nature and your own heart.

Many Transcendentalists, including Emerson and Thoreau, turned in particular to the scriptures of the East for a new teacher—a turn that was completely unprecedented in American intellectual circles.^¹⁷ The Bhagavad Gita’s arrival in Concord during the summer of 1845 was a noteworthy event in the transmission of Hinduism to the United States.^¹⁸ The Gita quickly took an abiding place in Emerson’s and many other Transcendentalists’ spiritual journeys.

We would make a mistake, however, if we view Transcendentalism’s turn to the East as a genuine manifestation of our contemporary understanding of pluralism. Although many Transcendentalists were greatly influenced by their introduction to Eastern scripture and thought, it was in no way a reciprocal or mutual engagement. It was a decidedly one-sided conversation.

Much of the Transcendentalists’ encounter with the East was “steeped in ignorance.” Emerson in particular did not bother to learn much about the rich cultural and religious history underlying the sacred scriptures of Hinduism and Buddhism.^¹⁹ He approached Hindu and other non-Western scriptures as he approached all texts in both literature and nature: he took them out of context and used them to confirm and illustrate his own intuitive truths. Rather than an expression of pluralism, this can more accurately be characterized as “a kind of intellectual imperialism.”^²⁰

In many ways, then, Emerson’s “discoveries” about Hinduism and other Eastern religions really say a lot more about Emerson than about Eastern religion. The window he thought he was looking through turns out to have been more of a mirror than a window. In truth, the Hinduism with which he was dialoguing wasn’t so much Hinduism as it was Emerson’s largely ignorant understanding of Hinduism

But at least he and other Transcendentalists paid some attention to Hinduism. At least they saw that Hinduism has the potential to reveal truth, too. Given the time, Transcendentalism’s turn to the East was quite remarkable. The contemporary African American scholar Cornel West is right when he calls Emerson and the other Transcendentalists the “ancestors” of cultural pluralism (or multiculturalism).^²¹

Transcendentalism had other shortcomings, too, in addition to the vestiges of cultural imperialism within it. Though prominent early feminists like Margaret Fuller were important members of the movement, many of the male Transcendentalists never fully embraced the equality of women. Emerson drove Fuller absolutely nuts on this count. In exasperation, she wrote him once, “O Waldo, most unteachable of men,…you are at heart a sinner on this point.”^²² So were many of the other male Transcendentalists.

Many of the Transcendentalists also didn’t care much about institutions—in particular, churches. Theodore Parker, for example, intentionally made weak the structure of his church. Wary of strong churches, Parker believed they are prone to restricting the freedom of the individual. Parker’s church was perennially weak financially, and it always met in rented space. This was all well and good while Parker was alive: he was such a compelling figure that thousands flocked to his church’s services anyway. But after his death, his church quickly went into decline and soon died. Its closure is one reason why Transcendentalism faded rather quickly from its peak in the mid-1800s.^²³ I believe that strong institutions are absolutely necessary to the flourishing of liberal religion. And I believe that a strong liberal church need not restrict the freedom of the individual.

And sometimes Transcendentalists, with their heads way up in the clouds, were hopelessly impractical. The image of Emerson as a huge eyeball with tails and hat is funny partly because it looks like this creature is totally out to lunch. Louisa May Alcott pointed out this common Transcendentalist trait with great power, especially in reference to the most out-to-lunch Transcendentalist of all: her father Bronson. While Bronson rode the circuit of parlor discussions and dabbled in Utopian community-building, his family literally faced starvation. Her family’s plight only changed when Louisa’s books started to sell: she became the breadwinner for her whole family. Frankly she was a little bitter about this.^²⁴

But in spite of its shortcomings, the foundational ideas of Transcendentalism are deep and enduring. I believe they underlie the central principles of Unitarian Universalism today. And I believe that Transcendentalism therefore is the most significant chapter in our UU history, and one of the most significant in the intellectual and religious history of our nation. It will be my thesis in this sermon series that a new, updated Transcendentalism can and should be the heart of a healthy, vibrant, effective Unitarian Universalism for the twenty-first century.

1 Dr. Duncan E. Littlefair was the senior minister of the Fountain Street Church in Grand Rapids, MI, from 1944 to 1978. Littlefair, my childhood minister, used these words as the Call to Worship every Sunday he preached. He died on January 17, 2004, at the age of 91.

2 Margaret Fuller, “A New Manifestation,” Reading #575 in Singing the Living Tradition (Boston: Beacon Press, 1993).

3 “It Sounds Along the Ages,” a hymn by William Channing Gannett, # 187 in Singing the Living Tradition (Boston: Beacon Press, 1993).

4 Ralph Waldo Emerson in The Portable Emerson, Carl Bode, ed. (New York: Viking Penguin, 1981), p. 29.

5 Frederic J. Muir, “Unitarian Universalist Diversity and the New Transcendentalism,” Unitarian Universlist Selected Essays 1997 (Boston: Unitarian Universalist Ministers Association, 1997), pp. 53-54.

7 Nancy Stula, “Christopher Pearse Cranch: Painter of Transcendentalism,” in Transient and Permanent: The Transcendentalist Movement and Its Context, edited by Charles Capper and Conrad Edick Wright (Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1999), p. 553.

8 Emerson., pp. 98-99; Barry Andrews, “The Roots of Unitarian Universalist Spirituality in New England Transcendentalism,” 1992 Selected Essays, (Boston: Unitarian Universalist Ministers Association, 1992), p. 27; Lee Bluemel, “Those Who Stayed: A Transcendentalist Story of Ministerial Alliances and Churchmanship,” Unitarian Universalism Selected Essays 1998 (Boston: Unitarian Universalist Ministers Association, pp. 65-66; Lawrence Buell, Emerson (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 2003), p. 31.

10 Capper and Wright, Preface, p. x; David Robinson, “’A Religious Demonstration’: The Theological Emergence of New England Transcendentalism,” in Capper and Wright, p. 58; Bluemel, p. 68; Buell, p. 33.

11 Emerson, p. 83. This passage was shared with some hesitation since it was snowing outside during at least one of the weekend’s services!

12 Buell, p. 65; Robert D. Richardson, “Emerson and the Perennial Philosophy,” http: www.firstparish.org/richardson.html, pp. 4-5.

14 Charles Capper, “A Little Beyond: The Problem of the Transcendentalist Movement in American History” in Capper and Wright, p. 28; Buell, pp. 14, 36; Robinson, p. 53.

15 Dean Grodzins, “Theodore Parker and the 28^th Congregational Society,” in Capper and Wright, pp. 78, 88.

18 Alan Hodder, “Concord Orientalism” in Capper and Wright, p. 191; Diana Eck, A New Religious America (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2001), p. 94.

19 Buell, p. 172. Thoreau worked harder to understand the context of Eastern religions: Hodder, p. 203.

22 Phyllis Cole, “Woman Questions: Emerson, Fuller, and New England Reform,” in Capper and Wright, p. 434.

24 Helen R. Deese, “Transcendentalism from the Margins: The Experience of Caroline Healy Dall,” in Capper and Wright, pp. 542-543.