“Reform the World? Cultivate Onions”

A sermon on Transcendentalism delivered by

The Rev. Carol Rosine

at the First Universalist Society in Franklin, MA

March 15, 2009

Reading Responsively: “The Oversoul” # 431

Those of us who did not grow up in a Unitarian Universalist Sunday School were probably first exposed to Transcendentalism in a High School or College English course, when we were required to read about Thoreau’s experience at Walden Pond or were forced to decipher Emerson’s arcane reflection on the individual’s direct experience of the Holy. Perhaps you recall the term “transparent eyeball-ness” where he described the ecstatic experience in which the “Me” and the “Not Me” are merged into one. He said, “Standing on the bare ground,-- my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space,-- all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball: I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me: I am part or particle of God.” Or perhaps you have heard the old joke in which Emerson says to the hot dog vendor, “Make me one with everything.”

But Transcendentalism was much bigger than Emerson and Thoreau. It wasn’t just floating on a pond or wandering dreamily through the woods or gazing into the heavens and becoming one with the Universe. It was more than writing prose that read like poetry or singing of Golden Mornings.

The first historian of Transcendentalism, O.B. Frothingham, said that the movement, “though local in activity, limited in scope, brief in duration, engaging but a comparatively small number of individuals, left a broad and deep trace on ideas and institutions. It affected thinkers, swayed politicians, guided moralists, inspired philanthropists, created reformers.” This movement which lasted only from 1830-1850 (twenty brief years) turned religious and philosophical thought upside down in America, it challenged the orthodox church (including the first generation of Unitarians), and it led to major social changes: the way in which children were educated, the plight of the poor who subsisted on meager wages alone; the horrible conditions in prisons; the treatment of the mentally ill; the impact of alcohol abuse on the family; and finally and most comprehensively, the abolition of slavery. So many of the social reforms that we take for granted today originated with these religious ancestors of ours.

Most of those associated with Transcendentalism were New Englanders with Boston connections. Most were Unitarians with most of the men being ministers educated at Harvard’s Divinity School. But there were women who played prominent roles as well like Elizabeth Peabody whose bookstore and lending library on West Street in Boston was the preferred gathering space for those who had been influenced by this New Thought. There was the brilliant Margaret Fuller whose Conversations for Women was pivotal in teaching women to clarify their own thoughts and learn to articulate them clearly and confidently. These conversations were so highly regarded that pretty soon the men asked if they could come as well and Fuller eventually consented. But what happened is that the men, who really had no training in the subjects she was teaching nor real knowledge of these subjects, began to dominate the conversations anyway. They asserted themselves and “dogmatized.” As a result, the men were no longer allowed access to Margaret Fuller’s Conversations for Women!

The Radical Ideas espoused by the Transcendentalists didn’t spring forth spontaneously out of nowhere, of course. The First Generation of American Unitarians had already removed themselves from orthodox Christianity with their use of Reason as it applied to Religion. This First Generation had been arguing with Trinitarians about the nature of God and claimed that God was not three in one, but was One. That Jesus was not of the same nature as God, but was fully human. That he was a teacher, a prophet, a guide for how to lead a righteous life. That the Bible was not the literal word of God but contained the word of God as William Ellery Channing put it. This first generation of Unitarians were schooled in a higher form of Biblical Scholarship in which history & context needed to be understood. The Bible Stories, they believed, were like Greek and Roman myths—they were not fact but poetry. The final authority for them was not God’s revelation as the Trinitarians claimed, but human reason. Isn’t it interesting that 200 years later this same debate is still going on between fundamentalist Christians and those of us who are much more progressive.

Following the War of 1812, there were a few young Unitarian Scholars who traveled to Germany to study with the theologians and philosophers there who were espousing some very different ideas. It was a few of these young men who returned to America and eventually began teaching at Harvard. Change was in the air, especially among the second generation of Unitarians who were, perhaps, rebelling a bit against their elders as young people are wont to do. They were experiencing Unitarianism as corpse-cold and wanted a faith that spoke to the heart as well as to the head. You see, the sermons that their elders, the First Generation of Unitarians, were preaching, were reasoned discourses that would go on for an hour or more. These preachers would carefully exegete a passage of scripture or build a solid theological argument for the subject they were discussing in the belief that faith that was not supported by reason was nothing more than superstition. Not much to stir the soul in what was being heard.

The new ideas that these young scholars were being exposed to were based on European scholarship that said that there was more to the mind than what could be understood through reason alone. That human understanding can only approach knowledge and can never know the Ultimate Truth. It was being said that there is a mysterious intuition that can help makea leap into faith. And the Infinite which some might call God, can only be grasped by this Faith. We would say it like this, “Mystery. Mystery. Life is a riddle and a mystery>”

Now you have to realize that I’ve just summarized volumes of theological & philosophical thought into four sentences. And that it’s my take on the kernels of what they were talking about. Some of you may pull some very different understandings out of all the philosophizing that was going on back then. But I think that I’ve pulled out some of the most important threads that pertain to our Transcendentalists.

The Transcendental Club began meeting in September of 1836, the Bicentennial of the founding of Harvard College which meant that many of the alumni were in town for the celebration. Some of these Harvard-educated clergy had been absorbing this “New Thought” coming from the continent and were anxious to talk with like-minded colleagues. Over a period of 4 years, they met 30 times to discuss philosophy, theology, and social issues and in the process these men and women essentially turned the world upside down. The event that put these Transcendentalists on the map happened in 1838 when the students graduating from Harvard Divinity School invited Ralph Waldo Emerson to deliver the customary address preceding their graduation, an event that would be mostly ignored today, but back then, it was a really big deal. The faculty and the invited clergy were not thrilled that Emerson was to be the speaker, because he had already started to make waves with his writings & lectures in which he was expanding on this New Thought. But the students admired him greatly and so they invited him anyway.

Emerson began his lecture by extolling the beauty and virtue of nature: “In this refulgent summer, it has been a luxury to draw the breath of life. The grass grows, the buds burst, the meadow is spotted with fire and gold in the tint of flowers. The air is full of birds and sweet with the breath of the pine, the balm-of-Gilead, and the new hay. The corn and the wine have been freely dealt to all creatures. One is constrained to respect the perfection of this world, in which our senses converse.” Just what we would expect to hear from Emerson, however these opening lines were a bit startling to his audience because he was talking about nature as if it were a good thing, something, almost, worthy of worship. You have to understand that Christians back then, even the more liberal Christians, still thought of nature as fallen.

Emerson went on to make some radical statements about Jesus Christ and how it wasn’t necessary to believe in the miracles described in Scripture because the important thing was what Jesus was teaching not on what he was doing. Scripture claimed that walking on water and turning water into wine were miracles, but Emerson believed that miracles did not mean that the laws of nature had to be suspended. Instead the whole of life, every moment is a miracle.

And then Emerson had the audacity to criticize the preaching of his colleagues. He described what he experienced in a colleagues church like this: “A snow storm was falling all around us, but while the storm was real, the preacher was merely spectral. 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. Sadly, he spoke not one word that intimated that he had laughed or wept, was married or in love, had been commended, or cheated, or chagrined…. He had failed dismally in converting life into truth.”

There were only a few distinguished guests who actually heard this lecture which took place in the Divinity Hall Chapel, a splendid but tiny room that probably seats no more than 30 people. So what happened on that day was not remarkable. It was what happened afterwards. You see back then educated people took religion and philosophy very seriously. Whole sermons were printed in newspapers. Pamphlets & Journals proliferated and were widely disseminated with arguments made and then disputed by others. Emerson did not lower himself by taking part in the barrage of arguments that continued for a couple of years after this Divinity School Address. His critics called him a dreamer who condemned logic. That his egotism was dangerous. But his admirers defended his ideas and spread them wide and far.

By 1840 there was a division taking place within this fledgling Transcendental Movement which was due in part to the Panic of 1837. What happened was that there was a major economic upheaval in which a lot of banks failed. Sounds similar to what we are experiencing today. Some of the Transcendentalists were deeply distressed by the poverty they saw around them. It was said that while factory owners had profited by industrialization, the wage laborers were actually worse off than slaves. They had all of the disadvantages of freedom and none of its blessings. At least slaves, it was said, were being clothed, housed, and fed while those working in industry for wages had nothing. .

George Ripley, one of those upper class intellectuals who was also a Transcendentalist, had watched the neighborhood around his church shift as the wealthy moved out and the poor moved in. He was appalled, not only by the poverty surrounding his church, but also by the indifference, the apathy of his parishioners. They were concerned only for themselves, believing that independence, self-reliance was the highest good. Instead of following the lead of their minister in caring about what was happening around them & working for social justice, they became more conservative, more smug, and so George Ripley resigned his pulpit.

What he ended up doing was establishing an egalitarian community, a Utopian community called Brook Farm. Within this community, all was to be harmonious where desires were to be gratified, not repressed. Where the work done should satisfy one’s deepest urges. They farmed, of course, started a school & even some small businesses, but after six years, Brook Farm failed. It is said that too many of those living there were more interested in the life of the mind instead of milking the cows. The Scottish writer and reformer, Thomas Carlyle, said that George Ripley had resigned his ministry hoping to reform the world by cultivating onions.

There were other Utopian communities established about the same time. One was right next door in Hopedale and another was in Harvard, a community called Fruitlands. This one was the brainstorm of Bronson Alcott, who had been transforming the way in which children were being educated. He was also the father of Louisa May Alcott. Mr. Alcott’s intention at Fruitlands was to create a place where people could come to live in order to purify themselves. They were vegans and used no animal products which meant no leather or wool or even fertilizer for their fields. They refused to abuse animals by using them for plowing so instead worked the soil by hand. The problem was that the men at Fruitlands much preferred to be off proselytizing and so most of the actual work fell to Mrs. Alcott and her four daughters. By late fall, their small harvest was lost to an early frost, and in addition the Alcott women were getting tired of the diet and the cold baths and the “flesh brushing” with rough towels, so they quit and went home. Fruitlands was another Utopian failure.

All of these Utopian communities ended up failing, partly because the focus for the Transcendentalists who wanted to reform society shifted to the issue of slavery. It was the War with Mexico and the Fugitive Slave Act that prompted these Transcendentalists to putting their energy into the abolition of slavery. The great Unitarian preacher, Theodore Parker, let the way in this effort, but eventually even Emerson became an abolitionist, although a much quieter and reserved one than the fiery Theodore Parker, who, it is said, wrote his sermons with a pistol at his side.

So here we have it. It is quite a legacy that’s been bequeathed to us by our religious ancestors. To this very day, we Unitarian Universalists still struggle with how to balance reason and rational discourse with the need for a deeper spiritual life, for the experiences that transcend the rational and touch the mystery. We struggle sometimes over which comes first: transforming our interior lives or transforming the world. Do we need to have peace in our hearts before there can be peace in the world? Which comes first? Or is it all mixed up into one living Whole? Reason and Spirit. Heart and Mind. Changing our selves and changing the world. All mixed up together. All at the same time.

This is the legacy passed on to us by those great thinkers and experiencers and doers of the 1830s and 1840s. They changed the direction that Unitarianism was headed. They were the ones who shaped what it was that we were to become.

Reference: American Transcendendalist, Philip Gura (Hill and Wang, 2007)