Shine a Light

To take my mind off the nonsense in the news these days, I've been reading Emerson Among the Eccentrics, a group portrait of the Transcendentalists from the early half of the 19th century.  It was a pretty amazing time.  Science and religion weren't considered competing forces.  Emerson saw God in the natural world around him, not accepting any contradiction in faith and reason because he didn't take the Bible literally.

It would be 30 years or so before Darwin put forward his theory of natural selection, but even in the 1830s, evolution was discussed by renown figures like Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and Charles Lyell, who Emerson would have probably been aware of.  His naturalistic and literary tastes, however, ran toward Rousseau and Blake.

I was curious who the Transcendentalists were, and as near as I can figure out they owe their origins to the Unitarians, who took a broader view to religion, favoring Jesus the man to Christ as part of the Holy Trinity.  As such, this is a direct outgrowth of Deism, which Thomas Jefferson and other instrumental figures in the American Revolution espoused. 

Transcendentalism was also influenced by the Second Religious Awakening, which owed its origins to Swedenborgism, which spread to America through Millennialist religious groups like the Harmonists, who established utopian communities in Pennsylvania and Indiana, awaiting the arrival of the second coming of Christ.  The Transcendentalists tried their utopian luck at Brook Farm, but they didn't hold out for such an epiphany.

Religion and science tended to work together, certainly through technology, which grew rapidly during this time.  The Harmonists were an extremely industrial sect that lasted 100 years, moving from Pennsylvania to Indiana and then back to Pennsylvania because of their resistance to slavery.  New Harmony, on the banks of the Wabash, was too close to the slave state Kentucky, and as such they had numerous confrontations with plantation owners over runaway slaves.  So, they pulled up stakes and moved to Economy, Pennyslvania, which they kept going until 1905, long after the death of Father Rapp.

Meanwhile, Emerson toured New England giving lectures on Transcendentalism that captured the imagination of many followers.  He became the center of a group of poets, naturalists and professors, who for the most part bowed to his wisdom, but Emerson promoted independence of thought, which is why he was most taken by Henry David Thoreau, who wasn't afraid to challenge him.  Their paths crossed repeatedly without ever really coming together.

I like this period because it offers a broad view of what a rapidly expanding America could become.  Emerson wasn't afraid of change or new cultures arriving on the continent.  He was an avid reader and fell under the charms of the Upanishads, immersing himself in Hinduism.

This was in sharp contrast to the American Republican Party, promoting its very narrow Nativist view of the country in the 1840s, which would later expand into the Know Nothing Party of the 1850s, the direct ideological precursor to the Nativist Republicans we see today.

Reading Emerson Among the Eccentrics offers insights into our better human nature, before we let slavery and fear rule our society.  It was out of this religious and transcendentalist ferment that the abolition movement was born, promoting equal rights not just across racial lines but also gender lines, as many of the leading abolition figures of this time were women.  There's a lot to learn from the Transcendentalists.  Nice to see that spirit still continues.