clearly. It is hard to see why the great truths of Christianity rest on the personal authority of Jesus, more than the axioms of geometry rest on the personal authority of Euclid or Archimedes. The authority of Jesus, as of all teachers, one would naturally think, must rest on the truth of his words, and not their truth on his authority.
Parker also attempted to wrest the moral authority of religion out of the hands of the ministers and into the individual consciences of his congregation: “If Christianity were true, we should still think it was so, not because its record was written by infallible pens; nor because it was lived out by an infallible teacher,—but that it is true, like the axioms of geometry, because it is true, and is to be tried by the oracle God places in the breast.” This “oracle” in the breasts of his congregation allowed them to see that “Christianity is a simple thing; very simple. It is absolute, pure Morality; absolute, pure Religion; the love of man; the love of God acting without let or hindrance. The only creed it lays down is the great truth which springs up spontaneous in the holy heart—there is a God.”
Parker clearly understood that the radicalism of his statements would provoke a strong reaction. He attempted to defend himself against cries of blasphemy by pointing out that religion is always in a state of change: “The heresy of one age is the orthodox belief and ‘only infallible rule’ of the next.”
Unfortunately for him, much of Unitarian Boston was not ready for his progressive thought. An anonymous layperson, writing in the newspapers following the sermon, made this point abundantly clear: “I would rather see every Unitarian congregation in our land dissolved and every one of our churches razed to the ground, than to assist in placing a man entertaining the sentiments of Theodore Parker in one of our pulpits.”
Parker did remain in his pulpit until 1845, however, when he resigned to found his own Unitarian church in Boston. His new Twenty-eighth Congregational Society was enormous, and he often preached to thousands of worshippers in Boston’s Music Hall.
It is perhaps impossible to complete any discussion of the connections between Unitarianism and Transcendentalism without mentioning Ralph Waldo Emerson’s three-year post at the Unitarian Second Church of Boston. His father had been the minister of the First Parish Church of Boston, just as his grandfather, William Emerson, had been the minister of Concord’s First Church. The younger Emerson’s stint, however, was perhaps as unremarkable as his passage through Harvard College and Harvard Divinity School. Although a gifted orator and a passionate examiner of theological ideas, Emerson was not a complete success as a minister; he had difficulty connecting with his parishioners and was a weak spiritual guide, partly due to his ambivalence about his position.
In his letter of resignation and his farewell sermon of 1832, Emerson explained that he could not, in good conscience, perform the communion when he did not believe that Jesus meant for it to be a ceremony. Privately, though, he admitted to the difficulty of having to pray publicly when he was not moved to do so. He was also not confident in his ability to perform all the duties required of a minister. His departure from the church was not a clean break, though; he continued to speak from the pulpit both in and around Boston, as well as back in Concord, for many years; toward the end of his life, he returned to the Unitarian church as a member.
Like-Minded Seekers
While there would remain close ties between the two, Transcendentalism soon outgrew the confines of Unitarianism and needed forums beyond pulpits and theological debates. Although Transcendentalist ideas were discussed informally during innumerable dinners, walks, and post-lecture conversations, two meeting places played an especially important role in fashioning this new American literary and philosophical tradition: the Transcendental Club and Elizabeth Palmer Peabody’s West Street bookstore and foreign language library.
The Transcendental Club officially began on September 19, 1836, as a meeting of what Frederic Francis Hedge called “like-minded seekers.” Hedge, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and George Ripley had met after Harvard’s bicentennial celebration the week before and created what they called a “symposium” to discuss ideas of religion, philosophy, literature, education, and culture away from the restrictive arenas of the church and Harvard. The first meeting took place at George Ripley’s house in Boston. Philosopher and educator Bronson Alcott, Unitarian minister James Freeman Clarke, and a handful of Harvard Divinity School students joined Ripley, Hedge, and Emerson.
Over the next four years, the group met nearly every month when Frederic Hedge came to Boston from his home in Bangor, Maine. The meetings were held at members’ houses around Boston and Concord, although never in Cambridge. The loose and rotating membership included many of the intellectual giants of the era: educator and publisher Elizabeth Peabody; the feminist critic Margaret Fuller; the poet Jones Very; Ellery Channing, the poet who was Reverend Channing’s nephew; the poet and caricaturist Christopher Cranch; and many others.
The Transcendental Club was not for the faint of heart or mind; the topics set for the meetings, or “symposiums” as they preferred to call them, were as weighty as they were abstruse. Over the four years of their meetings, the group covered such philosophical topics as mysticism, genius, education, religion, pantheism, and inspiration, to name just a few.
Unitarianism vis-à-vis Transcendentalism
Although Unitarianism and Transcendentalism are clearly linked, there are some important differences between the two. First, the Unitarianism of the nineteenth century was an established religion supported by Harvard Divinity School as well as by an increasing number of churches, ministers, congregations, and associations across New England. Transcendentalism, in contrast, was expounded by a loose affiliation of philosophers, ministers, writers, and social activists who believed in many of the same ideas but differed radically in other ways.
Of the many subtle differences between Unitarianism and Transcendentalism, perhaps the most notable was one of mere degrees: the Transcendentalists felt that Unitarianism did not go far enough in embracing the passionate and intuitive communion with the Divinity they believed was an integral part of all people. They often characterized Unitarianism as too rationalistic and lacking warmth; Emerson went so far as to call it “corpse-cold.” For their part, the Unitarians were uneasy with the criticism of organized religion inherent in many of the Transcendentalist stances.
In more recent times, the Unitarian establishment, especially after its merger with the Universalists in 1961, has embraced those same philosophers who were ostracized for their radical views in the nineteenth century. The Unitarian Universalist website now features biographies of ministers including Channing, Parker, Emerson, and Ripley, who in their day had contentious and rocky relationships with the church. The website also devotes space to more secular Transcendentalists such as Bronson Alcott, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Henry David Thoreau.
The Saturday Club
Twenty years after he helped found the Transcendental Club, Emerson was happy to be a part of another social club, the Saturday Club, which met most often at (2) the Parker House, a hotel and restaurant at 60 School Street. It was much like the Transcendental Club in that it featured dinner and conversation among brilliant and highly educated men (although the Transcendental Club had included women too) and spawned a publication—in this case, the Atlantic Monthly.
Saturday Club members were more eclectic than the Transcendentalists, though, and by no means philosophically similar. They included the scientist Louis Agassiz, Judge Hoar of Concord, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow from Harvard, James Elliot Cabot, and various Transcendentalists in addition