Unitarianism and Transcendentalism

Religion in America

Rise of Unitarianism

Effect of Enlightenment on urban New England churches

The “Unitarian controversy,” 1805, splits Congregationalism

◦ Appointment of Henry Ware to faculty of Harvard Divinity School

◦ Calvinists to Andover & Yale

William Ellery Channing

◦ Unitarianism’s publicizer

◦ Teaches a loving, immanent God

Transcendentalism

German “higher criticism”: Bible in doubt

Ralph Waldo Emerson, Unitarian minister

◦ Resigns, 1832; “corpse-cold Unitarianism”

◦ “Transcendental Club”

◦ Nature, 1836

Unitarian split heals in late 19th century

Western Unitarians grow more humanistic

Emerson, Nature, 1836

Through nature to God

Poetry

◦ William Cullen Bryant

◦ “Thanatopsis,” 1817

◦ Go forth, under the open sky, and list
To Nature’s teachings

◦ “A Forest Hymn,” 1824

◦ The groves were God’s first temples.

Through nature to God

Art

◦ Hudson River School

◦ Thomas Cole

◦ Frederic Church

◦ Albert Bierstadt