- Time Period
- 5/25/1803 - 4/27/1882
- Description
- Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Transcendentalism was a variation of European Romanticism and a response to both Unitarianism and declining Calvinism. Initially, he was a young Unitarian minister for three years until he became disenchanted with the "cold" and "unenthusiastic" mindset of Unitarianism. Likewise, he found Calvinism too exclusivist and overly focused on abstract doctrines like original sin. Inspired by the powerful language of Romanticism, he espoused embracing the Spirit without the rigidity of law beginning with his sermon, "[Harvard] Divinity School Address" in 1836. Rejecting Christ’s miracles and the "myths" of Christianity, he believed that life was a miracle and that God dwelled in all things. This way of thinking made Emerson an important figure in Transcendentalist thought.Emerson’s work influenced both churched and unchurched Americans, including poet Walt Whitman, clergyman Henry Ward Beecher, and prominent businessman John D. Rockefeller, who embraced Emerson’s call for self-reliance.
- Interactive Timeline(s)
- Prominent Religious Events and People in American History Religious Minorities (Non-Christian)
- Browse Related Timeline Entries
- Prominent Religious Events and People in American History Religious Minorities (Non-Christian) in American History
- Events
- The Second Great Awakening
- Movements
- Transcendentalism
- Photographs
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Ralph Waldo Emerson portrait- Internet Archive- from Ralph Waldo Emmerson, John Lothrop Motley, Two Memoirs by Oliver Wendell Holmes -
Ralph Waldo Emerson reading- National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution -
Ralph Waldo Emerson study- Library of Congress, LC-USZ62-92337 -
Wife and son of Ralph Waldo Emerson- Internet Archive- from Journals of Ralph Waldo Emerson -
Ralph Waldo Emerson statue- Library of Congress, LC-USZ62-132129 - Book/Journal Source(s)
- Reid, Daniel, Robert Linder, Bruce Shelley, and Harry Stout, 1990. Dictionary of Christianity in America. Downers Grove, IL.
- Web Page Contributor
- Benjamin T. Gurrentz Affliated with: Pennsylvania State University, Ph.D. in Sociology
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Emerson, Ralph Waldo
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