Religious Influences

Ralph Waldo Emerson and Religion

In A Historical Guide to Ralph Waldo Emerson, David M. Robinson’s essay, “Emerson and Religion” discusses the major role that religion and spirituality played in shaping many of Emerson’s writings. During the 1820’s, Emerson’s religious roots were primarily drawn from his father who was “among the leading ministers of the anti-Calvinist liberal party who had led most of the established churches in Boston area to a theological stance that was characterized as . . . Unitarian.” (152) Rather than accept the Calvinist belief that one’s salvation was entirely dependent on God, Unitarians believed that salvation included a moral cultivation of the self. In 1827, Emerson became a minister of the Second Church in Boston, but struggled with the role as he continually tried to “push at the accepted boundaries of Unitarian theology” and resigned in 1832. (157)
At this time, he voyaged to Europe and a few years later published Nature in 1836. His first major text included “the three key strands of his thought—a belief in the human access to the moral sense, a vision of all reality as ‘one mind,’ and a conviction that the study of nature could help reveal that comprehensive unity.” (159) His second book, Essays (1841), included his extended thoughts previously publicized in his lectures about the development of the soul and specifically, the importance of transcendence as expressed in “Spiritual Laws” and “The Over-Soul.” These essays also demonstrate the effect of Eastern philosophy on Emerson and his “affinity with Hinduism’s mythical representations of the indwelling of God in the individual, and the concept of the universe as the manifestation of one mind.” (165)
Robinson later discusses how the tragic event of the death of Emerson’s son, Waldo, in 1842 had him question his spiritual life and the pursuit of happiness. That year, his essay, “Experience”, was published where he argued: “the true romance which the world exists to realize, will be the transformation of genius into practical power. “ (168) During the 1840s and 1850s Emerson displayed his use of “practical power” as he became more politically involved and was a prominent voice for the abolition of slavery.