“THERE ARE HUNDREDS OF WAYS TO KNEEL AND KISS THE GROUND: A NEW TRANSCENDENTALISM”

A paper by the Rev. Roger Bertschausen

Presented to the Prairie Group on November 4, 2004

I. Introduction

As a relative newcomer to Prairie Group, I had the vague impression that getting assigned a paper just two years after delivering another paper was unlikely. So my heart sank when Program Committee member Nichole Kirk’s call last spring swiftly and utterly disabused me of this impression.

And then, as if covering Transcendentalism and its relationship to the contemporary surge of interest in spirituality among Unitarian Universalists wasn’t enough, the Program Committee included in my assignment a special focus on “paganism.” The combination of knowing I would defend paganism—or the more inclusive term “earth-centered spirituality” which I shall use in this paper—as fitting within the big tent of Unitarian Universalism and my awareness of the general hostility many in this esteemed group feel toward paganism added immeasurably to the sense of dread I had in acquiescing to the Prairie Group discipline.

In fulfilling this assignment, I will need to paint rather broad strokes before getting to the issue of Transcendentalism and earth-centered spiritualities. This is because the Transcendentalism of the middle nineteenth century and a new Transcendentalism for this age don’t necessary lead to or favor earth-centered spiritualities. Earth-centered spiritualities are not Transcendentalism’s punch-line. Rather, Transcendentalism opens the door to earth-centered spiritualities, among other spiritualities.

So I shall begin with some broad brush strokes.

II. Setting the Stage: Pluralism and the Contemporary Thirst for Spirituality

The Unitarian Universalist Association is currently in the midst of a momentous transition. For most of the twentieth century, humanism was the dominant philosophical viewpoint in Unitarian Universalism. But the waning years of the twentieth century and the first years of the twenty-first have seen a change: humanism is no longer the dominant philosophy within our Unitarian Universalism. This is not to say humanism has disappeared or is now unimportant; on the contrary, a significant number of UUs continue to be staunch humanists, and some UU congregations continue to have a primarily or even exclusively humanist identity. Humanism remains a profoundly important philosophical viewpoint in Unitarian Universalism. But looking at the UU movement as a whole, humanism is no longer dominant—and this is a very significant change indeed.

This is not the first time in UU history that we have undergone such a momentous philosophical transition[1]. In fact, I would suggest it’s the third ground-shifting transition in American UU history. The first happened in the 1830s and 40s, when Unitarian Transcendentalists rejected the Christian domination of their faith in favor of a more eclectic approach. Central to this rejection was the Transcendentalist challenge of the Bible as the only or even the principal source of divine revelation. Transcendentalist Unitarians declared that there are equally insightful truths to be discovered in the sacred texts of other world religions—and in nature and even in our own souls. The upshot of the Transcendentalist revolution, worked out over many decades, was this: Christianity was no longer the dominant philosophical viewpoint in Unitarianism. Instead, a more general theism became the dominant philosophy. Although Christianity was no longer the dominant viewpoint, a significant number of Unitarians continued to identify themselves as Christian.

The second momentous philosophical transition occurred in the early part of the twentieth century: humanism replaced theism as the dominant philosophical viewpoint in Unitarianism. Once again, the viewpoint that lost dominance did not become extinct in Unitarian circles. Theism simply was no longer dominant. And now we are in the third enormous transition in American Unitarian Universalism: the end of humanism as our dominant philosophy.

Why is this transition happening now? Primarily it is a reflection of a wider trend in our American culture: a resurgence of interest in spirituality that dates back to the 1960s. For these past thirty or forty years, Americans in vast numbers have turned to spirituality, chiefly I believe in an effort to discover ways to cope with and understand all of the challenges of our age. This trend shows no sign of abating.

One principal place Americans are looking for spirituality is in evangelical Christian churches, which are in the midst of an explosion in growth and vitality. This is certainly evident in my hometown of Appleton, Wisconsin, where four evangelical Christian churches now each have several thousands of members, while Catholic, Lutheran and other main line congregations are mostly mired in a decades-long decline. Just in the past couple years, two of these huge evangelical churches have built new facilities to the tune of nine million dollars each—and that represents only the first phase of their long-term construction plans. The only mainline church to approach this kind of explosive growth in the Appleton area is a Lutheran church which is attempting to mimic the style and fervor of these four evangelical congregations.

Eugene Taylor highlights the significance of this contemporary spiritual resurgence when he compares it to the First Great Awakening that took place in the years before the Revolutionary War, and to the Second Great Awakening that took place in the middle years of the nineteenth century.[2] Though many people tend to associate the earlier awakenings with more conservative religious expressions, Taylor asserts that the first two Awakenings historically were expressed in liberal as well as conservative congregations. He persuasively makes the case, for example, that Transcendentalism can be understood in part as an expression of a resurgence of interest in spirituality in liberal (mostly Unitarian) congregations. He argues that the contemporary spiritual awakening also finds expression in both liberal and conservative congregations.[3]

As was the case in liberal as well as conservative congregations in the previous Awakenings, an important aspect of this contemporary Awakening is a desire for more emotional expression in spirituality—a desire to make sure the heart as well as the head are addressed in ones spiritual life. Though certainly it is manifested in ways quite different from evangelical Christian churches, we can see in recent years this resurgence of interest in a more emotional spirituality in many—probably most—UU congregations as well. The upsurge in a more emotional spirituality has been widely noted and discussed in UU circles for more than a decade now. For many UUs, the once dominant humanist philosophical orientation has not felt conducive to spirituality and a higher emotional content. There is therefore a correlation between the rise in interest in a more emotional spirituality and the loss of humanism’s dominance.

Rather than leading to a particular spiritual expression, the search for more spirituality has led UUs to an increasingly wide array of spiritualities and religious traditions. This is certainly evident in the adult programming in my congregation, which includes Native American talking circles, Zen Buddhist and Tibetan Buddhist meditation groups, earth-centered drumming circles, a goddess group, a primarily Christian prayer group as well as humanist groups.[4] This pluralism of spiritualities reflects the eclecticism that Taylor observes in contemporary American culture.

As discussed above, in looking at the history of dominant philosophical orientations within Unitarian Universalism, an important point is that this is not the first time in our history that a dominant philosophy has lost its pre-eminence. But I hope it will be the last. I say this because I believe a genuine pluralism within Unitarian Universalism is poised to take the place of any particular dominant philosophy. Instead of some new philosophy marching in to take the place of humanism—which took the place of theism, which took the place of Christianity—I am hoping that we will no longer have a dominant philosophical viewpoint: not Christianity, not theism, not humanism, not any particular philosophy or theology.

This is exactly what is happening in my congregation. Once dominated by humanists, my congregation no longer has a dominant philosophical viewpoint. We have humanists, and Christians, and theists, and pagans, and Buddhists, and Native Americans, and Hindu and Muslim members, among others. What’s more, we are pretty evenly spread along the philosophical spectrum. All of these spiritual paths and more are welcome in our big tent which is the Fox Valley Unitarian Universalist Fellowship. Our rapid growth has been fueled more than anything else by this noteworthy but not always easy transition to a pluralism of philosophical and spiritual orientations.

Of course some might argue that pluralism is itself a philosophical orientation or ideology, little different from Christianity, theism or humanism. I reject this argument: I think that because of its expansiveness, pluralism is qualitatively different from a particular philosophical viewpoint. Pluralism lacks the more restrictive boundaries of a particular philosophy or theology. Take Christianity, for example. While there are countless variations of Christianity, they all are bounded by certain notions: the centrality of Jesus’ message to one’s spirituality, for example. This type of boundary is not present in pluralism.

Perhaps a definition of “pluralism” will help. I like Diana Eck’s definition:

Pluralism is not an ideology, not a leftist scheme, and not a free-form relativism. Rather, pluralism is the dynamic process through which we engage with one another in and through our very deepest differences.[5]

Pluralism, she also writes, is not just about the differences between people, but also about “engagement, involvement, and participation” between diverse people. Pluralism “requires participation, and attunement to the life and energies of one another.” Essential to true, thriving pluralism is a sense of respect, mutuality and reciprocity as people with different beliefs and understandings deeply engage with one another. And Eck asserts that pluralism isn’t about “finding a common faith that is acceptable to all, watering down one’s own faith so it will be palatable to someone of another faith.”[6]

My central goal at the Fox Valley UU Fellowship is to embody Eck’s vision of pluralism. People with different philosophies, theologies or spiritualities must not just hang out among those of similar orientation, but must also engage with those in the congregation who have different orientations. When this happens, then my Fellowship will be truly pluralistic. It’s not enough for members of the Zen Buddhist meditation group and the Native American talking circle and the Christian prayer group to interact only within their groups; they must also engage with one another across the religious divides that separate them, sharing with one another the differences and the commonalities of their particular philosophical orientations. The point is not for all of these folks to arrive at a common (melting pot) spiritual viewpoint, but rather for each person to go deeply into his or her viewpoint and to share its depth with others who don’t hold that viewpoint. In doing so, the individual spiritual journeys of those on both ends of the dialogue will deepen. And members will experience first-hand something the world desperately needs: the opportunity to talk with rather than oppress or kill people who hold different religious viewpoints.

III. The Seeds of Contemporary UU Pluralism

I believe that the seeds of this contemporary pluralism in Unitarian Universalism can be found in our own UU religious tradition—and particularly in Transcendentalism. I should take a moment to make explicit the claim that Transcendentalism is a part of our UU heritage. Although Transcendentalism labels a movement that encompassed more than our faith, we can certainly consider Transcendentalism to be part of our UU heritage. As Capper and Wright note, with few exceptions Transcendentalism “grew in the spiritual soil of American Unitarianism.”[7] Transcendentalism was us—and is, as I shall argue, us.

The seeds of the pluralism so central to contemporary Unitarian Universalism are manifest in Transcendentalism in three different ways. First and foremost, the Transcendentalists put individual freedom at the heart of the liberal religious journey. Transcendentalism’s pivotal shift of the locus of authority from a sacred book, leader or tradition to the intuition of the individual paved the way for the centrality of individual freedom. As Lawrence Buell notes, Emerson’s central project was “the unchaining of human minds”[8]—unchaining human minds from creeds and dogmas and conventions.

Emerson’s resignation from Boston’s Second Unitarian Church illustrates the primacy he put on the freedom of the individual. He resigned because he refused to administer the communion ritual. Given the centrality of communion in the Christian church, this was, of course, no minor issue. Staking out a stark position on communion—“I won’t do it”—certainly got people’s attention and crystallized the full implication of the shift in the locus of authority. In a sermon outlining his position, he articulated a strong claim for individual freedom—including the freedom to abandon communion for no other reason than that he no longer found it suitable:

To pass by other objections, I come to this, (that) this mode of commemorating Christ is not suitable to me. That is reason enough why I should abandon it. If I believed that it was enjoined by Jesus on his disciples, and that he even contemplated to make permanent this mode of commemoration…and yet on trial it was disagreeable to my own feelings, I should not adopt it…I am not engaged to Christianity by decent forms; it is not saving ordinances, it is not usage, it is not what I do not understand that engages me to it—let these be the sandy foundation of falsehoods. What I revere and obey is its deep interior life…Freedom is the essence of Christianity…Its institutions should be as flexible as the wants of men. That form out of which the life and suitableness have departed should be as worthless in its eyes as the dead leaves that are falling around us.[9]

As Buell notes about this statement: “Here for the first time in public Emerson becomes Emerson, the Emerson of the later essays who affirms the divinity of the self, the cornerstone of Transcendentalism.”[10] Emerson makes this even more explicit several years later in the Divinity School Address when he asserts that what was most significant about Jesus was that he “saw with open eye the mystery of the soul:” namely, that “God incarnates himself in man.” According to Emerson, Jesus said in this “jubilee of sublime emotion,” “‘I am divine. Through me, God acts; through me, speaks. Would you see God, see me; or see thee, when thou also thinkest as I now think.’”[11] The divinity of the self becomes the central truth of Christianity, and the central truth of Emerson’s increasingly universalistic faith. And with this truth comes a corresponding truth for Emerson: “Freedom is the essence of Christianity,” as well as the essence of Emerson’s increasingly post-Christian faith.