Professor examines Transcendentalists of the 19th century

UNC-CH professor examines the Transcendentalists of the 19th century

Faith is under siege.

Through their best-selling books, Richard Dawkins ("The God Delusion"), Christopher Hitchens ("God is Not Great") and Sam Harris ("The End of Faith") are leading widespread efforts to challenge the historical, scriptural and psychological foundations of religious belief.

But, as Philip F. Gura reveals in "American Transcendentalism" (Hill and Wang, $27.50, 365 pages), this is hardly the first time that faith has been tested. In his crisply written history, Gura, a professor of American literature and culture at UNC-Chapel Hill, focuses on the period 1830-50, when challenges to religious belief led to a flowering of American thought centered in and near Boston.

As he details the Transcendentalists' rich stew of ideas, Gura debunks myths that surround them. He reminds us the movement had many more leaders than writers Ralph Waldo Emerson ("Self-Reliance") and Henry David Thoreau ("Walden"); that community-minded reform efforts were integral to this movement famous for its celebration of the individual, and that European thinkers greatly influenced this quintessentially American phenomenon.

In a recent phone interview, Gura discussed his work, which is a finalist for the National Book Critics Award for Nonfiction, whose winners will be announced March 6.

Q: Transcendentalism is usually remembered as a philosophical movement epitomized by the largely secular writings of Emerson and Thoreau. Why is that wrong?

A: Transcendentalism began as a religious demonstration in the 1820s and '30s. Nearly all of its early lights were clergymen of the Unitarian school.

Q: What motivated them?

A: Unitarianism was seen as a religion of rationality, of intelligence and logic. And during this time there were profound intellectual challenges to faith.

Q: Such as?

A: Beginning in the late 18th century, European scholars began developing what's known as "higher criticism." That is, they began applying the historical and linguistic tools used to understand secular works to sacred texts. Through this approach, they identified some of the contradictions and inconsistencies in the Bible; they saw that it was written by particular people at particular times and a product of that culture. This approach undercut the belief that the Bible contained the absolute words of God.

Q: How did the Transcendentalists respond?

A: The Transcendentalists did not speak in a single voice or hold one set of views. But the Unitarian minister William Ellery Channing, for example, responded by saying that instead of being literally the word of God, the Bible contained it.

Q: Is it fair to say that they had the rug pulled out from under their feet and they were looking for a new footing for their faith?

A: What they were looking for was the centrality of the religious message. They were looking for that which transcends things. That's why this group was very open to sacred texts from other cultures. They wanted to find what was underneath it all.

Q: Didn't some see a distinction between religion and theology?

A: Yes, George Ripley, for example, described theology as a set of propositions "for and against which we may dispute" while religion was "a matter of the inward nature, the higher consciousness of man."

Q: That inward-gaze seems to define Transcendentalism.

A: Right. The idea is that religion is internal, that you don't base your faith on reading a book. The message of the Transcendentalists is that we are all holy, we are all divine. You have to discover that consciousness, which links you to the higher truth.