Mark Twain is supposed to have said, “If history doesn’t repeat itself, it at least rhymes.”  Though we didn’t quite put it that way in my American religion history presentation this week, there sure are lots of rhymes between Transcendentalism and contemporary American spirituality.

So to refresh your memory, Transcendentalism was lived-out and interpreted in many different ways by the thinkers of its day, but we can describe it at least as a uniquely American response to Romanticism influenced by the religion of Boston (particularly Harvard Unitarians) in the early 19th century.

You’ll probably remember the big names are part of Transcendentalism — Emerson and Thoreau — but there were also plenty of smaller folks we don’t remember today but who influenced thoughts of the day.

So what what was Transcendentalism?  Briefly: A group of religious freethinkers who embrace a religious liberalism.

And according to Horatio Dresser, a later fan of spiritualism, it included broadly speaking

• individual aspiration after mystical experience or religious feeling
• the valuing of silence, solitude, and serene mediation
• the immanence of the transcendent–in each person and nature
• the cosmopolitan appreciation of religious variety as well as unity in diversity
• ethical earnestness in pursuit of justice-producing reforms
• an emphasis on creative self-expression and adventure-some seeking

I’ve not taken any courses myself, but I’m going to posit that my seminary’s certificate programs in spiritual formation do all the same things as Dresser’s description of transcendentalism.

Through Columbia’s courses on spiritual formation students go on meditation retreats, walk labyrinths, take classes on creation, seek to understand “neighbor” in the broadest form, consider how to act justly, and emphasize self-expression beyond papers for the classroom.

And, to put it awkwardly, Columbia is by no means the most transcendentalist of seminaries.

So go read some Twain — and maybe some Thoreau — and consider if you have a Transcendentalist within.

image by win john