An offshoot of unitarianism founded by Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Here are the basic tenets of transcendentalism.
- A creator exists.
- This creator wants to be accessible to all his creatures.
- This creator made no special revelations to special groups and does not entrust the truth to any exclusive religion or philosophy.
- This creator has opened the channel of communication between himself and every soul.
- The soul is able to recognize and communicate with the creator.
- The soul can perceive its relationship to everything.
- Man needs solitude, reverence and faith to find this creator.
- Every man can be a mystic.
- Man can find the answers within himself. But also needs to observe nature to find answers there because nature contains patterns and principles.
- Once man has seen and discovered, he becomes a natural philosopher.
- Once he discovers the secret of the universe, he becomes a prophet or seer of the future.
- A prophet is a poet. His function is to speak.
- Every man can be a poet.
Per Andrew J. Brown, James Martineau’s Rationale of Religious Enquiry had a profound influence to the development of transcendentalism. According to Brown, most contemporary unitarian ministers “see themselves primarily as descendants of this Transcendentalist movement.” And since Shinichiro Imaoka has explicitly mentioned the influence Emerson had on him, it will also be an inspiration of his jiyu shukyo.
This connection between transcendentalism and free religion makes sense why I have always been attracted to Henry David Thoreau and why my desired life work is a combination of philosophy, contemplation, writing, walking (and other art forms like photography), and facilitating.
References
Brown, A. J. (2017, June 25). The Free Mind and the “Rationale of Religious Enquiry.” Caute — Making Footprints Not Blueprints. https://andrewjbrown.blogspot.com/2017/06/the-free-mind-and-rationale-of.html
Ripley’s positive review of Martineau’s book had a profound influence upon the subsequent development of the Transcendentalist movement and it began to help it definitively to move away from a biblically derived Christian Unitarianism.
it seems important to note that most modern British and American Unitarian ministers — including me — see themselves primarily as descendants of this Transcendentalist movement