Pantheism and Panentheism
The Iliff School of Theology
Prof. (Emeritus) Charles Milligan
23 July 1999
WERE THEY OR WEREN’T THEY? THE COMPATIBILITY OF TRANSCENDENTALISM WITH PANTHEISM: A UU PAGAN PERSPECTIVE
©2001 Khrysso Heart LeFey
It is a growing trend among Unitarian Universalist (UU) Pagan writers to draw parallels between UU Pagans and Transcendentalists.1 Indeed, one can observe a great deal of sympathy between the values they name, among them affirmation of "the inherent worth and dignity of every person," affirmation of "a free and responsible search for truth and meaning," and "respect for the interdependent web of life."2 However, it would be fallacious to cite this coincidence as proof that the movements are comparable. In light of the fact that the theo/alogy of many Neo-Pagans includes pantheism or pantheistic polytheism,3 it could be useful to explore the theo/alogies of several of the more prominent Transcendentalists to see if a pantheistic world view could serve as a valid criterion for comparison. Were or were not the Transcendentalists pantheists, as in fact several of them were accused by their contemporaries of being? This paper will examine the apparent religious beliefs of three prominent Transcendentalists--Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, and Theodore Parker--to answer that question, and then it will explore some corollary issues.
EMERSON: NAME-CALLING
Apparently it didn’t matter that Emerson never came right out and called himself a pantheist. His detractors, and there were many among Cambridge theologians, counted him one anyway, partly on account of his mystical language and partly on account of his outspoken regard for German mystics and poets, especially Kant.4 Other Transcendentalists were aware of his reputation, not to mention his beliefs, and pantheist or no, they were inclined to let Emerson bear the weight of the criticism on this count.5
In light of his writing, one can scarcely blame Emerson’s critics for calling him a pantheist; he gave them considerable evidence, of which his concept of the Oversoul is arguably the most convincing, if elusive. Catherine Albanese says,
"Even though he devotes extended thought [in his essay, 'The Over-Soul'] to the term and concept, the meaning of Emerson’s Oversoul is not precise. On the one hand, the Oversoul is God; but on the other, it is the divine part of human nature and the overarching collectivity in which all participate. It is the 'I' of each 'me,' but it is an I that transcends biography even as it celebrates it--an I that, like a tree with endless ground roots, encircles the earth and mingles with all that exists. The Oversoul is involved in matter yet moves beyond it as spirit."6
If one were to count on Albanese’s statement alone, cases could be established for calling Emerson a pantheist, a panentheist, or just a plain old mystic. But since the lesson of Transcendentalism is direct experience, it is of course better to consult the source.
In this quotation from Emerson’s essay "Self-Reliance," the statement, "Where he is, there is nature" leaves it totally up for grabs between pantheism and panentheism; it doesn’t say whether the realm of nature is contained within or congruent to the God-figure:
"There is a great responsible Thinker and Actor working wherever a man works . . . a true man belongs to no other time or place, but is the centre of things. Where he is, there is nature. He measures you and all men and all events."7
Likewise, although it is invoked from time to time by contemporary pantheists as proof that Emerson is one of them, this excerpt from the essay "Nature" doesn’t specify the boundaries of God:
"Standing on the bare ground--my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space--all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eyeball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulates through me; I am part or particle of God."8
His use of the word “ONE” in this excerpt from “The Over-Soul” carries more weight on the side of pantheism than the language of the other two, but it is still not definitive:
"Within man is the soul of the whole; the wise silence; the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related; the eternal ONE. And this deep power in which we exist and whose beatitude is all accessible to us, is not only self-sufficing and perfect in every hour, but the act of seeing and the thing seen, the seer and the spectacle, the subject and the object, are one. We see the world piece by piece, as the sun, the moon, the animal, the tree; but the whole, of which these are the shining parts, is the soul."9
Based on these three eloquent passages, I conclude that Emerson could most safely be said to have been a panentheist. Of course, his detractors in the 1830s didn’t have this word to wield against him, so according to the lexicon of the time, "pantheist" was as accurate as they could get.
FULLER: SOMETHING PAGAN ABOUT HER
Fuller, the best-known woman Transcendentalist and one of the most consistent figures in their circle, was an editor, essayist, poet, translator, and literary critic. She wrote a great deal on her political convictions--foremost of which was the empowerment of women--and far less on theology. For the purposes of this paper, I will draw my evidence on Fuller’s theological convictions from biographer Paula Blanchard.
It is highly unlikely that Fuller was either a pantheist or a panentheist, but she was sympathetic enough to Emerson’s reputed pantheism (along with the others’ political and religious stances) that she was chosen as first Editor of the Transcendentalist magazine the Dial for that very reason.10
Fuller had polytheistic leanings from age six, when her father introduced her to classical mythology, though her references to the Greek pantheon seem ultimately to have been metaphorical. Still, Blanchard says, "There was something pagan about Margaret, something of Juno or Ceres"11 and that Fuller had lifelong occult interests that began in those childhood days of mythological study.12
As for her theology during her adulthood, Blanchard says,
"Margaret’s own religious beliefs were neither complicated nor radical; she was probably closer to James Freeman Clarke in this respect than to any of the others. She believed in a loving, anthropomorphic God, although at this point in her life [1837, when she was 27] she did not believe He intervened in individual lives. Like her mother, she believed in a real Heaven with real souls in it, and she thought that she and everyone else except a few of the very wicked were going there. . . . She admired and sometimes caught a transitory glow from Emerson’s mysticism, but ultimately she found his idea of the Deity too cold and his idea of immortality too vague. She loved nature, but was essentially alienated from it and could function at her best only among people."13
From this description, there is really no reason to conclude that Fuller would fall down anywhere within the realm of what Charles Hartshorne would call the “pan-doctrinal” spectrum: her theology reflected a personal theism with a dash of virtual Universalism thrown in.
PARKER: IMMANENT AND TRANSCENDENT
Parker was at least as much a troublemaker as Emerson, as far as Unitarian ministers were concerned, but to their annoyance, he remained a Unitarian minister, while Emerson had left the pulpit, so they didn’t need to deal with the collegiality issue with him. Parker decided to "work within the system," as the saying goes, and his issue was a hot button for 1850s Unitarians, for Parker preached a completely naturalistic concept of the Divine. Nowadays, of course, such a suggestion wouldn’t raise an eyebrow in a UU congregation, but at the time, the local Unitarian ministers nearly came to drafting a creed that would exclude Parker. As it was, they blacklisted him from their pulpits. He considered his heresy to be clearly within the bounds of fair claims of a Transcendentalist, whether or not his cohort agreed with him.
One might think that a naturalistic stance would indicate a pantheistic world view, but in his last sermon, written shortly before he died and never delivered by him to his congregation, Parker proclaims his belief in the transcendence of God; these words from that sermon are clearly the worlds of a panentheist:
"The infinitely perfect God is immanent in the world of matter, and the world of spirit, the two hemispheres which to us make up the universe; each particle thereof is inseparable from Him, while He transcends both, is limited by neither, but in Himself is complete and perfect."14
TRANSCENDENTALISTS AS UU PAGAN FOREBEARS?
Based on this analysis of three of the most prominent members of the movement, one cannot logically generalize that the Transcendentalists were pantheists if pantheism excludes the concept of the transcendence of the Divine: Emerson, in the quoted passages, does not give enough criteria as to whether he includes or excludes it; Fuller was not too far from the Dominant Religious Paradigm (DRP) of the time (namely, theism of the Calvinistic/Unitarian stripe); and Parker out and out claims God to be transcendent in his summary of his life’s doctrine.
By that token, they cannot rightly be said to be the "spiritual forebears of UU Pagans" in the spiritual sense, since, arguably, pantheism sums up more Pagans’ theology than panentheism does,15 and UU Paganism is representative of Pagan theology at large. If they are forebears of anyone theologically, it might be New Age practitioners, since the New Age in general is more inclusive of transcendence than is Neo-Paganism in particular. Sociologist Michael York suggests this closer tie: "The original impetus for [the metaphysical] movement in the United States is to be found in the New England Transcendentalists."16
Emerson’s self-identity as a "disciple of Christ"17 ties him more closely to New Agers than to Pagans, too, since the New Age generally has more tolerance for the cosmic Christ image than Paganism does. It is also notable that one of the early names considered for the Transcendentalist movement was "The New School."18
In his 1842 essay, "The Transcendentalist," Emerson effectively describes the mystical aspects of Transcendentalism, tying his cohort with the Idealists of the world . . . if in fact he is speaking for all of them and not only for himself--the essay takes on a decidedly autobiographical, not to mention self-indulgent, tone about halfway through:
"What is popularly called Transcendentalism among us is Idealism.
"[Idealists] perceive that the senses are not final, and say, the senses give us representations of things, but what are the things themselves, they cannot tell.
"The Idealist has another measure, which is metaphysical, namely, the rank which things take themselves in his consciousness.... Mind is the only reality.... Nature, literature, history, are only subjective phenomena.
"Everything real is self-existent.... All that you call the world is the shadow of that substance which you are, the perpetual creation of the powers of thought, of those that are dependent and of those that are independent of your will.
"The transcendentalist adopts the whole connection of spiritual doctrine. He believes in miracle, in the perpetual openness of the human mind to new influx of light and power; he believes in inspiration, and in ecstasy.
"There must be a few persons of purer fire kept specially as gauges and meters of character; persons of a fine, detecting instinct. . . . Perhaps too there might be a room for the exciters and monitors; collectors of the heavenly spark with power to convey the electricity to others."19
There is another paragraph in the essay that is quite remarkable:
"It is a sign of the times, conspicuous to the coarsest observer, that many intelligent and religious persons withdraw themselves from the common labors and competitions of the market and the caucus, and betake themselves to a certain solitary and critical way of living, from which no solid fruit has yet appeared to justify their separation. They hold themselves aloof: they feel the disproportion between their faculties and the work offered them, and they prefer to ramble in the country and perish of ennui, to the degradation of such charities and such ambitions as the city can propose to them, They are striking work, and crying out for something worthy to do! What they do, is done only because they are overpowered by the humanities that speak on all sides; and they consent to such labor as is open to them, though to their lofty dream the writing of Iliads or Hamlets, or the building of cities or empires seems drudgery."20
What is remarkable about this paragraph is that it is not about doctrine or theology or even, really, philosophy; it’s about self-imposed exile, applicable to pantheists or Bohemians or gypsies or counterculturalists or hermits. It’s a description of a lifestyle choice that is intentionally beyond the pale and obviously tied to worldview. But while it may tell of how at least one Transcendentalists lived, it doesn’t say much about what all or most of them believed--though perhaps what one of them believed in. Ultimately, as was pointed out in class about pantheism, Transcendentalism is a philosophy, not a religion.
It is this sociological way that may actually tie the Transcendentalists to the modern Pagan community more than theology can. Within even just the community of UU-identified Pagans, there tends to be a highly visible population of people who live as Emerson describes. I, personally, was struck by how closely this paragraph describes how I lived for the seven years prior to enrolling in this course. It does not, however, portend any ties between me and any other Bohemian. None of the others in my free-wheeling circle were Pagans or any other kind of pantheists. The most that I can conclude from my experience is that there is some coincidence between the lives on some pantheists and some Transcendentalists. Though certainly by this characterization in "The Transcendentalist" there would be ample grounds for kinship between me and my cohort now and Emerson and his cohort then, I can see no reliable criterion for calling the Transcendentalists the spiritual forebears of the Neo-pantheists who gather with the UU Pagan community.
On second look, though, the important similarity between the Transcendentalists and Neo-pantheists is that what the circles they move in comprise is a cultural underground. The kinship is not based on common religion but on the common experience of having forsaken the DRP. The Transcendentalists, for the most part, forsook a highly visible cultural religious paradigm: in Boston in the 1830s, Unitarianism represented a large percentage of the Boston-area churchgoing population. Today, many pantheists who find their way into what Colin Campbell calls the "cultic milieu,"21 essentially another name for "the underground," have come out of today’s DRP, namely, "Judaeo-Christian" tradition; rarely do they come out of nothing.22 Ironically, UUism is historically part of the DRP, yet it is also a movement to which "come-outers" flee.
I posit that the milieu that includes pantheistic Paganism and Neo-Transcendentalism (The New Age) is the likely and reasonable direction in which today’s "come-outers" are likely to go upon leaving the DRP, because the paradigm including them and underlying it is pluralistic, naturalistic, pan/polytheistic, and oriented toward direct experience of the Numinous.
Martin Marty wrote in 1964, "Americans, if they deviate from historic Christian norms, exchange them for other theisms or for pantheism and not for atheism."23 In fact, he says, "Today’s man may, in his heart of hearts, already have opted for pantheism."24
Transcendentalism did actually set the stage for this important paradigm-shift, thanks to the emphasis on direct experience of the sensible as well as the Numinous (Emerson), feminism,25 (Fuller), the synthesis of the Immanent with the Transcendent (Parker), and, indirectly, multiculturalism (Parker), all of which were made issues by its adherents. Transcendentalism then and organized underground efforts now (including the more popular New Age practices and UU Paganism) have contributed to the syncretism of diverse worldviews into an increasingly visible and coherent alternate paradigm. Marty, again:
"In the various pantheisms and paganisms of history and power are seen the most powerful examples of Christianity’s aftermath in unbelief. They are powerful because they are institutionalized, consolidated, operative."26
Ultimately, when most people depart from the DRP, they would rather affirm something positive and move through to new levels of spiritual understanding than simply reject all that they’ve been taught and define their worldviews in negative terms. To transcend27 old worldviews, to move through Christianity to post-Christianity, requires a death-and-rebirth process, hearkening to what Nietzsche referred to as the "death of God." David Miller points out in The New Polytheism that "polytheism is Nietzche’s word for pluralism,28 which is what is inherent in the emerging paradigm. 'We are polytheists,' he says. 'The death of God gives rise to the rebirth of the Gods.'"29 Giving up old paradigms--killing off one’s concept of God--allows for new, affirmative worldviews:
"When released from the tyrannical imperialism and monotheism by the death of God, man has the opportunity of discovering new dimensions hidden in the depths of reality’s history. He may discover a new freedom to acknowledge variousness and many-sidedness. He may find, as if for the first time, a new potency to create imaginatively his hopes and desires, his laws and pleasures."30
One hundred fifty years after the rise of Transcendentalism, pluralistic world-views, including pantheism, polytheism, Paganism, and Neo-Transcendentalism/New-Age thinking are all continuing the process of creating an affirmative new paradigm for post-Christians to embrace.
UU Pagans, pantheistic and otherwise, owe a particular debt of gratitude to the pioneering work that the Transcendentalists, in leaving (or at least going beyond) Unitarianism and then giving back to it, left as a legacy to our movement. Says Pagan UU minister Christa Heiden Landon, a co-founder of the Covenant of UU Pagans,
"In the 1980s, the existence of the Transcendentalists and their role in UUism was something that UU Pagans could relate to with because of their reverence for the Immanent in nature. Any movement that could welcome Emerson, Thoreau, and Parker might have a place for Pagans as well: Emerson and Parker opened the door for the presence of non-Christian religions in UUism."31
Ultimately, it was their example, not their theology or any list of commonly-held beliefs, that earns the Transcendentalists their standing as spiritual forebears of UU Pagans.
_______________
NOTES
1. For example, Joan Van Becelaere, president of CUUPS, the Covenant of Unitarian Universalist Pagans, has just published an outline for an adult Religious Education curriculum in which she suggests that the Transcendentalists can fairly be named among the forebears of UU Pagans, and RE curriculum author Elizabeth Fisher is preparing a monograph in which she draws parallels between modern Pagans and the Transcendentalists. [PS: An article relating Transcendentalism to UU Paganism by Elizabeth Fisher and her husband Robert Fisher appeared in Connections Journal in the summer of 2000.]
2. These values are listed as per the Principles and Purposes of the Unitarian Universalist Association.
3. Adler, p. 25. Author Margot Adler is a UU Pagan and a former member of the CUUPS board of directors. Unless instructed otherwise, the reader may assume that “Pagan” and “Neo-Pagan” are synonymous.
4. Brooks, p. 196
5. Hutchison, p. 29.
6. Albanese, p. 91.
7. “Self-Reliance”
8. “Nature”
9. “The Over-Soul”
10. Blanchard, p. 154.
11. ibid., p. 128.
12. ibid, p. 127.
13. ibid., p. 126.
14. “Experience as a Minister,” sermon, written 1859, reproduced in Commager, p. 346).
15. Adler, pp. 24-25. This point has been argued by UU Pagans on the Internet, but by CUUPS standards the point has not been proven either way. It is my educated opinion as a CUUPS leader. [I served as a trustee of CUUPS-continental from 1998 to 2000.]
16. York, p. 33.
17. Sassian, p. 100.
18. Hutchison, p. 23.
19. “The Transcendentalist.”
20. ibid.
21. York, p. 252.
22. Less than 10 per cent of Pagans, a number which is representative of a broader community. Adler, p. 444.
23. Marty, p. 87.
24. ibid, p. 130.
25. Starhawk asserts, “The strongest mythogenic force at work today . . . is feminism.” (Starhawk, p. 196)
26. Marty, p. 128.
27. This use of “transcend” is, at least in part, the way it was meant in the development of the word “Transcendentalism.”
28. Miller, p. 3.
29. ibid, p. 4.
30. ibid., pp. 3-4.
31. Landon interview.
SOURCES
ADLER, MARGOT. Drawing Down the Moon: Witches, Druids, Goddess-Worshippers, and Other Pagans in America Today. (Boston: Beacon, 1979)
ALBANESE, CATHERINE L. The Spirituality of the American Transcendentalists. (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1988)
BLANCHARD, PAULA. Margaret Fuller: From Transcendentalist to Revolution. (New York: Dell, 1978)
BROOKS, VAN WYCK. The Flowering of New England 1815-1865, revised ed. (Dutton, 1940)
COMMAGER, HENRY STEELE. Theodore Parker: An Anthology. (Boston: Beacon, 1960)
EMERSON, RALPH WALDO. “Nature.” Self-published as a chapbook in 1836. (Republished by Dr. Jone E. Johnson on the World Wide Web)
________. “The Over-Soul.” First published in First Essays, 1841. In Catherine L. Albanese, The Spirituality of the American Transcendentalists. (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1988)
________. “Self-Reliance.” First published in First Essays, 1841. In Catherine L. Albanese, The Spirituality of the American Transcendentalists. (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1988)
________. “The Transcendentalist: A Lecture read at the Masonic Temple, Boston, January, 1842.” (Republished by Dr. Jone E. Johnson on the World Wide Web)
HUTCHISON, WILLIAM R. The Transcendentalist Ministers. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1959)
LANDON, CHRISTA HEIDEN, D. Min. Telephone interview, 18 July 1999.
MARTY, MARTIN E. Varieties of Unbelief. (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1964)
MILLER, DAVID L. The New Polytheism: Rebirth of the Gods and Goddesses. (New York: Harper & Row, 1974)
SASSIAN, DAVID. “Emerson, Ralph Waldo” pp. 100-101 in The Encyclopedia of Religion, ed. Mircea Eliade. (New York: Macmillan, 1987)
STARHAWK. The Spiral Dance. (San Francisco: Harper, 1979)
YORK MICHAEL. The Emerging Network: A Sociology of the New Age and Neo-Pagan Movements. (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1995)
CONSULTED BUT NOT CITED
ALBANESE, CATHERINE L. “Transcendentalism,”pp. 1117-1127 in Encyclopedia of the American Religious Experience, ed. Charles H. Lippy and Peter W. Williams. (New York: Scribners, 1988)
ANDREWS, BARRY M. Roots of Unitarian Universalist Spirituality in New England Transcendentalism. (Manhasset, NY: UU Congregation at Shelter Rock, n.d.)
HARTSHORNE, CHARLES. “Pantheism and Panentheism,” pp. 167-171 in The Encyclopedia of Religion, ed. Mircea Eliade. (New York: Macmillan, 1987)
HOCKING, WILLIAM E. The Meaning of God in Human Experience. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1912)