ormal” and “vague and passionless.” (The National Experience, pg. 261). The religion was also beginning to focus more on material success, rather than spiritual well being. While the foundation of Unitarianism began to lose its fervor, a new movement was forming. In and around Boston, a romantic movement was beginning and the rational ideas of Unitarianism began to lose favor. Romanticists rejected the idea that experience and “pure reason” were the keys to truth and instead believed that intuition was the way to go. Romanticists believed that there was a level of enlightenment that could only be reached through spiritual insight. Romanticism brought about a new era of thought and provoked new viewpoints on theology and philosophy. In 1836, a group of intellectuals living around Boston, Massachusetts began meeting informally to exchange ideas on theology and philosophy. The group was not organized at all, but the members did give their group a name - The Transcendental Club. If the club had bothered to keep a list of members, it would have been a very distinguished list. At one time or another, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Amos Bronson Alcott, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Margaret Fuller were all members of the club. It eventually became apparent that the calm rationalism upon which Unitarianism was based could not satisfy the Transcendentalists’ yearning for a more intense spiritual experience. The group believed that one’s own intuition, no matter how irrational, was the most reliable avenue to truth and God. Transcendentalists also believed that people were intrinsically good and that they didn’t need to use their intellect to make them so. It was the belief of the Transcendentalists that people didn’t have to “learn” to be good because the desire to be decent and good was part of every person’s soul. This concept is made very clear in an essay written by ...
