The Transcendentalist Ministers

Book excerpt: This book, awarded the Brewer Prize by the American Society of Church History, is a study of the efforts of the Transcendentalists of the New England Renaissance to reform the Unitarian Church. Scholarly interpreters have, in general, agreed on the basic religious orientation of the Transcendentalist Movement. Mr. Hutchison, however, believes that it was far more than a tendency to appraise the universe in terms of an intuitive faith. Most of the men closely associated with the Movement in New England were Unitarian ministers, and he has concentrated on their attempt to apply transcendental thinking to theology and to the everyday problems of the parish ministry. At the same time he has produced a sympathetic appraisal of the conservative Unitarian position in his review of the so-called Transcendentalist Controversy. Yale Historical Publications, Miscellany 71. Mr. Hutchison is associate professor of American civilization at The American University in Washington, D.C.