Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walt Whitman, individualism, & the Anglican Diocese of Niagara

Poets show up in curious places:

Perhaps only in America could a major cultural figure such as Ralph Waldo Emerson become a spokesman for a popular brand of athletic shoes.  During a summer campaign in the late 1980’s, Reebok International put the clipped, gnomic sentences of “Self-Reliance” to work for selling designer sneakers.  In one spot from the twenty million dollar promotion, a fairy godmother, briefcase in hand, spouted Emersonian wisdom:  “Insist on yourself.  Never imitate.  To be great is to be misunderstood.”

(Roger Lundin, The Culture of Interpretation p 104)

At the same time that Tocqville was looking at this new thing called "America", Ralph Waldo Emerson was beginning to exert his own influence on the spirit of the new age.  Emerson was in a line of influential thinkers and writers for whom the Self was an ultimate authority, source of truth, and goal.   "To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men—that is genius’’ wrote Emerson in his influential essay Self Reliance (1841).  This essay was to become known later as Emerson's most forceful exposition of his particular brand of individualism. "Trust thyself" became the catchphrase of Emerson's thinking.

"Ne te quaesiveris extra."

Man is his own star; and the soul that can
Render an honest and a perfect man,
Commands all light, all influence, all fate;

Do not seek anything beyond yourself, you yourself are your "own star".  To be sure, Emerson's take on things was not a base form of misguided Epicurean pleasure seeking.  Or at least he didn't want it to come across as such.  Since the time of Descartes, the idea was floating around that autonomy, rather than authority, should be the starting point of all we do.  The only firm foundation, really, is myself.  For what else can I really know and what else can I really trust?  Forget things like creed and church -- look only within! On the one hand, the Emerson of "Self Reliance" has a point:  do not merely be cowed by the thinking of others - dare to stand against public opinion if you have to..  But then the principle upon which you stand is really only yourself.

Emerson was a wondeful journal keeper.  He detailed some of his thoughts from his time as a minister in the Second Church (Unitarian) in Boston.  Having started in ministry, he began to wander, and then move intentionally, away from historic Christianity.  Emerson began to have his doubts about both the teaching and practice of the Church.  By 1832 you can see that he was getting ready to quit the church's ministry:  "The profession is antiquated.  In an altered age, we worship the dead forms of our forefathers.  Were not a Socratic paganism better than an effete superannuated Christianity?" (Emerson in His Journals, ed Joel Porte, p 83).  Interestingly, most of this came to head over the issue of communion.  In a sermon on The Lord's Supper, Emerson outlines his objections to both the teaching and practice of the sacrament: 

Having recently given particular attention to this subject, I was led to the conclusion that Jesus did not intend to establish an institution for perpetual observance when he ate the Passover with his disciples; and, further, to the opinion, that it is not expedient to celebrate it as we do. I shall now endeavor to state distinctly my reasons for these two opinions.

Perhaps, though, Emerson's greatest reason was his concluding view of who Jesus is.  Emerson gave an address to his old school, Harvard Divinity.  In this address Emerson tells us what he thinks is the root of the problem:  "Historical Christianity has fallen into the error that corrupts all attempts to communicate religion. . . . It has dwelt, it dwells, with noxious exaggeration about the person of Jesus. The soul knows no persons."  And so he proceeded to jettison as so much baggage this historic-faith idea about "the person of Jesus", and found himself in opposition to those who held that Jesus is what the Church has taught about him - Son of God and Son of Man.  The soul, the "self", does not need to look to someone else (such as Jesus) - you only need, in the end, to look to yourself.  Be your own star.

Emerson discovered in the poet Walt Whitman a like minded individual.  In a letter responding to Whitman's "Leaves of Grass", Emerson wrote:  "I greet you at the beginning of a great career, which yet must have had a long foreground somewhere, for such a start." (Letter to Whitman, 21 July, 1855)  Whitman went on to be a disciple of Emerson.  Whitman began "Song of Myself" (Whitman, Poetry and Prose, Kaplan, 1982) with, well, as the title says:  "I celebrate myself, and sing myself, / And what I assume you shall assume..."   The poem continues with a romantic optimism in which "we discover that all of us are saved, because none of us are guilty" (Lundin, 147).   "Let the physician and the priest go home", Whitman declares, as this new version of free and romantic humanity, endlessly progressing humanity emerges.  Let the romantic poet of the "self" usher in a better kingdom than the kingdom of God.

Which brings me to another interesting use of Emerson's thought and Whitman's influence in contemporary culture.  It appears the the Anglican Diocese of Niagara is poised to offer same sex blessings, according to the Anglican Journal:

The decision by the diocese of Niagara to offer same-sex blessings has drawn mixed reactions from Anglicans in Canada.

Similarly, backlash over the recent decision by the Episcopal Church (TEC) to affirm the openness of “any ordained ministry” to gay and lesbian people and to develop more liturgical resources for same-sex blessings reflects the continuing deep divide over sexuality in the Anglican Communion.

“As a bishop, I cannot recognize the legitimacy of what Niagara is doing,” said Bishop Bill Anderson of the diocese of Caledonia. “I sadly conclude that Niagara has chosen to walk apart, and is therefore in a state of impaired communion.”

In an interview, Bishop Anderson said “bishops simply do not have the spiritual, theological or canonical authority to change the teaching of the church at the local level, however much their diocesan synods may do so.” He added that this point was “clearly articulated” by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, at the 2008 Lambeth Conference, the decennial gathering the world’s Anglican bishops.

When you look at the text of the proposed liturgy, you can follow along with this:

PART 2: The Proclamation of the Word
Which includes one or more of these elements:
a) One or more readings from the Hebrew or Greek scriptures
b) A reading from an appropriate secular source.

Note the language (it's the same used by Emerson - "the Hebrew [and] Greek Scriptures".  It was Emerson's way of describing texts which are 'culturally bound'.  And the choices suggested for readings "from an appropriate secular source":

We Two Boys Together Clinging
by Walt Whitman
(1819-1892)

We two boys together clinging,
One the other never leaving,
Up and down the roads going, North and South excursions making,
Power enjoying, elbows stretching, fingers clutching,
Arm'd and fearless, eating, drinking, sleeping, loving.
No law less than ourselves owning, sailing, soldiering, thieving,
threatening,
Misers, menials, priests alarming, air breathing, water drinking, on
the turf or the sea-beach dancing,
Cities wrenching, ease scorning, statutes mocking, feebleness chasing,
Fulfilling our foray.

"No law less than ourselves owning" .  It is the fundamental question before the church still under the influence of the power of the "romantic self".  Are we a law unto ourselves?  Are we, 'ourselves', the highest authority that needs to be obeyed, followed, listened to? Is this the appropriate (it certainly is secular) reading?  If so, what does it teach us?  For the school of Emerson, Whitman and those who follow in their line of thinking, the goal is the dismissal of the old cumbersome Christianity, with its emphasis on the "noxious exaggeration of the person of Jesus".

Comments

[anthony]

whitman also talked about being one with everyone and one being everyone with him--deft not a xian, but not believing that he was a law into himself.

did i ever send you the paper that compared james and whitman?

[joseph]

"Of all the countries of the world, America is the one in which the precepts of Descartes are least studied and best followed" - Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1851) "Democracy in America".

I think de Tocqueville had it correct. The American romantic individualism, the assurance that the "self" is the ultimate authority, is the most prevalent characteristic of our culture. And I agree with him that it is also the least understood of our presuppositions.

Send me the paper on James & Whitman, I'll be at the lake over the weekend & will have a look.

[anthony]

it's not mine. but have emailed a pdf

(i think Tocqueville misses some of the more commuintarian energy in American thot, it is a struggle b/w both of them)

[Tim Chesterton]

Al theological issues aside, the Niagara Rite really is a very bad piece of liturgy. One of the commentators over at Thinking Anglicans calls it an 'awful, badly written, tacky ceremony'. I agree.

[anthony]

i mean the problem with the new liturgies is they tend to be politics over language...though the BCP still has prayers to gaurd against mensturating women, and to convert the jews, both of which perhaps should no longer be in the active liturgy.

[joseph]

tim - I concur.

anthony - got the essay, thanks, & was working on the other front but my first choice has since left town. Will tryto look for a few others.

On another front, I think I'll clean up iphoto and post some more pics for the next few weeks...

[anthony]

yea, fotos!

[Kate]

"To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men—that is genius’’

That isn't genius, that is insanity.

[Leslie]

>>though the BCP still has prayers to gaurd against mensturating women

I suspect this is still a common prayer for many.

As you were...

[joseph]

anthony - where is that prayer? I thought I knew the BCP pretty well, but haven't run across it.

Leslie - not touching that one with a barge pole...