Showing posts with label Parker Palmer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Parker Palmer. Show all posts

2022/07/24

LA Quaker: "Transformative Quakers"--my latest book--focuses on three amazing California Quakers

LA Quaker: "Transformative Quakers"--my latest book--focuses on three amazing California Quakers

Wednesday, July 2, 2014

"Transformative Quakers"--my latest book--focuses on three amazing California Quakers

Transformative Friends

I am pleased that my latest book, Transformative Quakers, is now available online. It consists of biographies of three remarkable California Quakers--William Lovett, Robert Vogel, and Josephine Duveneck--who made a difference in the world, working for peace, helping the poor, and caring for children and youth.You can order this book through Amazon. https://www.createspace.com/4832073

The book is an outgrowth of a series of lectures called “Transformative Friends” that was started by Brian Vura-Weis at Pacific Yearly Meeting (PYM). Over the years, Transformative Friends lectures have focused on notable Quakers such as William Penn, Elizabeth Fry, John Greenleaf Whittier, Thomas Kelly and Howard Brinton. This booklet focuses on Quakers closer to home.

In 2013, Pacific Yearly Meeting established a “Bob Vogel Fund” to help fund youth projects. This fund came from the Pacific Friends Outreach Society (PFOS), of which Bill Lovett was a founding member. It therefore seemed appropriate to honor these two Friends who cared deeply about young people and Quaker education. Josephine Duveneck also cared deeply about young people and organized many youth activities at Hidden Villa Ranch in Palo Alto. It seemed fitting to include her in this volume, especially since Quakers from the very beginning have recognized the importance of women called to prophetic ministry. Peace and justice cannot be achieved without men and women at all levels of society working together.

Bill Lovett has been a beloved and respected member of the Pacific Yearly Meeting since coming to California with his family in 1965. A birth-right Friend whose family became Quakers in the time of William Penn, Bill was born in 1923 in Fallsington, a small rural Quaker community in Pennsylvania not far from the Delaware River. He has been a passionate pacifist all his life and served time in prison during World War II because of his uncompromising commitment to conscientious objection. Bill refused to seek CO status as a Quaker because he wanted CO status to be extended to non-religious people of conscience.  Bill became involved in helping low-income farmworkers in the Central Valley build affordable homes through Self-Help Enterprises, a precursor to Habitat for Humanity. He and his wife Beth helped to found Visalia Meeting and built its beautiful meetinghouse in a lot near their farm. In the latter years of his life, Bill became involved in efforts to establish a permanent site where Pacific Yearly Meeting could hold its annual session. This cause attracted many young Friends who became acquainted with the Lovetts through Quaker Oaks farm. When the permanent site project was no longer deemed feasible, its funds were turned over to PYM to be used for its fledgling Youth Service Program.

I came to know Bill through the Youth Service Program that I helped to start for Southern California Quarterly Meeting and the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC). In 1994, I took a youth group to the Central Valley to do a project with Self-Help Enterprises and we stayed at the Visalia Meetinghouse. There Bill shared with us his amazing story, much to the delight of our young volunteers. I must add that when my wife Jill heard Bill’s story at a PYM gathering, she was so impressed she insisted we stop off in Visalia and record it. The afternoon we spent with the Lovetts at Quaker Oaks Farm was not only an unforgettable experience, it was also the genesis of this booklet!

Like Bill, Robert Vogel (1917-1998) was a conscientious objector during WW II. Born in Rochester, NY, Bob became a Quaker during grad school and spent three years in a Civilian Public Service (CPS) camp rather than join the military. There he began working for the AFSC—an organization that he served faithfully for over forty years. Bob moved to Pasadena with his wife Etta and lived there for the rest of his life. During his years as AFSC staff, he worked on peace education and traveled through the world visiting and supporting Quaker work in China, Japan, Africa, the Middle East, Latin America and the Soviet Union—as well as visiting Friends throughout the United States. He built bridges not only with America’s “enemies,” but also between different branches of Quakers: he was a true ambassador for peace. He also worked on local issues, moving into a low-income, multicultural area of Pasadena, serving on the Pasadena Healthy Start Program, the LA County Children’s Planning Council, and the ACLU. In addition, he and his wife raised a family of four children: Janice, David, Jonathan, and Russell. Jonathan Vogel-Borne followed in his father’s footsteps, worked for the Friends Meeting in Cambridge, served for many years as yearly meeting secretary of New England Yearly Meeting, and is currently giving the keynote address at Pacific Yearly Meeting’s 2014 annual session. Thanks to Jonathan, I was given permission to publish excerpts from Bob’s unpublished memoir in this booklet.

I first became acquainted with Bob when I moved to California and had scruples about signing a loyalty oath after landing a teaching position at El Camino College in 1989. He gave the support and materials I needed to explain to the dean why, as a Quaker, I could not sign such an oath in good conscience. As I came to know Bob, my respect and admiration for him grew. My most memorable experience occurred when I was helping to start the youth program in Southern California. During a somewhat contentious meeting, Bob calmly stood up and spoke with deep feeling about the need to support youth programs. As he spoke, he put his hands on my shoulders and I felt a surge of energy course through my body that I can only describe as the Holy Spirit. At that moment I felt confident that the youth program would be approved and succeed, and it did. I knew that Bob was truly a man in touch with the Spirit, as his life and writings clearly testify.

Josephine Duveneck (1891-1978) came from a well-to-do Boston family and had a deep concern for social justice, peace and young people. In a memorial address (July 8, 1978) Paul Seaver, a history professor at Stanford University, wrote: “Josephine Duveneck joined Palo Alto Meeting in 1937 and on several occasions served as Clerk of Meeting for a total of nine years. She was largely responsible for the fact that our present meeting house is located in one of the few interracial neighborhoods in Palo Alto. Her contributions to Friends’ concerns were manifold and manifest: let me just mention her work with Japanese Americans, interned during World War II, and with Native Americans, which led to the Indian Program of the AFSC’s Northern California office...” Seaver goes on to point out that many of the children of Palo Alto Meeting spent time during the formative years at Hidden Villa, a ranch that the Duvenecks turned into a summer camp and retreat center. As the Los Altos Historical Society notes, “Hidden Villa became a center for social, educational, environmental, and humanitarian activities. In summer it was a youth camp, to which the Duvenecks brought minority and disadvantaged children, and minority counselors, which given the mostly white demographics of the San Francisco Peninsula, was particularly unusual and innovative. It had the first youth hostel on the Pacific Slope. World War II refugees and Japanese-American victims of the World War II ‘relocation’—internment—were released to Hidden Villa. Gatherings included church outings, interracial parties, and fundraisings. Minority groups were welcome. The hostel accommodated a Moslem group which met to instruct children in Moslem faith and rituals. Native Americans met for dancing and feasts.”

I read Josephine’s spiritual autobiography just prior to becoming editor of Friends Bulletin in 1996, and it was a profoundly moving experience. I felt led to write something about Josephine so I toured Hidden Villa with her daughter Elizabeth Duveneck Dana. Exploring this ranch was an unforgettable experience. In Hidden Villa Josephine’s spirit lives on, in its natural habitat: the California landscape, with its cattle and rolling hills and trails winding through bay laurel, live oak and chapparal—the land virtually untouched from the days it was inhabited by the Ohlone Indians.  I am glad I finally have an opportunity to lift up the example of a Quaker who loved the land, and loved people,  and found a balance between activism and spirituality. As Paul Seaver wrote, “As long as [Josephine’s] memory remains green among us, we will possess an enlarged vision of the potentialities of our common humanity and of the work God calls us to do in our time.”

Peace, justice and young people—these are the concerns that link these three Transformative Friends. May their lives inspire and challenge us to be transformed, and to transform others, through the Spirit of Love and Truth.

At the end of this booklet is a section containing “queries”—open-ended questions—designed to help you think more deeply about the lessons you can learn from the lives of these Friends. I hope you will share this booklet with others, start study groups, and reflect upon important queries, such as, What are you being called to do with your life? What inspires you to make a difference in the world? What brings you deep and lasting joy? How is your life speaking?

 
“Be patterns, be examples in all countries, places, islands, nations wherever you come; that your carriage and life may preach among all sorts of people, and to them; then you will come to walk cheerfully over the world, answering that of God in everyone; whereby in them you may be a blessing, and make the witness of God in them to bless you.” –George Fox, 1656.

“Before you tell your life what you intend to do with it, listen for what it intends to do with you. Before you tell your life what truths and values you have decided to live up to, let your life tell you what truths you embody, what values you represent.”

― Parker J. Palmer, Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation (1999).

 

1984 LIVING IN THE LIGHT SOME QUAKER PIONEERS OF THE 20th CENTURY

1984-living-in-the-light.pdf

LIVING IN THE LIGHT
SOME QUAKER PIONEERS OF THE 20th CENTURY

Volume I-In the U.S.A.
LEONARD S. KENWORTHY, Editor
Freinds GENERAL CONFERENCE
and QUAKER PUBLICATIONS
Box726
Kennett Square, Pa. 19348 
===
Table of Contents   PAGES
Introduction to Volumes I and II . 1
I. Emily Greene Balch: Social Worker, Reformer, Educator,
and Peace Protagonist, by Leonard S. Kenworthy 6
2. Kenneth and Elise Boulding: Partners in Building the
New Jerusalem, by Cynthia Kerman and Carlene Bagnall 22
3. Howard and Anna Brinton: Translucent Teachers and
Ministers of the Light, by Dan Wilson . 41
4. Henry J. Cadbury: Let This Life Speak, by Margaret H.
Bacon . 60
5. Mary Steichen Calderone: Interpreter of Human Sexuality, by David Mace . 75
6. Everett L. Cattell: Man of Wisdom and Integrity, by
Donald R. Murray, Jr. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
7. Rachel Davis DuBois: Pioneer in Intergroup Relations,
by Elizabeth Cattell . 102
8. Rufus M. Jones: Luminous Friend, by Leonard S.
Kenworthy . . . . . . . 115
9. Thomas E. Jones: The Dreamer and The Builder, by
Paul A. Lacey . . . 131
10. Thomas R. Kelly: His Life as a Miracle, by T. Canby
Jones . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ... 146
II. Frederick J. Libby: Catalyst for Peace, by E. Raymond
Wilson ............... 162
I2. Clarence E. Pickett: Servant of Humanity, by Lewis M.
Hoskins 177
I3. Bayard Rustin: Crusader for Racial and Social Justice, by
Leonard S. Kenworthy 190
14. Alice C. Shaffer: Champion of the World's Children, by
Leonard S. Kenworthy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205
15. Douglas and Dorothy Steere: More Than the Sum of the
Parts, by Parker J. Palmer . 221
16. D. Elton Trueblood: Quaker and Ecumenical Christian,
by Tom Mullen . . . . . . . 234
17. Elizabeth Gray Vining: The Measure of a Life, by Mary
Hoxie Jones . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247
18. E. Raymond Wilson: Practical Quaker Dreamer, by Samuel R. Levering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 263
Brief Biographies of the Authors . 279 


2022/07/20

What People Really Want from Church and Quaker Meeting

What People Really Want from Church and Quaker Meeting

What People Really Want from Church and Quaker Meeting
August 1, 2018

By Donald W. McCormick


© spinyant
Ideeply love Quakerism and don’t want it to die out, but the number of North American Quakers has been steadily decreasing for three decades. According to statistics from Friends World Committee for Consultation, Quaker membership in the United States and Canada grew modestly over the middle part of the twentieth century to peak at 139,200 in 1987. The latest Quaker census in 2017 counted 81,392 U.S. and Canadian Friends, a loss of over 40 percent. A report published by Earlham School of Religion in 2005 concluded, “If these downward trends in the Society’s membership were to continue unchecked, American Quakers would become extinct sometime late in the twenty-first century.”

We can reverse this downward trend, and this is likely to involve learning from the experience of other churches. A good tool for doing this is the Reveal for Church survey: an extremely large survey of over 2,000 churches and 500,000 congregants. (To find out more about this survey, go to revealforchurch.com or listen to their podcast.)

What do people want from church?
At the core of the survey is an important question: What do people want from church? The answer to this is key to understanding why people join a church. The respondents’ answers are inspiring. Fifty-four percent said that the thing they most want is spiritual guidance, and over 30 percent said they want fellowship.

The survey defined a church that offers spiritual guidance as one that does the following:

provides a clear pathway that helps guide congregants’ spiritual growth
challenges congregants to grow and take next steps
has church leaders who model and consistently reinforce how to grow spiritually
helps congregants to understand the Bible in depth
helps congregants to develop a personal relationship with Christ
Churches that provided this were generally vibrant and had high levels of congregant satisfaction.

When I read this, I asked myself if we Quakers are providing the equivalent of this type of spiritual guidance. Do newcomers and others see us as meeting their spiritual needs? If they do, do they see this right away, or does it take a while? To answer these questions, I had to learn more about the “clear pathway” that the Reveal literature described. Although Quakerism has great wisdom in the area of spiritual guidance, at first it seemed that it was inconsistent with the spiritual guidance described in the survey. I thought of how listening to and heeding the Spirit may lead one Quaker to refuse to pay any taxes that contribute to war and another to become an army chaplain. It didn’t seem like we Quakers were following one clear pathway. Also, my initial understanding of the Reveal survey model of spiritual guidance didn’t fit with the kind of models of lifelong spiritual growth and maturity that I used to cover when I was a professor teaching courses in psychology of religion.

Then I looked more closely at what the Reveal researchers meant by a “clear pathway” and I realized that their idea of it isn’t so much a nuanced model of lifelong spiritual growth as it is something much more basic and doable. It’s the kind of thing that would get you off the runway of the spiritual path and into the air. It isn’t intended to guide your spiritual plane all the way to its destination. Understanding this, I began to see how a Quaker version of this could be crafted.

Classes that challenge you to take the next steps along a clear spiritual pathway
In the survey, churches that provide spiritual guidance communicate the path, the next steps, and the challenges in different ways. The most common model is a set of four afternoon classes that make up what is probably the most popular adult education curriculum in churches today. It comes from a church known for phenomenal growth: Saddleback Church, headquartered in southern California. In 1980, 40 people attended their first worship service; today over 22,000 people attend weekly services.

The first class covers the church, membership, how to live in accordance with God’s purpose, and the church’s plans for the future. At the end of the class, you are challenged to be baptized and to apply for membership.

The second class is about the path of spiritual maturity and techniques for developing four habits needed for spiritual growth (prayer, Bible reading, tithing, and fellowship). After this class, you are challenged to practice these habits.

The third class is about finding your spiritual gifts and choosing how you will use those in ministry, that is, in serving the church and others. At the end, you are challenged to put these into practice.

The fourth class is about evangelism. At the end you are challenged to begin sharing your faith.

The classes constitute a clear pathway that starts with membership and leads to spiritual maturity, ministry, and evangelism. Each time you finish taking a class, you are asked to accept the challenge at the end of it. The next steps involve putting into practice what you just learned and taking the next class.

Fellowship is the other major thing that people want from church. In the churches from the Reveal survey, it is primarily experienced in small groups of eight to ten people who meet weekly to learn about spiritual matters and to get to know fellow parishioners. These groups are places where people know you, know what’s going on in your life, and know what matters to you. If you wind up in the hospital, it’s the members of your small group that come over and visit, that take care of your kids when you’re in there, and that bring you meals while you are still getting back on your feet after having been discharged. And you are glad to do the same for all of them.

The classes described in the Reveal literature get people moving on their spiritual journey quickly. These churches make their expectations clear right away. They let you know that you are expected to embrace Christ (if you haven’t already); join a small group; and to take the classes that show the path, provide you with next steps, and challenge you to grow spiritually

When you do this, you begin to experience the two main things that people want out of church—spiritual guidance and fellowship. This makes people want to keep coming back.

Can Quaker meetings provide this kind of fellowship and spiritual guidance?
How can newcomers to Quakerism experience a similar kind of fellowship and spiritual guidance without watering down the Quaker experience?

One way would be to encourage newcomers to join a small group and take a comparable set of courses. This would involve reorganizing the way that we introduce people to Quakerism, not changing what Quakerism is.

Newcomers could be encouraged to participate in a small group early on. People want a spiritual home where they experience a sense of belonging, where people care about them and they feel like they fit in. In other words, they want real spiritual community. It can be difficult to feel included in a meeting that has long-term social bonds; small groups can help with this. I should point out that in many meetings, we are already providing the kind of fellowship described in the Reveal survey through the excellent Friends General Conference (FGC) Spiritual Deepening program.

Classes that offer a clear pathway, next steps, and challenges
In addition to fellowship, a meeting could offer classes that form a path, that provide next steps, and that offer regular challenges. Below is one possible way of doing that. (I don’t mean this suggestion to be definitive; there are many other ways that these kinds of classes can be organized.)

The first class could provide a short overview of Quakerism as a whole, but spend most of the time on the meaning of meeting for worship and what to do when you’re in it. At the end, participants could be challenged to take the next steps: regular participation in meeting for worship and enrollment in the next class.

The second class could focus on personal spiritual practices such as prayer, meditation, and discernment of leadings. Since the process of discernment can be both individual and corporate, group processes like clearness committees, spiritual accountability groups, and meeting for worship on the occasion of business would also be included. At the end, participants could be challenged to take the next steps: regular engagement in personal spiritual practice, participation in business meeting, and enrollment in the next class.

The third class could be about learning about Quakerism in more depth. It could present some information about Quakerism and offer ways to continue learning about it (e.g., reading Faith and Practice on a regular basis, or participating in quarterly meetings, yearly meetings, the FGC annual gathering, Pendle Hill programs, etc.). At the end, participants could be challenged to commit to some ongoing form of study.

The fourth class could focus on service: serving the meeting (e.g., serving on a committee), directly serving those in need (e.g., feeding the homeless), or activism (e.g., creating systemic change by working for peace, justice, or sustainability). At the end, participants could be challenged to commit to some form of service.

At the end of the four classes that make up this beginner’s path, participants would have most of the tools they need to start living the Quaker life. These are also tools that they can continue to use for the rest of their lives.

Meeting spiritual needs
There is a thirst for greater spirituality in Quaker meetings. I say this for two reasons. The first is because of dissatisfaction with Quaker meetings that have shied away from their spiritual and religious center; this was a common theme in the over 100 online comments about my February Friends Journal article, “Can Quakerism Survive?”

The second reason is that in recent moving and influential speeches, both Parker Palmer and Ben Pink Dandelion called for embracing and communicating the spiritual and religious core of Quakerism.

The model presented here shows one way to help satisfy the spiritual thirst of newcomers by introducing them to the spiritual core and spiritual guidance that they want from a meeting.

People in Quaker meetings and those interested in Quakerism aren’t that different from the people who took the Reveal survey. We Quakers have something to learn from the survey about what people want from church and how to provide it. People may show up at our doors because of various outreach activities, and they may like their initial encounter with Quakerism because various methods from FGC’s Welcoming Meetings program are being used. These are both important, but people won’t keep coming back to meeting if they don’t see how it addresses their needs for spiritual guidance and fellowship. All three activities—outreach, welcoming, and meeting people’s spiritual needs—are essential. If one is missing, the other two won’t get very far. But together, these three activities can defeat the trend of declining membership. Quakerism can grow, and meetings can become more vibrant.

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Donald W. McCormick
Donald W. McCormick, donmccormick2@gmail.com, is a member of Grass Valley Meeting in Nevada City, Calif. He is director of education for Unified Mindfulness, a company that trains mindfulness teachers. The senior editor of Friends Journal described his February article, “Can Quakerism Survive?,” as “the most talked about article in recent history.”

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10 thoughts on “What People Really Want from Church and Quaker Meeting”

Mackenzie
August 1, 2018 at 3:38 pm
I just want to plug a book I read on this topic. It’s called “Simple Church,” by Eric Geiger and Thom Rainer. They studied a whole bunch (maybe 1000?) of churches and found that churches that align their programs with the goal of making disciples grow, and ones that don’t, don’t. Even in declining rural towns, churches that do that grow! I read it a while ago, so it’s not super fresh in my mind, but I think there were even case studies of churches that changed what they were doing and started growing again, after having been stagnant or in decline.

Reply


Joshua Brown
August 5, 2018 at 10:22 am
I greatly enjoyed reading your Friends Journal article, “What People Really Want From Church and Quaker Meeting”. You mention a number of points which I have been trying to get Friends to see for a long time, and some of your conclusions parallel my own research.

A few years ago, I looked at the membership numbers across all yearly meetings belonging to Friends United Meeting from 1906 up until the turn of the century. There are a few dips and surges, but basically I found a straight-line decline over that time period. Over the last 40+ years, it’s been running about 1% per year, which is roughly in line with your figures.

The straight-line nature of the graph says to me that it’s not the fault of any particular yearly meeting, or any individual yearly meeting leadership, but probably something more to do with larger demographics. My best guess is that Quakers have simply failed to reproduce in adequate numbers to offset deaths and departures. This is a well-documented trend affecting many other denominations as well.

One of the other things which came out in my research was that while membership numbers were dropping, actual attendance at meeting for worship has been much more stable. Where membership went down by roughly 40% over 40 years, worship attendance only went down by about 15%.

This says to me that our membership numbers were probably somewhat inflated to begin with. Meetings kept people on the rolls long after they left. I’ve seen this in many local meetings, both pastoral and unprogrammed, in several different yearly meetings where I’ve served, and I expect it’s pretty universal among Friends. We don’t want to drop people who might come back. We don’t want to hurt the feelings of parents and grandparents by dropping their kids who left after high school or college. Ministry and Counsel committees go for 5 or 10 years without housecleaning the membership list.

I’m a little leery of the general population survey done by Reveal for Church which you mention in your article. To some extent, I think that these surveys tend to force the taker into a somewhat predetermined outcome – the questions channel you into a fairly limited number of possible answers. I could be doing them a disservice, but the answers seem a little canned to me. They sound like the kind of results that most evangelical Christians want to hear.

I don’t think that the four points you list are altogether wrong, but I’m not sure they really cover the depth of what either existing members of Friends want, or what potential new members want. I agree that people want something more than what most Quaker meetings offer, and this almost certainly has an impact on our declining numbers.

In many meetings, the losses are gradual, and the additions are also gradual. It’s easy not to notice the change until you look at 4 or 5 years. I always try to get the meetings I serve to look at the net loss or gain in attendance – not always easy, because Quakers tend to view keeping track of attendance as somehow unspiritual. A net loss of 5 members in a single year may not seem like much in a meeting with 100 members, but over 5 years it’s a 25% decline in membership.

Another important trend, and it’s common to many churches (not just Friends) is a decline in the average number of times people attend worship each month. Gone are the days when everyone came every Sunday. At Springfield Friends, we have about 130 members. Out of that group, about 40-45 people are here every week without fail, about 50 come once or twice a month, and another 40 come 2 or 3 times a year, mainly at Christmas and Easter. We also have a large pool of inactive and semi-active members who show up at random, sometimes coming for 5 or 6 weeks and then disappearing for 4 or 5 years.

Quakers used to take membership very seriously indeed, and there were a lot of outward signs that you were a member. Plain dress, plain speech, and a long list of disciplinary items, all added up to being a Quaker. Perhaps most important, Quakers expected to marry other Quakers, and you could be disowned for marrying outside the Society of Friends. I’m glad that period faded away several generations before I joined. But Friends no longer set a very high bar to joining, and there is no particular penalty for drifting away.

I heartily agree that Quakers need to offer more in the way of guidance, challenge, leadership modeling and Bible study. Most meetings fail miserably at all of these. But I doubt that we will succeed in gaining and maintaining members by adopting a generic evangelical agenda.

In many contemporary evangelical churches, they consider you a member after coming to worship 3 or 4 times. Mega-churches in particular have tend to have a very large turnover in membership, often 20% or more every year. Before taking Saddleback as a model for Friends, we need to look at the life of churches like this, and ask how it relates to the life that Friends want to offer.

Years ago, a Quaker researcher told me that the “natural” size for most Quaker meetings is about 35 members. Growth above this level takes a tremendous amount of work and organization, which most Quaker meetings are ill-prepared and ill-inclined to do. Many meetings of my acquaintance have a kind of snobbery about their small size. Quakers also value the family feeling of a smaller group, and when the meeting grows we complain that we don’t know everyone in the meeting. There’s a kind of suspicion that meetings which are larger are using tricks to grow, or that they are somehow less spiritual than the small, devoted remnant meetings with 25 or 30 members.

I’ve worked with meetings of different sizes, and I appreciate this criticism. On the other hand, there are simply a lot of really great things you can do with a larger group. You can have a much more effective youth program, and more adult discussion groups catering to different interests. With a larger meeting, you can more easily find kindred Friends who are deeply interested in peace activism, or singing together, or serious study of the Bible or Quaker history. Smaller meetings have a lot of trouble reaching “critical mass” for different groups like these.

Monthly meeting for business is much more intimate in a small meeting, and most business is undertaken by everyone. In a larger meeting, committees do more of the work, and a much smaller proportion of people usually come for monthly meeting. Larger meetings have to spend a lot more time on communication and coordination – as the newsletter editor and web site manager for Springfield Friends, this is one of my main concerns.

Most small meetings simply don’t have the resources for the kind of membership training which you recommend in your article. Even larger meetings can struggle with this. It’s one of the reasons why the week-long workshops at FGC are so popular. FUM and many yearly meetings used to do this, but financial pressures and the limited number of people who can take a week off for a conference have cut into this type of ministry.

I have long advocated that quarterly meeting is a better sponsor for serious educational ministry. I’ve been involved several times as a teacher and organizer of quarter-sponsored adult groups, usually modeled on a program developed many years ago by Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, which meets once a week for a 2-hour session. With 6-10 meetings in a quarter, we usually drew about 20-25 participants. The program ran during the school year, and we had three 10-week sessions, one focused on the Bible, one on church history, and one on Quaker theology.

You mention fellowship as an important need. Again, in small meetings this tends to be a fellowship of the whole group, though many meetings have small interest groups and formal or informal social groups. In larger meetings, fellowship needs to be more organized, and most meetings have a host of smaller groups of different kinds. When I came to Springfield, I found 4 or 5 adult Sunday School classes which have been going for decades, mainly organized in age cohorts. Group members have supported each other through having children, seeing them through school, middle age, and the death of spouses. These groups have survived for anywhere from 10 to 50 years and are deeply valued, and they form the backbone of the active membership of the meeting.

Your article is focused on spiritual growth and getting new people involved, but I would also like to mention another issue which can send membership numbers into a death spiral. In the local meeting, any kind of scandal involving money, sex or power can destroy a meeting within weeks. We don’t like to talk about this, but I have personally seen this happen in Quaker meetings, and several times my first 3-4 years of work with a new meeting has centered on healing after this type of problem.

Long before the #MeToo movement, I worked with meetings where many of the members had been damaged by sexual abuse of one kind or another. Quakers are not immune to this, and I’ve been involved with a couple of very painful interventions. At West Richmond Friends, following the discovery that one of our most respected elders had been making unwanted advances to several women, we had an intensive 8-week discussion and planning group to work on healing. Most congregations – even Quaker meetings – don’t do this kind of work, and suffer major losses in attendance and membership after something ugly comes to light. At West Richmond, because of the way we handled it, we actually gained a number of new members!

One of the other things which I have seen at very close range, is the tremendous destruction and loss of membership and resources which take place when a yearly meeting divides. Quakers used to know about this – the memory of the Orthodox/Hicksite separation stayed very clear in Quaker memories for several generations. In the last 40 years there has been a lot of pressure to separate from Friends for theological reasons, mainly over LGBT issues. At least 5 large yearly meetings have been torn apart over this, and the results have been catastrophic. In most cases, the total number of Friends left on both sides after the fight has been substantially lower than the total before. Missions and service projects which served for generations have been gutted. I know that this is outside the scope of your article, but one major reason for recent membership losses has been these divisions. I’ve documented a lot of the fallout in my blog, https://arewefriends.wordpress.com/

Anyway, thanks again for your very thoughtful article. I hope you will keep Friends’ feet to the fire on this!

Best wishes,

– Josh Brown

Reply


Richard Gordon Zyne
August 13, 2018 at 2:59 pm
I have been a member of a Friends Meeting for several years and at the same time I have also been a member of a Unitarian Universalist Fellowship. My UU membership goes back decades. I love Quaker worship, the silence, the Light within, and also the commitment to God and social justice. Both denominations, however, are struggling to find their voice, to grow, and to survive. At least that’s how I experience it. Both of the fellowships I attend are right down the street from each other. One week I go to the Quakers and the next to the UU. I make jokes about both fellowships merging and meeting in the middle at an abandoned building that used to be a car repair shop. I need both because both provide me with good fellowship and peace. Both fellowships suffer because they spend so much of their time and money worrying about property, buildings, and stuff. They get bogged down in politics and doing things like they’ve always done. Sometimes I want to run away from both! Looks like I’ll just have to create my own spirituality and just pulsate between the two bodies.

Reply


Julie Scott
August 13, 2018 at 3:29 pm
Your article and the comments added here were very interesting and are important discussions. As a non-quaker, you might ask why I’m reading your website and newsfeed. It is my attempt to get a better understanding of your way of life and cultural norms. To see if I might fit in. I have only heard good & wise things from Quakers.

You might ask – why haven’t I joined. Well, first of all, I’m not sure I measure up. Not sure of what is expected of me. One thing every person who is contemplating a new direction is looking for – and that’s certainty. Certainty that they will fit in, that they won’t offend anyone; that they are following the structure expected. Especially when it comes to exploring new churches and spirituality.

Without asking your membership to change their worship style and meetings, maybe you could add an activity that is available at all the Quaker meetings – one that is more geared to fellowship. A place & time to connect with strangers, and a place to be safe. Folks like me, might be willing to travel a little further, if we really knew we might be welcomed. Your non-structured services won’t fit the cookie -mold of other evangelist churches. And that’s okay. But we really do need more encouragement to observe and ask questions, where as interested individuals, we don’t disrupt the meditative side of your gatherings.

Glad you’re all sharing such interesting discussions.

The Quakers seem to have a vibrant young adult membership, even if small. They should be included in this quest to share what you offer in spirituality.

Reply


Brent
August 15, 2018 at 2:56 pm
For years, before I was on FGC staff, I worked for the Center for Congregations in Indianapolis. There I served on a some working groups on effective outreach and welcome based on research from the US Congregational Life Survey (you can check out the 10 strengths of vital congregations here — http://www.uscongregations.org/…/beyond-the-ordinary-10-st…/) Faith Communities Today (FACT) also has some downloadable leaders resource you might find helpful/interesting (if we can get beyond “Quaker exceptionalism” and learn from others — in particular small congregations) — http://faithcommunitiestoday.org/publications… as well as other resources.

In addition, the Center for Congregations (www.centerforcongregations.org) has a wealth of free downloadable resources — just search through workshop resource guides and resources. Their information is based on work with thousands of congregations (including small ones — like many Friends congregations are).

I think these are more helpful to the majority of Friends than is the REVEAL survey mentioned this article since REVEAL is a product developed by the megachurch Willow Creek for a specific set of reasons that don’t fit most Quaker congregations..

Reply


John Moorman
September 8, 2018 at 6:29 pm
In the areas I am familiar with, Minneapolis-St Paul, Houston and Austin, growth has been mostly geographical (drive time), membership preferences (read cliques) and to a lesser extent worship style. In all three cities the Meetings are viable and stable or growing. Our Meeting in Georgetown Tx has became a Worship Group sponsored by Austin Society of Friends after being an informal meeting of Friends for several years. Our immediate goal is survival, growth would be a blessing.

Unfortunately I can find little help online or from Yearly Meetings and the General Friends Conference. PDFs, one size fits all, articles are seldom very helpful. What would help our Quaker growth would be better outreach by the Yearly Meetings, especially online interactive availability.There seems t be a shortage of computer literate talent among Quaker. SCYM is a small Yealy Meeting covering five states of progressive Meetings with limited resources. I believe strongly that growing small “seed” Meetings like ours are the future of our Quaker faith.

Reply

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2022/07/17

Transcendentalism - Wikipedia

Transcendentalism - Wikipedia

Transcendentalism

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Transcendentalism is a philosophical movement that developed in the late 1820s and 1830s in New England.[1][2][3] 

A core belief is in the inherent goodness of people and nature,[1] and while society and its institutions have corrupted the purity of the individual, people are at their best when truly "self-reliant" and independent. 

Transcendentalists saw divine experience inherent in the everyday, rather than believing in a distant heaven

Transcendentalists saw physical and spiritual phenomena as part of dynamic processes rather than discrete entities.

Transcendentalism emphasizes subjective intuition over objective empiricism. Adherents believe that individuals are capable of generating completely original insights with little attention and deference to past masters. It arose as a reaction, to protest against the general state of intellectualism and spirituality at the time.[4] The doctrine of the Unitarian church as taught at Harvard Divinity School was closely related.

Transcendentalism emerged from 

Origin[edit]

Transcendentalism is closely related to Unitarianism, the dominant religious movement in Boston in the early nineteenth century. It started to develop after Unitarianism took hold at Harvard University, following the elections of Henry Ware as the Hollis Professor of Divinity in 1805 and of John Thornton Kirkland as President in 1810. Transcendentalism was not a rejection of Unitarianism; rather, it developed as an organic consequence of the Unitarian emphasis on free conscience and the value of intellectual reason. The transcendentalists were not content with the sobriety, mildness, and calm rationalism of Unitarianism. Instead, they longed for a more intense spiritual experience. Thus, transcendentalism was not born as a counter-movement to Unitarianism, but as a parallel movement to the very ideas introduced by the Unitarians.[7]

Transcendental Club[edit]

Transcendentalism became a coherent movement and a sacred organization with the founding of the Transcendental Club in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on September 12, 1836, by prominent New England intellectuals, including George Putnam (Unitarian minister),[8] Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Frederic Henry Hedge. Other members of the club included Amos Bronson AlcottOrestes BrownsonTheodore ParkerHenry David ThoreauWilliam Henry ChanningJames Freeman ClarkeChristopher Pearse CranchConvers FrancisSylvester Judd, and Jones Very. Female members included Sophia RipleyMargaret FullerElizabeth PeabodyEllen Sturgis Hooper, and Caroline Sturgis Tappan. From 1840, the group frequently published in their journal The Dial, along with other venues.

Second wave of transcendentalists[edit]

By the late 1840s, Emerson believed that the movement was dying out, and even more so after the death of Margaret Fuller in 1850. "All that can be said", Emerson wrote, "is that she represents an interesting hour and group in American cultivation".[9] There was, however, a second wave of transcendentalists later in the 19th century, including Moncure ConwayOctavius Brooks FrothinghamSamuel Longfellow and Franklin Benjamin Sanborn.[10] Notably, the transcendence of the spirit, most often evoked by the poet's prosaic voice, is said to endow in the reader a sense of purpose. This is the underlying theme in the majority of transcendentalist essays and papers—all of which are centered on subjects which assert a love for individual expression.[11] The group was mostly made up of struggling aesthetes, the wealthiest among them being Samuel Gray Ward, who, after a few contributions to The Dial, focused on his banking career.[12]

Beliefs[edit]

Transcendentalists are strong believers in the power of the individual. It is primarily concerned with personal freedom. Their beliefs are closely linked with those of the Romantics, but differ by an attempt to embrace or, at least, to not oppose the empiricism of science.

Transcendental knowledge[edit]

Transcendentalists desire to ground their religion and philosophy in principles based upon the German Romanticism of Johann Gottfried Herder and Friedrich Schleiermacher. Transcendentalism merged "English and German Romanticism, the Biblical criticism of Herder and Schleiermacher, the skepticism of Hume",[1] and the transcendental philosophy of Immanuel Kant (and of German idealism more generally), interpreting Kant's a priori categories as a priori knowledge. 

Early transcendentalists were largely unacquainted with German philosophy in the original and 

relied primarily on the writings of Thomas CarlyleSamuel Taylor ColeridgeVictor CousinGermaine de Staël, and other English and French commentators for their knowledge of it. 

The transcendental movement can be described as an American outgrowth of English Romanticism.[citation needed]

Individualism[edit]

Transcendentalists believe that society and its institutions—particularly organized religion and political parties—corrupt the purity of the individual.[13] They have faith that people are at their best when truly self-reliant and independent. It is only from such real individuals that true community can form.

Even with this necessary individuality, transcendentalists also believe that all people are outlets for the "Over-Soul". Because the Over-Soul is one, this unites all people as one being.[14][need quotation to verify] Emerson alludes to this concept in the introduction of the American Scholar address, "that there is One Man, - present to all particular men only partially, or through one faculty; and that you must take the whole society to find the whole man".[15] Such an ideal is in harmony with Transcendentalist individualism, as each person is empowered to behold within him or herself a piece of the divine Over-Soul.

In recent years there has been a distinction made between individuality and individualism. Both advocate the unique capacity of the individual. Yet individualism is decidedly anti-government, whereas individuality sees all facets of society necessary, or at least acceptable for the development of the true individualistic person. Whether the Transcendentalists believed in individualism or individuality remains to be determined. Whitman embraced all facets of life, which seems more like individuality, which is more in tune with what the Indian spiritual tradition advocates; i.e. the True Individual, the yogic attainment of true individuality.

Indian religions[edit]

While firmly rooted in the western philosophical traditions of PlatonismNeoplatonism, and German idealism, Transcendentalism was also directly influenced by Indian religions.[16][17][note 1] Thoreau in Walden spoke of the Transcendentalists' debt to Indian religions directly:

In the morning I bathe my intellect in the stupendous and cosmogonal philosophy of the Bhagavat Geeta, since whose composition years of the gods have elapsed, and in comparison with which our modern world and its literature seem puny and trivial; and I doubt if that philosophy is not to be referred to a previous state of existence, so remote is its sublimity from our conceptions. I lay down the book and go to my well for water, and lo! there I meet the servant of the Brahmin, priest of Brahma, and Vishnu and Indra, who still sits in his temple on the Ganges reading the Vedas, or dwells at the root of a tree with his crust and water-jug. I meet his servant come to draw water for his master, and our buckets as it were grate together in the same well. The pure Walden water is mingled with the sacred water of the Ganges.[18]

In 1844, the first English translation of the Lotus Sutra was included in The Dial, a publication of the New England Transcendentalists, translated from French by Elizabeth Palmer Peabody.[19][20]

Idealism[edit]

Transcendentalists differ in their interpretations of the practical aims of will. Some adherents link it with utopian social change; Brownson, for example, connected it with early socialism, but others consider it an exclusively individualist and idealist project. Emerson believed the latter. In his 1842 lecture "The Transcendentalist", he suggested that the goal of a purely transcendental outlook on life was impossible to attain in practice:

You will see by this sketch that there is no such thing as a transcendental party; that there is no pure transcendentalist; that we know of no one but prophets and heralds of such a philosophy; that all who by strong bias of nature have leaned to the spiritual side in doctrine, have stopped short of their goal. We have had many harbingers and forerunners; but of a purely spiritual life, history has afforded no example. I mean, we have yet no man who has leaned entirely on his character, and eaten angels' food; who, trusting to his sentiments, found life made of miracles; who, working for universal aims, found himself fed, he knew not how; clothed, sheltered, and weaponed, he knew not how, and yet it was done by his own hands. ...Shall we say, then, that transcendentalism is the Saturnalia or excess of Faith; the presentiment of a faith proper to man in his integrity, excessive only when his imperfect obedience hinders the satisfaction of his wish.

Importance of nature[edit]

Transcendentalists have a deep gratitude and appreciation for nature, not only for aesthetic purposes, but also as a tool to observe and understand the structured inner workings of the natural world.[4] Emerson emphasizes the Transcendental beliefs in the holistic power of the natural landscape in Nature:

In the woods, we return to reason and faith. There I feel that nothing can befall me in life, — no disgrace, no calamity, (leaving me my eyes,) which nature cannot repair. 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 eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God.[21]

The conservation of an undisturbed natural world is also extremely important to the Transcendentalists. The idealism that is a core belief of Transcendentalism results in an inherent skepticism of capitalismwestward expansion, and industrialization.[22] As early as 1843, in Summer on the Lakes, Margaret Fuller noted that "the noble trees are gone already from this island to feed this caldron",[23] and in 1854, in Walden, Thoreau regards the trains which are beginning to spread across America's landscape as a "winged horse or fiery dragon" that "sprinkle[s] all the restless men and floating merchandise in the country for seed".[24]

Influence on other movements[edit]

Transcendentalism is, in many aspects, the first notable American intellectual movement. It has inspired succeeding generations of American intellectuals, as well as some literary movements.[25]

Transcendentalism influenced the growing movement of "Mental Sciences" of the mid-19th century, which would later become known as the New Thought movement. New Thought considers Emerson its intellectual father.[26] Emma Curtis Hopkins ("the teacher of teachers"), Ernest Holmes (founder of Religious Science), Charles and Myrtle Fillmore (founders of Unity), and Malinda Cramer and Nona L. Brooks (founders of Divine Science) were all greatly influenced by Transcendentalism.[27]

Transcendentalism is also influenced by HinduismRam Mohan Roy (1772–1833), the founder of the Brahmo Samaj, rejected Hindu mythology, but also the Christian trinity.[28] He found that Unitarianism came closest to true Christianity,[28] and had a strong sympathy for the Unitarians,[29] who were closely connected to the Transcendentalists.[16] Ram Mohan Roy founded a missionary committee in Calcutta, and in 1828 asked for support for missionary activities from the American Unitarians.[30] By 1829, Roy had abandoned the Unitarian Committee,[31] but after Roy's death, the Brahmo Samaj kept close ties to the Unitarian Church,[32] who strived towards a rational faith, social reform, and the joining of these two in a renewed religion.[29] Its theology was called "neo-Vedanta" by Christian commentators,[33][34] and has been highly influential in the modern popular understanding of Hinduism,[35] but also of modern western spirituality, which re-imported the Unitarian influences in the disguise of the seemingly age-old Neo-Vedanta.[35][36][37]

Major figures[edit]

Major figures in the transcendentalist movement were Ralph Waldo EmersonHenry David ThoreauMargaret Fuller, and Amos Bronson Alcott. Some other prominent transcendentalists included Louisa May AlcottCharles Timothy BrooksOrestes BrownsonWilliam Ellery ChanningWilliam Henry ChanningJames Freeman ClarkeChristopher Pearse CranchJohn Sullivan DwightConvers FrancisWilliam Henry FurnessFrederic Henry HedgeSylvester JuddTheodore ParkerElizabeth Palmer PeabodyGeorge RipleyThomas Treadwell StoneJones Very, and Walt Whitman.[38]

Criticism[edit]

Early in the movement's history, the term "Transcendentalists" was used as a pejorative term by critics, who were suggesting their position was beyond sanity and reason.[39] Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote a novel, The Blithedale Romance (1852), satirizing the movement, and based it on his experiences at Brook Farm, a short-lived utopian community founded on transcendental principles.[40]

Edgar Allan Poe wrote a story, "Never Bet the Devil Your Head" (1841), in which he embedded elements of deep dislike for transcendentalism, calling its followers "Frogpondians" after the pond on Boston Common.[41] The narrator ridiculed their writings by calling them "metaphor-run" lapsing into "mysticism for mysticism's sake",[42] and called it a "disease". The story specifically mentions the movement and its flagship journal The Dial, though Poe denied that he had any specific targets.[43] In Poe's essay "The Philosophy of Composition" (1846), he offers criticism denouncing "the excess of the suggested meaning... which turns into prose (and that of the very flattest kind) the so-called poetry of the so-called transcendentalists".[44]

See also[edit]

References[edit]

Notes[edit]

  1. ^ Versluis: "In American Transcendentalism and Asian religions, I detailed the immense impact that the Euro-American discovery of Asian religions had not only on European Romanticism, but above all, on American Transcendentalism. There I argued that the Transcendentalists' discovery of the Bhagavad-Gita, the Vedas, the Upanishads, and other world scriptures was critical in the entire movement, pivotal not only for the well-known figures like Emerson and Thoreau, but also for lesser known figures like Samuel Johnson and William Rounsville Alger. That Transcendentalism emerged out of this new knowledge of the world's religious traditions I have no doubt."[17]

Citations[edit]

  1. Jump up to:a b c d Goodman, Russell (2015). "Transcendentalism"Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. "Transcendentalism is an American literary, political, and philosophical movement of the early nineteenth century, centered around Ralph Waldo Emerson."
  2. ^ Wayne, Tiffany K., ed. (2006). Encyclopedia of Transcendentalism. Facts On File's Literary Movements. ISBN 9781438109169.
  3. ^ "Transcendentalism"Merriam Webster. 2016."a philosophy which says that thought and spiritual things are more real than ordinary human experience and material things"
  4. Jump up to:a b Finseth, Ian. "American Transcendentalism". Excerpted from "Liquid Fire Within Me": Language, Self and Society in Transcendentalism and Early Evangelicalism, 1820-1860, - M.A. Thesis, 1995. Archived from the original on 16 April 2013. Retrieved 18 April 2013.
  5. ^ Miller 1950, p. 49.
  6. ^ Versluis 2001, p. 17.
  7. ^ Finseth, Ian Frederick. "The Emergence of Transcendentalism"American Studies @ The University of VirginiaThe University of Virginia. Retrieved 9 November 2014.
  8. ^ "George Putnam", Heralds, Harvard Square Library, archived from the original on March 5, 2013
  9. ^ Rose, Anne C (1981), Transcendentalism as a Social Movement, 1830–1850, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, p. 208ISBN 0-300-02587-4.
  10. ^ Gura, Philip F (2007), American Transcendentalism: A History, New York: Hill and Wang, p. 8ISBN 978-0-8090-3477-2.
  11. ^ Stevenson, Martin K. "Empirical Analysis of the American Transcendental movement". New York, NY: Penguin, 2012:303.
  12. ^ Wayne, Tiffany. Encyclopedia of Transcendentalism: The Essential Guide to the Lives and Works of Transcendentalist Writers. New York: Facts on File, 2006: 308. ISBN 0-8160-5626-9
  13. ^ Sacks, Kenneth S.; Sacks, Professor Kenneth S. (2003-03-30). Understanding Emerson: "The American Scholar" and His Struggle for Self-reliance. Princeton University Press. ISBN 9780691099828institutions.
  14. ^ Emerson, Ralph Waldo. "The Over-Soul"American Transcendentalism Web. Retrieved 13 July 2015.
  15. ^ "EMERSON--"THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR""transcendentalism-legacy.tamu.edu. Retrieved 2017-10-14.
  16. Jump up to:a b Versluis 1993.
  17. Jump up to:a b Versluis 2001, p. 3.
  18. ^ Thoreau, Henry David. Walden. Boston: Ticknor&Fields, 1854.p.279. Print.
  19. ^ Lopez Jr., Donald S. (2016). "The Life of the Lotus Sutra"Tricycle Magazine (Winter).
  20. ^ Emerson, Ralph Waldo; Fuller, Margaret; Ripley, George (1844). "The Preaching of Buddha"The Dial4: 391.
  21. ^ Emerson, Ralph Waldo. "Nature"American Transcendentalism Web. Retrieved 2019-04-15.
  22. ^ Miller, Perry, 1905-1963. (1967). Nature's nation. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. ISBN 0674605500OCLC 6571892.
  23. ^ "The Project Gutenberg eBook of Summer on the Lakes, by S. M. Fuller"www.gutenberg.org. Retrieved 2019-04-15.
  24. ^ "Walden, by Henry David Thoreau"www.gutenberg.org. Retrieved 2019-04-15.
  25. ^ Coviello, Peter. "Transcendentalism" The Oxford Encyclopedia of American Literature. Oxford University Press, 2004. Oxford Reference Online. Web. 23 Oct. 2011
  26. ^ "New Thought", MSN Encarta, Microsoft, archived from the original on 2009-11-02, retrieved Nov 16, 2007.
  27. ^ INTA New Thought History Chart, Websyte, archived from the original on 2000-08-24.
  28. Jump up to:a b Harris 2009, p. 268.
  29. Jump up to:a b Kipf 1979, p. 3.
  30. ^ Kipf 1979, p. 7-8.
  31. ^ Kipf 1979, p. 15.
  32. ^ Harris 2009, p. 268-269.
  33. ^ Halbfass 1995, p. 9.
  34. ^ Rinehart 2004, p. 192.
  35. Jump up to:a b King 2002.
  36. ^ Sharf 1995.
  37. ^ Sharf 2000.
  38. ^ Gura, Philip F. American Transcendentalism: A History. New York: Hill and Wang, 2007: 7–8. ISBN 0-8090-3477-8
  39. ^ Loving, Jerome (1999), Walt Whitman: The Song of Himself, University of California Press, p. 185, ISBN 0-520-22687-9.
  40. ^ McFarland, Philip (2004), Hawthorne in Concord, New York: Grove Press, p. 149ISBN 0-8021-1776-7.
  41. ^ Royot, Daniel (2002), "Poe's humor", in Hayes, Kevin J (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Edgar Allan Poe, Cambridge University Press, pp. 61–2, ISBN 0-521-79727-6.
  42. ^ Ljunquist, Kent (2002), "The poet as critic", in Hayes, Kevin J (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Edgar Allan Poe, Cambridge University Press, p. 15, ISBN 0-521-79727-6
  43. ^ Sova, Dawn B (2001), Edgar Allan Poe: A to Z, New York: Checkmark Books, p. 170ISBN 0-8160-4161-X.
  44. ^ Baym, Nina; et al., eds. (2007), The Norton Anthology of American Literature, vol. B (6th ed.), New York: Norton.

Sources[edit]

Further reading[edit]

  • Dillard, Daniel, “The American Transcendentalists: A Religious Historiography”, 49th Parallel (Birmingham, England), 28 (Spring 2012), online
  • Gura, Philip F. American Transcendentalism: A History (2007)
  • Harrison, C. G. The Transcendental Universe, six lectures delivered before the Berean Society (London, 1894) 1993 edition ISBN 0 940262 58 4 (US), 0 904693 44 9 (UK)
  • Rose, Anne C. Social Movement, 1830–1850 (Yale University Press, 1981)

External links[edit]

Topic sites

Encyclopedias

Other