Transcendentalism in the Nonotuck Bioregion
I’m immersed in a research project: ferreting out the religious history of Nonotuck, especially the part that concerns the spiritual freedom the early inhabitants exercised when they imagined and worshiped God. That’s why I’m thinking about Transcendentalism.
Transcendentalism is a particularly Massachusetts-ian theology for three reasons.
First, the colonists who invaded Massachusetts were serious about theology. They fled England & entered the forests to exercise their Calvinistic faith freely and purely (“Puritans”).
Second, Massachusetts started the American Revolution to defend the natural rights laid out 1st in the Magna Carta and then in the Declaration of Independence.
Third, these rights (especially of equality) were not found in Calvinism, which believed humans were born damned and only an elite were chosen by God to live in heaven.
Transcendentalism rejected this doctrine but retained another cornerstone of Calvinism—the faith that God is experienced vitally without need for priestly mediation. Transcendentalists merged this feeling of God in nature, or as nature, with the democratic idea that “the laws of nature, and of nature’s god” ensoul in everybody the equal right to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” They created a theology we recognize when we stand at the rim of the Grand Canyon pondering mysteries great, grow a victory garden and live the myth of the yeoman, see the sun through the leaves and sense the lifepulse and know the miracle. Transcendentalism gave us our National Parks.
So, back in the Nonotuck: The Sylvester Judd family lived this evolution (from Calvinism to Transcendentalism) in three generations. More on that tomorrow.
Judd house, soon to be the Westhampton Library:
Nonotuck's foremost Transcendentalist was born, and lived his childhood, here
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