The
Divinity School Address is the common name for the speech
Ralph Waldo EmersonRalph Waldo Emerson was an American essayist, philosopher, and poet, best remembered for leading the Transcendentalist movement of the early 19th century. His teachings directly influenced the growing New Thought movement of the mid 1800s...
gave to the graduating class of
Harvard Divinity SchoolHarvard Divinity School is one of the constituent schools of Harvard University, located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the United States. The School's purpose is to train learned religious leaders —either in the academic study of religion, or for the practice of a religious ministry or other...
on July 15, 1838. At that time, Harvard was the center of academic
UnitarianUnitarianism as a theology is the belief in the single personality of God, in contrast to the doctrine of the Trinity ....
thought. In this address, Emerson made comments that were radical for their time. Emerson enunciated many of the tenets of
TranscendentalismTranscendentalism was a group of new ideas in literature, religion, culture, and philosophy that emerged in New England in the early to middle 19th century...
against a more conventional Unitarian
theologyThe term "theology" literally means the study of God, deriving from the Greek word theos, meaning 'God', and the suffix -ology from the Greek word logos meaning "discourse", "theory", or "reasoning"...
. He argued that moral intuition is a better guide to the moral sentiment than religious doctrine, and insisted upon the presence of true moral sentiment in each individual, while discounting the necessity of belief in the historical
miracleA miracle is a perceptible interruption of the laws of nature, such that can be attempted to be explained by divine intervention, and is sometimes associated with a miracle worker. Many folktales, religious texts, and people claim various events they refer to as "miraculous". People in different...
s of Jesus.
Emerson's Divinity School address was influenced by his life experiences.
The
Divinity School Address is the common name for the speech
Ralph Waldo EmersonRalph Waldo Emerson was an American essayist, philosopher, and poet, best remembered for leading the Transcendentalist movement of the early 19th century. His teachings directly influenced the growing New Thought movement of the mid 1800s...
gave to the graduating class of
Harvard Divinity SchoolHarvard Divinity School is one of the constituent schools of Harvard University, located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the United States. The School's purpose is to train learned religious leaders —either in the academic study of religion, or for the practice of a religious ministry or other...
on July 15, 1838. At that time, Harvard was the center of academic
UnitarianUnitarianism as a theology is the belief in the single personality of God, in contrast to the doctrine of the Trinity ....
thought. In this address, Emerson made comments that were radical for their time. Emerson enunciated many of the tenets of
TranscendentalismTranscendentalism was a group of new ideas in literature, religion, culture, and philosophy that emerged in New England in the early to middle 19th century...
against a more conventional Unitarian
theologyThe term "theology" literally means the study of God, deriving from the Greek word theos, meaning 'God', and the suffix -ology from the Greek word logos meaning "discourse", "theory", or "reasoning"...
. He argued that moral intuition is a better guide to the moral sentiment than religious doctrine, and insisted upon the presence of true moral sentiment in each individual, while discounting the necessity of belief in the historical
miracleA miracle is a perceptible interruption of the laws of nature, such that can be attempted to be explained by divine intervention, and is sometimes associated with a miracle worker. Many folktales, religious texts, and people claim various events they refer to as "miraculous". People in different...
s of Jesus.
Emerson's Divinity School address was influenced by his life experiences. He was an ex-Unitarian minister, having resigned from his ministry at Second Church, Boston, in 1832. Emerson had developed philosophical questions about the validity of Holy Communion, also called The Lord's Supper. He believed this ritual was not consistent with the original intentions of Jesus. It is felt that this concern was only one of many philosophical differences with Unitarian beliefs of the 1830's, but it was a concern that could be readily understood by the members of his congregation. Emerson was well liked by his congregation and efforts were made to reconcile the congregation's needs with his philosophy, but Emerson resigned after a final sermon explaining his views.
Over the next few years, Emerson's views continued to drift away from the mainstream Unitarian thought. His biographer Robert Richardson describes him as having moved beyond Unitarianism but not beyond religion. Emerson became a noted lecturer and essayist. He was frequently invited as a guest minister into Unitarian pulpits.
The 1838 Divinity School graduating class was composed of six seniors; Emerson was invited to speak by class members. Emerson decided the time was appropriate to discuss the failures of what he called "historical Christianity". He was completely surprised by the negative outburst which followed.
While a scholarly discussion would have been anticipated, the attacks on Emerson became personal. He was called an atheist, a negative comment in 1838. The chief Unitarian periodical of the time (The Christian Examiner) stated that Emerson’s comments, “…so far as they are intelligible, are utterly distasteful to the instructors of the school, and to Unitarian ministers generally, by whom they are esteemed to be neither good divinity nor good sense.”
The address touched off a major controversy among American Unitarian theologians, primarily about the necessity of belief in the historical truth of the Biblical miracles, but involving other secondary issues as well. The Unitarian establishment of New England and of the Harvard Divinity School rejected Emerson's teachings outright, with
Andrews NortonAndrews Norton was an American preacher and theologian. Along with William Ellery Channing, he was the leader of mainstream Unitarianism of the early and middle 19th century....
of Harvard publishing especially forceful retorts, including one calling Transcendentalism "the latest form of infidelity."
Henry Ware, Jr.Henry Ware, Jr. was an influential Unitarian theologian, early member of the faculty of Harvard Divinity School, and first president of the Harvard Musical Association. He was a mentor of Ralph Waldo Emerson when Emerson studied for the ministry in the 1820s.The son of Henry Ware, he was born in...
, one of Emerson's mentors as a divinity student more than a decade prior, delivered the sermon
The Personality of the DeityIn response to Ralph Waldo Emerson's Divinity School Address, Henry Ware, Jr. delivered a sermon titled The Personality of the Deity in the chapel of Harvard University on September 23, 1838...
, which was also circulated in printed form, in order to argue against Emerson's position.