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Summary

This chapter shows that biblical criticism encouraged some figures, including Ralph Waldo Emerson and Theodore Parker, to abandon what they perceived as transient historical grounds for what they understood as a transcendent moral sphere. Many scholars have stressed the ahistorical aspects of Transcendental belief and emphasized the ways in which Transcendentalism outgrew its Unitarian roots. In doing so, however, they have often neglected to note how historical arguments freed heterodox thinkers such as Emerson and Parker in their attempts to build atemporal worlds. While most biblical scholars used historical readings to ground universal truths in a biblical past, these Transcendentalists employed historical explication to unmoor such truths from that historical setting. The growing perception of historical distance assisted them in that effort. As these and other thinkers drew attention to the shiftiness of historical evidence, the limitations of time, and the remoteness of the past, they exposed the transience of the historical grounds on which American Protetants based their faith.

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2 - “The Ground Will Shake”

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2 - “The Ground Will Shake”

Summary