American Transcendentalism
American Transcendentalism is an American version of 19th-century German Romanticism that developed in the late 1820s and 1830s in the eastern United States – New England Transcendentalism.  Its core belief sees inherent goodness in people and nature along with the view of a creative human spirit that operates in and through mind-created spirit. Where people are at their best when they are self-reliant and independent even though society and its institutions have corrupted the purity of the individual.

Important not to confuse transcendental with transcendent. To a theologian the term 'transcendental' triggers the thought of a 'god out there' (God transcends this world).  Transcendental does not refer to something out there, but something inside, pervading all.

There wouldn't be any transcendentalism or romanticism apart from Kant.  He is the philosophical transition that made it possible. He had the term before they did (Transcendental Idealism).  An early significate influence of Kant can be seen in Samuel Taylor Coleridge's 'Aids to Reflection & The Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit’ (1904).  The ‘Preliminary Essay’ by Reverend James Marsh (1829 ‘Aids’ edition) has been claimed to almost single-handedly laid the groundwork for the New England Transcendentalism movement. Marsh helped resolved theological conflicts between American Congregationalists and Unitarians by removing the disagreements from the ground of Lockean sensationalism to the higher ground of Kantian idealism. Orthodox Congregationalist appealed to the letter of Scripture to validate the doctrines of innate depravity, election and predestination.  Unitarians protested such beliefs violated universal standards of morality.  Both sects ignored the essential elements of any truly vital faith, the potential in each man for spiritual participation in the divine will.

Coleridge’s ‘Aids to Reflection’ helped to revitalize Congregationalism by restoring the spiritual flame that had become dimmed by secularism, doctrinal debate, skepticism and moralism; to return Unitarians to Orthodoxy by assuring them that they need not analyze the mysteries of the Christian faith logically in order to participate in them spiritually.

The spiritual principles within ‘Aids to Reflection’ – the mind spirit of the human soul participates in a world spirit – are also found in the works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Thomas Troward, Dr. Ernest Holmes and New Thought, to name a few.

Great Awakening