Editing Spirituality (section)

====Transcendentalism and Unitarian Universalism====
[[Ralph Waldo Emerson]] (1803–1882) was a pioneer of the idea of spirituality as a distinct field.<ref>Schmidt, Leigh Eric. ''Restless Souls: The Making of American Spirituality''. San Francisco: Harper, 2005. {{ISBN|0-06-054566-6}}</ref> He was one of the major figures in [[Transcendentalism]], an early 19th-century [[Liberal Christianity|liberal Protestant]] movement, which was rooted in English and German [[Romanticism]], the Biblical criticism of [[Johann Gottfried Herder]] and [[Friedrich Schleiermacher]], the [[skepticism]] of [[David Hume|Hume]],<ref group=web name="Stanford-Transcendentlism">{{cite web |url=http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/transcendentalism/ |title=Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ''Transcendentalism'' |publisher=Plato.stanford.edu |access-date=2014-01-04 |archive-date=2010-07-11 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100711124255/http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/transcendentalism/ |url-status=live }}</ref> and [[Neoplatonism]].{{sfn|Remes|2014|p=202}}{{sfn|Versluis|2014|p=35}}
The Transcendentalists emphasized an intuitive, experiential approach to religion.<ref group=web name="Lewis">{{cite web|author=Jone Johnson Lewis |url=http://www.transcendentalists.com/what.htm |title=What is Transcendentalism? |publisher=Transcendentalists.com |access-date=2014-01-04|url-status=usurped|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140627121243/http://www.transcendentalists.com/what.htm|archive-date=2014-06-27}}</ref> Following Schleiermacher,{{sfn|Sharf|1995}} an individual's intuition of truth was taken as the criterion for truth.<ref group=web name="Lewis" /> In the late 18th and early 19th century, the first translations of Hindu texts appeared, which were also read by the Transcendentalists, and influenced their thinking.<ref group=web name="Lewis" /> They also endorsed [[Universalism|universalist]] and [[Unitarianism|Unitarianist]] ideas, leading to [[Unitarian Universalism]], the idea that there must be truth in other religions as well since a loving God would redeem all living beings, not just Christians.<ref group=web name=" Lewis" /><ref group=web name="Andrews">{{cite web |url=http://archive.uua.org/re/other/andrews.html |title=Barry Andrews, ''The Roots Of Unitarian Universalist Spirituality In New England Transcendentalism '' |publisher=Archive.uua.org |date=1999-03-12 |access-date=2014-01-04 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130921054734/http://archive.uua.org/re/other/andrews.html |archive-date=2013-09-21 }}</ref>