section_path: Development of the meaning of spirituality/Modern spirituality/Transcendentalism and Unitarian Universalism
section_name: Transcendentalism and Unitarian Universalism
paragraph_text: Transcendentalism and Unitarian Universalism
  
  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) was a pioneer of the idea of spirituality as a distinct field. He was one of the major figures in Transcendentalism, an early 19th-century liberal Protestant movement, which was rooted in English and German Romanticism, the Biblical criticism of Johann Gottfried Herder and Friedrich Schleiermacher, the skepticism of Hume, and Neoplatonism. The Transcendentalists emphasized an intuitive, experiential approach to religion. Following Schleiermacher, an individual's intuition of truth was taken as the criterion for truth. 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. They also endorsed universalist and 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.