The dissatisfaction with established religion that affected the Transcendentalists is strongly and clearly expressed in Emerson's 1838 "Divinity School Address," in which Emerson asked,
In how many churches, by how many prophets, tell me, is man made sensible that he is an infinite Soul; that the earth and heavens are passing into his mind; that he is drinking forever the soul of God? Where now sounds the persuasion, that by its very melody imparadises my heart, and so affirms its own origin in heaven? . . . But now the priest's Sabbath has lost the splendor of nature; it is unlovely; we are glad when it is done; we can make, we do make, even sitting in our pews, a far better, holier, sweeter, for ourselves.
These were critical words, and they drew strong negative response, particularly from Andrews Norton, a Biblical scholar and professor at the Harvard Divinity School, who issued his Discourse on the Latest Form of Infidelity in 1839 in response to the ideas Emerson put forth in his address.
Like the "Divinity School Address," Theodore Parker's "A Discourse of the Transient and Permanent in Christianity" expressed rejection of established religion and religious doctrine:
The stream of Christianity, as men receive it, has caught a stain from every soil it has filtered through, so that now it is not the pure water from the well of life which is offered to our lips, but streams troubled and polluted by man with mire and dirt. If Paul and Jesus could read our books of theological doctrines, would they accept as their teaching what men have vented in their name? Never, till the letters of Paul had faded out of his memory; never, till the words of Jesus had been torn out from the book of life. It is their notions about Christianity men have taught as the only living word of God. They have piled their own rubbish against the temple of Truth where Piety comes up to worship; what wonder the pile seems unshapely and like to fall? But these theological doctrines are fleeting as the leaves on the trees.
Clearly, Emerson and Parker both envisioned true religion as a personal rather than an institutional connection with the divine.
