Another excellent sermon from James Ishmael Ford.

Transcendentalism called us to examine our own hearts and the world through that faculty that can be called either “reason” or “intuition.” I find it really important how for them there was no particular difference between the two, reason from this angle, intuition from that. This is a much richer understanding of how we actually come to know things than many of us tend to notice. So, itself a great gift.

And when applied to life, it brings a new way of living in the world. Parker himself, in that sermon sorting the transient from the permanent, proclaimed, “Christianity is not a system of doctrines, but rather a method of attaining oneness with God. It demands, therefore, a good life of piety within, of purity without, and gives the promise that whoso does God’s will, shall know of God’s doctrine.” And with this Parker articulated a radical doctrine, declaring we are our true selves when we have nothing between God and us, between the ultimate and me, between the world writ large and you.

A Meditation on Theodore Parker and the Call of Liberal Religion as a Compass in Hard Times