“Ralph Waldo Emerson: The Oracle of Concord”

Let’s take a closer look at “Saint Ralph” — Unitarian minister, poet, essayist, lecturer and philosopher – who was one of the most influential writers and thinkers of the 1800s. In his famous “Divinity School Address” at Harvard Divinity School in 1838, Emerson became infamous for skewering virtually every orthodox Christian belief of his day.  A close friend of Henry David Thoreau, Bronson Alcott, Elizabeth Peabody, Margaret Fuller and other Unitarian luminaries all living in and around Concord, Massachusetts, Emerson was a leading proponent of individual self-reliance and the Transcendentalist movement.