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In the early nineteenth century, a great deal of diversity existed in American theology. Nevertheless, despite substantial differences, American religious thinkers during this period were dominated by Christians – mostly Protestants – and emphasized commonsense republican understandings of authority over against traditional standards. Even in disagreements, the commonsense republican approach to Christianity set the boundaries for dispute.

Chapter 8, reveals that, in addition to Coleridge's enormous impact on Emerson and Boston Transcendentalism, his influence extended even further into the nineteenth and early twentieth century via a second strand of Transatlantic Transcendentalism: “Vermont Transcendentalism.” James Marsh's restructuring of the University of Vermont curriculum according to Coleridgean principles revolutionized higher education, and many of Marsh's students became important public intellectuals, including H. J. Raymond, founder of The New York Times, and John Dewey, a founding figure in the philosophical movement of Pragmatism. Coleridge's influence on Vermont Transcendentalism transformed American nineteenth- and early twentieth-century letters, constituting a multi-generational link in Transatlantic Transcendentalism and ensuring his relevance for over a hundred years after the first editions of Coleridge arrived on American shores.

Thinkers unconnected to institutions were the most lively and creative thinkers in the US for much of the nineteenth century. These ‘amateurs’ were more willing to adopt untraditional, usually German, ideas; and they moved more quickly to modern, secular ideas. The most important of these thinkers were James Marsh of Vermont, who introduced Kantian ideas into America; Ralph Waldo Emerson, the leading Transcendentalist; Connecticut minister Horace Bushnell, who followed Nathaniel William Taylor in remaking the theology of New England and leading it to figurative and metaphorical interpretations of the Bible; John Williamson Nevin and Philip Schaff of the Mercersburg Seminary in Pennsylvania, who meditated on an organicist Protestant theology; and The St Louis Hegelians.

Chapter 2 relates Coleridge's seminal role in the development of Boston Transcendentalism. Two American interpreters were especially influential in the transatlantic transfer of Coleridgean ideas: James Marsh and Frederick Henry Hedge. Their commentaries extracted essential aspects of Coleridge's thought while also framing it in light of American concerns. James Marsh's preface to the American edition of Aids to Reflection promoted Coleridge's relevance for the renewal of American theology and philosophy and popularized the reason and understanding distinction. Hedge's 1833 article on Coleridge, which Emerson called a “living, leaping, Logos,” both summarized Coleridge's interpretation of German idealism and issued a call for intellectuals to “raise ourselves at once to a transcendental point of view.” Marsh's and Hedge's interpretations of Coleridge boosted his stature in America and indelibly shaped the development of Transatlantic Transcendentalism.

This chapter presents an interview with filmmaker James Marsh. Marsh began his career as a researcher and then a director for the BBC. His breakthrough documentary, Troubleman (1994), chronicled the last years of Marvin Gaye and his murder at the hands of his father. The King (2005) marked Marsh's move away from documentary into pure fiction and Man on Wire (2008) put his name on the map. The film tells the story of young Frenchman named Philippe Petit who stepped out on a wire illegally rigged between the twin towers of New York's World Trade Center on August 7, 1974. The interview covered topics such as what is was about Man on Wire that caught his interest; how they gained Petit's consent and collaboration; and the conscious decision not to mention the events of September 11, 2001.

Introduces historical precedents for American Transcendentalism, including Jonathan Edwards, James Marsh, Romanticism, Evangelicalism, and the history of Protestantism as well as the “Protestant principle” of individual interpretation of religion in America. Provides historical precedents of American Transcendentalism.