William Henry Channing, the nephew of Unitarian clergyman William Ellery Channing (1780-1842) and cousin of poet and Transcendentalist William Ellery Channing II (1817-1901), was a Unitarian minister, an author, an editor, and an idealistic reformer who assumed a variety of philosophical and religious identities during his life. He has been referred to as "the political conscience of the transcendental movement," but although Channing did initially espouse the tenets of Transcendentalism, he ultimately parted ways with its emphasis on self-culture. Instead, Channing advocated Christian socialism and sought to bring about what he called "the Kingdom of heaven on Earth" through the doctrine of associationism. Channing is important to the American Renaissance primarily as the influential editor of three periodicals--the Western Messenger, the Present, and the Spirit of the Age--publications that featured his own articles on social reform as well as others on literature, philosophy, and religion. Additionally, he...