This World is not Conclusion

Emily Dickinson lived her entire life in Massachusetts, the US state with the strongest Puritan heritage. From a young age, she received instruction in Calvinist doctrine, a hard-line sect of Protestant Christianity that stresses the absolute authority of Scripture, the idea of original sin (the belief that all human beings inherit a sinful nature at the moment of their birth), and predestination (the belief that each human’s eventual afterlife has been decided before their birth). Dickinson’s troubles with Calvinism at Mount Holyoke Female Seminary are fairly well-documented: Almost instantly, Dickinson bucked against the strictness of the school’s Calvinist theology, and she found their religious rules and practices “invasive” (Habegger, Alfred., “Emily Dickinson.” Britannica.com). While there, Dickinson described herself as being spiritually “without hope” and expressed no desire to be a Christian (“Emily Dickinson.” Poetry Foundation). Years later, when widespread spiritual awakenings were happening across America, Dickinson was the only member of her family who did not undergo any kind of conversion experience. While she resisted and criticized many aspects of Christianity her whole life, Dickinson remained a believer with her own understanding of Christianity, best expressed in poems like “Some keep the Sabbath going to Church” and “This World is not Conclusion.