T. S. Eliot and the Spirituality of Action: Journal of Vaishnava Studies

Abstract

In my beginning is my end” (East Coker I). Mary Queen of Scots’s motto, adopted by T. S. Eliot with reference to his collateral ancestor Sir Thomas Elyot (c. 1490–1546), encourages us to seek in Eliot’s Unitarian origins the seeds of his later spiritual vision. Grandson of William Greenleaf Eliot (1811–1887), who founded Washington University and helped found the First Unitarian Church in St. Louis, and son of Charlotte Stearns Eliot, who was both a poet and involved in community activities, he ended as an ornament of the Church of England. But the broad and questioning character of his religious vision, especially as expressed in Four Quartets, reflects his liberal
American origins. To these origins he also owes a life-long concern with responsible action, which I shall attempt to highlight in this essay.