In a sermon preached on May 27, 1832, Ralph Waldo Emerson told his congregation, "I regard it as the irresistible effect of the Copernican astronomy to have made the theological scheme of redemption absolutely incredible." Robert Richardson comments:
"Emerson's preference for astronomy over conventional Christian theology constitutes his break with the church. It is not a break with theism, not a rejection of the religious view of the world. It is a specific rejection of the idea that the center of Christianity is the fall of humankind in Adam and Eve and the redemption of humanity through the sacrifice of Christ." Richardson, Emerson: The Mind On Fire, 124-125.
Regrettably, Emerson was wrong to think that the fall of humankind and its redemption through the crucifixion of Christ is not the "center of Christianity"--it is the center, theologically speaking and, in my view, he was right to reject it. Like his admirer Tolstoy, Emerson was a post-Christian theist who thought himself a "true" Christian. Hence, he had no choice but to leave the church (and, by the same token, Russian Orthodoxy had no choice but to excommunicate Tolstoy).
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