Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism

Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism

     In Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism, Susan Jacoby presents a side of American history that, unfortunately, most Americans are never taught in school. A side that turns out to be vital to a true understanding of the ideals this country was founded on, and how some of our most important advancements in political and ethical life were accomplished. It is a story of heroism and strength by many who have been conveniently forgotten at best, or intentionally misrepresented at worst. And, all of the people that shared this fate have one thing in common, they were all cast as atheists and infidels. Be this accusation true or not, they were all Freethinkers who shared Enlightenment values. There are many stories about many courageous people fighting many hard-fought battles, but I would like to focus on some of the pieces of history that I had unfortunately been deprived of and impacted me greatly while reading this book.

     The first of those pieces is the story of Thomas Paine. I had never heard his name until college. And, until Jacoby’s book had no idea how awful that fact was, or how horribly the country he helped come to be had treated this great man. As Jacoby writes: “In the early 1800s, the author of “Common Sense” – which had sold some 500,000 copies in the mid-1770s – would be castigated as a Judas, reptile, hog, mad dog, souse, louse, archbeast, brute, liar, and of course infidel.” (35-36) What led to this change of opinion was the publication of Paine’s work, The Age of Reason, in which he expressed his disdain for the religious monarchy in much the same manner that he had expressed his hatred of governmental monarchy in Common Sense. The Age of Reason was written hastily by Paine while sitting in a French prison after “declaring his opposition to the execution of Louis XVI.” (41) He would sit in that cell, awaiting the guillotine and watching his health fade, for over nine months before James Monroe finally replaced Gouverneur Morris as America’s minister to France and worked for his release. And, Paine would not be able to return to the America he fought to help build until one of his only remaining friends, Thomas Jefferson, was elected and arranged for his safe transport back to America. However, Paine’s return was not necessarily a happy occasion. He found that most of his old friends no longer wanted to be associated with him for fear of their own reputations, and he had become a pariah to the common people because of a massive campaign orchestrated by the religious leaders and newspapers to sully his name. It seems so sad that the man who did so much to spread the Enlightenment thoughts and ideals that would sow the seeds of the Revolution that brought this country into being would be so horribly treated by the citizens of that newly founded country simply because of his thoughts on religion. But, worse than all of this, is the fact that, unlike the prophecy of William Cobbett in his 1797 so-called “biography” on Paine, he would not, “like Judas,…be remembered by posterity; [with men learning] to express all that is base, malignant, treacherous, unnatural, and blasphemous by the single monosyllable Paine.” As far as my grade school learning showed, he and all his efforts would simply be forgotten. Not unlike how our country “forgot” him while he rotted in that French prison cell. If for no other reason, the torrent of atrocities visited upon this man, whose only goal seemed to be freeing Americans from all forms of tyranny, should earn him a rightful place in the history books and classes.

     The second piece of history that impacted me in this book was one I knew about but was surprised to find out the extent of. The treatment of women throughout history is something I’ve always known was a struggle. However, I was not aware how far-reaching and sadistic that treatment could get. From Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s treatment by her own ‘sisters’ in the feminist movement after her publication of the Woman’s Bible, and lack of support from her own husband in the fight for women’s rights, to Viola Gregg Liuzzo’s defamation by J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI, women who wanted basic rights seemed to be attacked from every angle. Though, none seemed harder on women than the religions that many of them belonged to. The established religions have used every tool at their disposal to try to keep women ‘barefoot and in the kitchen’. This book highlights so many stories of horrific treatment towards women who, in most cases, should have been heralded for their heroism and bravery that it is impossible to list them all. But, for someone like myself, who was not raised in the church, it was gut-wrenching to read at times. I think the story of Viola Liuzzo was the hardest to read. Jacoby writes: “Viola Gregg Liuzzo, a thirty-nine-year-old Detroit wife and mother of five, was shot on a lonely stretch of highway between Selma and Montgomery. Liuzzo had been accompanied by a nineteen-year-old local black volunteer, and they were heading for Montgomery to pick up tired marchers and drive them back to Selma.” (334-336) They were killed by Klansmen who had an FBI informant in the car with them, and she was utterly destroyed in the papers and the courtroom during the Klansmen’s trial. She was defamed and blamed for her own murder simply because she was a woman who was ‘out of her place’. It was sickening to read, but a part of history that we should remember in order to know the effects of a profoundly sick society.

     The third piece of history that I was not privy to was the Comstock laws. This seems like a vitally important part of our history because, to me, it seems like a very clear example of a hard-fought battle to ensure our right to Freedom of the Press. Additionally, it struck a chord with me as it relates to some of the recent actions of our current administration towards the press. The Comstock laws were enacted because of the persistence of a driven young man named Anthony Comstock, and were used to jail “editors who published everything from diatribes against marriage to advertisements for venereal disease remedies.” (206) But, most especially, anything that dared to mention “the prevention of conception or birth (the term birth control did not then exist).” (207) The laws were enacted in 1873, after heavy lobbying by Comstock “with the backing of organized religion.” (207) Jacoby writes: “Freethinkers were the only consistent opponents to censorship from the 1870s until the First World War; nearly a half a century before there was an American Civil Liberties Union, without a body of judicial precedent to bolster their argument, freethinkers spoke out in defense of those accused of obscenity and blasphemy...” (205) And, Robert Ingersoll, one of Jacoby’s heroes, “was the best-known individual voice against censorship…[who even went so far as to suggest that] censors take a close look at the Bible, which ‘contains hundreds of grossly obscene passages, in my judgment, calculated to corrupt the minds of youth.” (205-206) In what could have been a tragedy, in my opinion, Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass was almost outlawed in its full form. In fact, one of the publishers who dared to publish it, Ezra H. Heywood, was brought to trial for violating the Comstock laws. But, in an act that showed how much American society had changed, the judge at Heywood’s trial dismissed the case. How different would the world be without Walt Whitman? However, the damage most inflicted by these laws was against the fight for birth control. These laws, backed by most religions, would aid the opposition in the long battle for women’s rights to their own bodies, and their access to birth control methods. It would take until 1959 for the Comstock laws to finally be “dealt a decisive blow…when Grove Press brought out an unexpurgated edition of D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover.” (307) I feel that these laws are something that every American child should learn about in school. It is vitally important for the public to be informed about what a world of censorship and lack of Freedom of the Press might look like. And, the battles that occurred over the Comstock laws paint a very vivid picture of that world.

     I would recommend this book to anyone. I was angered, bewildered, proud, and enthralled by the “history of American secularism” that Susan Jacoby presented. I wish that we taught our children the true story of our past and not some watered-down nationalistic Christianized version of a nation that was built on ideals that went against all of those characteristics. How can we truly defend what we do not know it was so hard to gain and keep? Or, maybe that’s the point.