During the eighteenth century, the Enlightenment (also known as the Age of Reason) emerged in Europe as a philosophical movement centered on reason as the primary source of authority. The foundations of this movement are found in the new scientific knowledge of the world which began to be developed a century earlier. This new scientific knowledge challenged the Christian worldview which was dominant in Europe at this time.
Inspired by the new scientific knowledge, deism emerged as an alternative to Christianity. In his book Revolutionary Deists: Early America’s Rational Infidels, Kerry Walters writes:
“Deism was that religious worldview which sprang from the Enlightenment’s emphasis upon reason, natural philosophy (or what today would be called science), and experience.”
In his entry on deism in The New Encyclopedia of Unbelief, Bill Cooke writes:
“Deism is, in the main, a European movement, and relevant only to the Christian tradition to which it was reacting.”
The word deism is first recorded in English in the 1680s and seems to come from the French déisme which, in turn, comes from Latin deus meaning “god.” Initially, it was used as the opposite of atheism and in the 1700s was used as the opposite of theism.
In general, deists rejected many elements of Christianity—original sin, the Virgin Birth, the Trinity—and felt that while there was a divine creator, this creator was not concerned with daily life. Deists refused to accept the divinity of Jesus and the divine authority of the Bible. Dismissing the idea of special revelation as fiction, deists saw the essence of religion as reason. William Wainwright, in his entry on deism in The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, writes:
“Since God’s benevolence is disinterested, he will ensure that the knowledge needed for happiness is universally accessible. Salvation, cannot, then, depend on special revelation. True religion is an expression of a universal human nature whose essence is reason and is the same in all times and places.”
Kerry Walters writes:
“Deism insisted that reality is the creation of a perfectly benevolent and rational deity—the ‘Supreme Architect’—whose divine rationality and goodness are reflected in his handiwork. Physical reality, for the deists, conforms to universal, immutable, and absolute laws of nature set in motion by God.”
In 1730, Martin Tindal (1657-1733) published Christianity as Old as Creation, which is sometimes called the “deist’s Bible.” Bill Cooke reports:
“Tindal extended the critique of scriptures by arguing that such texts, being human creations, are full of errors and inconsistencies and serve only to deflect our thoughts from the proper constitution of the universe.”
Tindal’s work angered the clergy and he was accused of being an immoral man. In his biography of Tindal in The New Encyclopedia of Unbelief, David Berman writes:
“No doubt criticism of his moral character was designed partly to bring his principles into disrepute; for showing that the man who virtually reduced religion to morality was himself immoral would certainly help the enemies of deism.”
Thomas Paine (1737-1809) brought deist ideas to a wider audience with his The Age of Reason (1794-1795), a best-seller in Europe and America. Bill Cooke reports:
“The writings of Thomas Paine struck a nerve that went far beyond the polite disputes over the merits of deism.”
Many religious fundamentalists became alarmed at the book’s popularity. In his short biography of Paine in The New Encyclopedia of Unbelief, Kenneth Burchell writes:
“In perhaps the most successful smear campaign in history, Federalists flogged Paine with his religious views in order to discredit his democratic radicalism, while religious conservatives called down anathema and invective on the great ‘Agent of Lucifer.’”
In 1796, the Methodist Episcopal Church, in response to deism in the United States, called for a national day of prayer to bring the country back to Christianity. Two years later, the Presbyterian Church claimed that the wrath of God would strike unless the United States turned away from deism.
Today, deism refers to the belief that god does exist but does not interfere with human life and the laws of the universe. God is transcendent. Many deists feel that religious beliefs must be based on features observed in the natural world and they tend to dismiss revealed religion—that is, religions which are based on supernatural revelations to prophets—as fiction. They feel that the knowledge needed for happiness is universal and does not depend on revelation.
Steven Doloff, in an article in Free Inquiry, writes:
“Deism prioritized an exclusive reliance upon reason to know God and his universe of natural (scientific) law.”
In comparing theism and deism, Richard Dawkins, in his book The God Delusion, writes:
“A deist, too, believes in a supernatural intelligence, but one whose activities were confined to setting up the laws that govern the universe in the first place.”
Deism was primarily a phenomenon of the 17th and 18th centuries and was strongest in England. In the Americas, George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and Thomas Paine were prominent deists. The American deists generally felt that Christianity had created an atmosphere of fear, intolerance, ignorance, and superstition. As a result, Christianity had hampered the development of scientific ideas as well as the well-being of individuals. Kerry Walters writes:
“Even more radically, many (but not all) of the American deists also argued that the Christian religion exerted a pernicious moral influence upon humankind.”
With regard to the impact of deism on the formation of the United States, Bill Cooke writes:
“The separation of church and state is a logical consequence of deism and constitutes its most lasting and positive legacy.”
Bill Cooke also reports:
“In most cases, deists advocated religious toleration, arguing that all religions were, to some extent at least, a representation of the divine truth of the universe. Deists tended to believe in a creator, but in most cases denied that the creator took any part in the day-to-day running of the universe.”
Kerry Walters summarizes the impact of the deists in the early years of the United States this way:
“If the deistic movement in the colonies and early Republic accomplished nothing else, it at least impressed upon the minds of sympathizers and detractors alike the hazards of sectarian dogmatism. It legitimized the sometimes disconcerting realization that there are a variety of different ways to think about ultimate issues such as the nature of God, providential design, theological method, and the purpose of religious life.”
In the United States, deism flourished from about 1725 until about 1811. The end of deism is marked by the launching of a national newspaper, Theophilanthropist, which was devoted to deism and published by the New York Deistical Society of Theophilanthropy. The life of the paper was short: from 1810 until 1811. Kerry Walters writes:
“The Theophilanthropist’s sporadic and uninspired career was the rather pathetic swan song of American deism. Its end signaled the end of deism.”
Religion 101/201
Religion 101/201 is a series exploring religious topics in which the concept of religion is not confined to the Abrahamic religions or to deity-centered religions. Religion 201 is an expansion of an earlier essay. More from this series:
Religion 201: Blasphemy
Religion 101: Secularism
Religion 101: Confucianism
Religion 101: Naturalism
Religion 101: The Evolution of Morality
Religion 101: Shamanistic Ceremonies
Religion 101: Atheism
Religion 101: Christian Imperialism
Religion 101: Revealed Religions