While the mythology of America proclaims the United States as a land of religious freedom, the actual history of the United States reveals many laws that discriminate against people who do not profess a belief in a god (usually the Christian God), higher power, or creator. While the Constitution bans religious tests for federal offices, the states have written and enforced laws based on the assumption that atheism, religious skepticism, and even deism were ideas that were dangerous to public safety and morals.
In their book Godless Citizens in a Godly Republic: Atheists in American Public Life, Laurence Moore and Isaac Kramnick write:
“It didn’t strike most early Americans as controversial that people who denied the existence of a divine creator could not hold public office. In many states could not testify in court even in their own defense. If they published treatises proclaiming their nonbelief or spoke about it publicly, they could face criminal charges that subjected them to heavy fines or jail terms.”
One of the interesting examples of criminalizing non-belief in the United States is the nineteenth century “Jersey’s Heresy Case.”
Charles B. Reynolds (1832-1896) was a freethought lecturer and evangelist who served as the chair of the executive committee of the American Secular Union. As a writer, he was a regular contributor to The Truth Seeker and the Boston Investigator. Reynolds developed a Gospel of Humanity based on the ideas of justice, love, mercy, and promoting the happiness of others. He lectured in many different venues, and when the towns lacked halls that he could rent, he would hold tent meetings which have been called “liberal tent revivals.”
In 1886, Reynolds scheduled a series of tent meetings in Boonton, New Jersey, a town of about 2,500 where he had previously lectured. In his book Village Atheists: How America’s Unbelievers Made Their Way in a Godly Nation Leigh Eric Schmidt reports:
“Conflicts with local Protestants and Catholics had arisen immediately, and by the night of his second lecture a noisy mob was poised to run him out of town. Reynolds cut his performance short and sought protection from authorities in order to proceed with his tent meetings the next night; instead he was arrested and charged with blasphemy—with ‘contumaciously reproaching the being and existence of God’ as well as ‘the scriptures as contained in the books of the Old and New Testament.’”
The mob destroyed the tent and Reynolds was lucky to escape unharmed. The city council held a special meeting and passed a resolution to prevent Reynolds from speaking in the community.
The trial, which would be known in many history books as “Jersey’s Heresy Case,” was held in Morristown. The well-known attorney and political figure Robert Green Ingersoll (known as “The Great Agnostic) served as Reynolds’ attorney. The trial was postponed until January 1887 because of Ingersoll’s illness.
Throughout American history, the rights of non-Christians to present testimony before courts, legislatures, and other bodies has been restricted by requiring a religious oath. In the nineteenth century many states did not allow non-believers—i.e. atheists and agnostics—to give testimony in legal matters. With regard to the Reynolds trial in New Jersey, Leigh Eric Schmidt reports:
“Like other states, New Jersey allowed witnesses who had pious scruples against oath-taking (Quakers, for example) to offer a solemn affirmation of truth-telling without the ‘So help me God’ phrasing and without swearing upon a Bible, but the prosecutor argued that atheists and agnostics did not fall within the allowance made for religious conscience…”
Robert Ingersoll did not call any witnesses at the trial. Leigh Eric Schmidt reports:
“Possibly Ingersoll did not want a repeat of the prior oath-taking debacle, but it was also indisputable that Reynolds had published Blasphemy and the Bible and handed it out in bulk in both Boonton and Morristown.”
At the trial, Ingersoll stated:
“I deny the right of any man, of any number of men, of any church, of any State, to put a padlock on the lips—to make the tongue a convict.”
However, it took less than an hour for the jury, most of whom were openly Christian, to reach a guilty verdict. The judge fined Reynolds $75, which Ingersoll paid.
After the trial, The Truth Seeker reported:
“Mr. Reynolds is now free from the toils of New Jersey savagery, and will resume his labors for intellectual liberty.”
Leigh Eric Schmidt summed up the impact of the trial this way:
“The Boonton affair disclosed any number of social and legal impediments that infidels and atheists confronted. It raised serious doubts about the unbeliever’s equal protection under the law; it showed the tenacity of religious tests in determining witness competency; it revealed the varied legal strata that could be applied to godless utterances—blasphemy, libel, profane swearing, obscenity, indecency, and public disturbance; it made manifest the social ostracism that unbelievers frequently experienced; and it demonstrated the double standard to which freethinkers so often attested—that Christians were free to ridicule infidels all they wanted, but the ‘same liberty’ did not work in reverse.”
The battle against non-belief continued in the United States during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. It intensified with the mid-twentieth century as American conservatives fought against “godless communism” in the Cold War and added the words “under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance. Vice President, George H. W. Bush was quoted as saying:
“I don’t know that atheists should be regarded as citizens, nor should they be regarded as patriotic.”
In the twenty-first century, conservatives continue to advocate for a theocratic concept of religious freedom which promotes some forms of Christianity as having superiority while denying religious freedom, including freedom of speech, to non-believers and followers of non-Christian religions.
Religion 101
Religion 101 is a series about various religious topics in which the concept of religion is not confined to god-centered religions. More from this series:
Religion 201: Heresy
Religion 201: Blasphemy
Religion 102: Agnosticism
Religion 102: Naturalism
Religion 101: God-Given Morality
Religion 101: Secularism
Religion 101: Atheism
Religion 101: Christian Imperialism