During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, there were a number of European scholars who felt confined by the traditional dogma and began to ask questions about it. This marked the beginning of a philosophy of freethought.
In general, there are five basic characteristics of freethought: (1) no party line, (2) no absolutes, (3) no censorship, (4) no sacred books, and (5) no sacred names. From the viewpoint of the doctrinal religions, each one of these characteristics encouraged heresy and blasphemy. In many theocratic nations, freethought was outlawed and those advocating it were punished.
In the English-speaking colonies of North America, unlike many European counties, there was some religious plurality in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. While some religions, such as Judaism and the pagan traditions of the American Indians, faced discrimination, there was no monolithic state religion, no office, such as the Catholic Inquisition, which ensured adherence to any particular doctrine. In her book Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism, Susan Jacoby writes:
“The religious pluralism of colonial America, which mitigated against a common cultural definition of religious heresy, also made room for freethought. As early as the 1750s, the spread of deism—often used by its detractors as a synonym for freethought and atheism—was considered a serious problem by orthodox clergymen.”
There is a correlation between literacy and freethought. While freethought can be viewed in its association with an educated elite, as literacy in colonial America spread to the general public, so did the basic concepts of freethought. Susan Jacoby reports:
“Expanding literacy, especially in the northern colonies, contributed to the spread of freethought beyond an educated elite to a larger audience of literate farmers, small businessmen, craftsmen, and, in growing numbers, their wives and daughters.”
Lest the religious diversity found in the English colonies be associated with religious tolerance, it should be noted that the colonies enacted laws against blasphemy. In 1697, for example, the Massachusetts blasphemy law, which continues to serve as the model for blasphemy laws in several states, declared that denying God, Jesus Christ, the Holy Ghost, or the holy scripture, was a crime. In his book Village Atheists: How America’s Unbelievers Made Their Way in a Godly Nation, Leigh Eric Schmidt reports:
“Offenders who cursed in God’s name, scoffed at the scriptures, or otherwise mocked sacred things often landed in court, and punishments meted out for such blasphemies could be severe, including public whipping, tongue-boring, and imprisonment. Though no one in the colonies was put to death for denying Christ’s divinity, or rejecting God, the law nonetheless looked upon such disavowals as potentially capital offenses.”
Closely associated with both the Enlightenment and freethought is science which emphasizes the study of reality. Susan Jacoby writes: “The expansion of literacy in the late colonial era was accompanied by a growing interest in and respect for science—an important element of freethought in all countries affected by the Enlightenment.” During the colonial era prior to the Revolutionary War, the science writings of Benjamin Franklin were popular. Following the formation of the United States, Thomas Jefferson reported that with the greater literacy in the United States, most Americans knew more about science than did their European counterparts.
Freethought is often associated with deism, a method of understanding the world which rose to prominence in Europe during the seventeenth century. In the Americas, deism was a philosophy espoused by many of the individuals who were prominent in the establishment of the United States. These include such men as Benjamin Franklin, Ethan Allen, Thomas Jefferson, Tom Paine, Elihu Palmer, and Philip Freneau. The American deists challenged many of the core beliefs of Christianity, particularly all claims of divine authority. In their book Godless Citizens in a Godly Republic: Atheists in American Public Life, Laurence Moore and Isaac Kramnick write:
“The virgin birth, the miracles attributed to Jesus, his resurrection and saving grace, heaven and hell—all of these ideas, they thought, flew in the face of reason. So did the belief that the Bible was the revealed word of God. For deists, reason always trumped faith. Deists saw their belief system as irenic. It eschewed the theological squabbles that had caused too many bloody wars in Europe.”
In emphasizing a rational and empirical approach to the study of the natural world, the American deists, as freethinkers, challenged the teachings of the Christian prophets, including Jesus, and viewed their claims of a divine or supernatural source as unrealistic and untrue. In his book Revolutionary Deists: Early America’s Rational Infidels, Kerry Walters writes:
“Consequently, they dismissed—sometimes systematically, sometimes polemically—the supernatural doctrines of miracles and special revelation, argued that neither Scripture nor ecclesial tradition possessed divine authority or internal consistency, and refused to accept either the divinity of Jesus or the orthodox trinitarian definition of the Godhead.”
Kerry Walters also reports:
“They denied the possibility of revelation or miracles, refused to acknowledge that Jesus was divine or the Godhead trinitarian, and in many instances they even insisted that the moral precepts spelled out in the New Testament were unworthy of either God or man.”
Freethinkers were intimately involved with the formation of the United States and this is most evident in the radical idea of an absolute separation of church and state. For many religious adherents (i.e., Christians) of the seventeenth century, and of the twenty-first century, the concept of secularism is an affront to their deity. In 1779, Thomas Jefferson proposed a bill that would provide equality under the law for people of all religions and people with no religion. A version of this bill was passed by Virginia in 1786 as the Act for Establishing Religious Freedom. Susan Jacoby writes:
“The significance of Virginia’s religious freedom act was recognized immediately in Europe. News of the law was received with great enthusiasm—not by the governments of the Old World, but by individuals who wished to promote liberty of conscience in their own countries.”
Another prominent American freethinker, James Madison, also advocated freedom from government sponsored religion. He wrote:
“Rulers who wish to subvert the public liberty, may have found an established clergy convenient auxiliaries. A just government, instituted to secure and perpetuate it [liberty], needs them not.”
In the formation of the new nation—the United States—freethought challenged and questioned the traditional notions about government, particularly the concept of kingship, and religion, particularly the requirement of religious belief as the foundation for citizenship. Susan Jacoby writes:
“In America, where the great debate over the federal Constitution was just beginning, Virginia’s law was hailed by secularists as a model for the new national government and denounced by those who favored the semi-theocratic systems still prevailing in most states.”
In the new constitution, the freethinkers were successful in inserting language in Article 6, Section 3, which prohibited any religious test as a prerequisite for elective or appointed officials. Susan Jacoby reports:
“The framers were denounced by religious traditionalists both for the Constitution’s ban on religious tests for public office and for its failure to acknowledge God as the ultimate governmental authority.”
In 1791, the Bill of Rights was added to the Constitution which included an amendment prohibiting Congress from establishing a religion or prohibiting the free exercise of religion.
One of the freethinkers who actively promoted deism during the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth was Elihu Palmer (1764-1806), who is described as a freethinker and a militant deist. In her biographical entry on Palmer in The New Encyclopedia of Unbelief, Susan Jacoby writes:
“For all his abrasiveness, Elihu Palmer is an important figure in the history of American secularism because, like the much better known Thomas Paine, he attempted to carry the message of deism beyond its original audience of educated upper-class intellectuals.”
His book Principles of Nature: or, a Development of the Moral Causes of Happiness and Misery among the Human Species, was published in 1801 and sold out three editions. Susan Jacoby writes:
“In Palmer’s view, all nonreligious advances in human thought began with the invention of the printing press and proceeded toward the day when philosophical assaults on church and state despotism produced both the American and French revolutions.”
With regard to Palmer’s freethought philosophy, Kerry Walters writes:
“He argued that Christianity is fundamentally indefensible on two counts: its supernatural foundation violates reason and experience, and its ethical maxims are unsystematic and unjust.”
He also set the stage for many of the important freethought ideas of the nineteenth century. Kerry Walters reports:
“He was also an ardent champion of radical reform who called for the complete separation of church and state, the abolition of slavery, an end to the social and legal subjugation of women, an unrestricted freedom of the press, universal education, and the decentralization of political authority.”
In the nineteenth century, freethought would become intimately intertwined with both abolitionism and women’s rights.
Religious Freedom Day
Religious Freedom Day celebrates the 1786 Virginia Act for Establishing Religious Freedom. This essay is the second in a three-part series celebrating Religious Freedom Day. Here’s the link to the first essay in this series:
Religion 101: A very brief overview of freethought
The third essay examines freethought in the nineteenth century women’s movement.
Religion 101
This series presents various religious topics in which the concept of religion is not confined to Christianity nor to religions which are based on the worship of a god or gods. More from this series:
Religion 201: Deism
Religion 201: Apostasy
Religion 201: Heresy
Religion 201: Blasphemy
Religion 102: Naturalism
Religion 102: Agnosticism
Religion 101: Animism
Religion 101: Women and marriage under ancient Irish Brehon law