Book Review: Freethinkers - A History
of American Secularism, by Susan Jacoby
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Published in JASANAS, Journal of Alternative Spiritualities and New Age Studies, Volume 3, September 2007 (link to JASANAS webpage) Jacoby, Susan, Freethinkers – A History of American Secularism, New York: Metropolitan Books, 2004 1,194 words |
Transatlantic
Difference in Religious Politics Book review by Mike King, February 2005 Journalist Alexander Chancellor, writing in the
Guardian during the 2004 US elections suggested
that “In Britain, flaunting religious faith is a political liability;
in America, it is a political necessity.” Anyone intrigued by the
transatlantic difference in religious politics and the place of
religion in public life will find Jacoby’s Freethinkers
invaluable: it should also be a primer for all political opponents
of George Bush. Jacoby’s book gives a detailed account of the historical
forces that create the US/UK paradox – why is religion central to
the politics of the US (when its founding Constitution separated
church and religion), whereas religion is a ‘political liability’
in the UK (which has never disestablished its national religion)? Jacoby, herself a journalist, introduces key figures
and arguments to clarify her account, many of which might be unfamiliar
to British readers, but at the same time apparently need reinstating
in the popular understanding of the US. She clearly holds dear both
the values of freethought and those of women’s liberation (her accounts
of women’s suffrage in the US is a bonus of the book), and so is
unsparing of the Christian right and its attempts to rewrite American
history. The key battleground is the “wall of separation” that Thomas
Jefferson helped erect between church and state, initially in Virginia
state legislation, and then in the American Constitution of 1787.
At the start of her book she points out that George Bush Jr.
was the first US president to give a major national address from
a church when he made his response to September 11. The religious
tone of his speech and those other faith leader he invited meant
that there was no speaker to represent the secular views of Jacoby
or the millions of Americans like her: “most of his predecessors
would have regarded the choice of a religious sanctuary for a major
speech as a gross violation of the respect for separation of church
and state constitutionally required of the nation’s chief executive.”
At the end of the book she states: “For the past four decades, the
militant religious right has mounted a tireless assault on the separation
of church and state …” So how is it that, in some sense, the US
is now less secular than it was in 1787? Jacoby shows us that the key to this paradox is
that at the time of the Constitution “honest differences of belief
had been considered so potentially disruptive to the fabric of society
that only a secularist government could guarantee public stability
and private liberty of conscience.” Freethought
in the Enlightenment, Voltaireian tradition,
partly brought to America through Thomas Paine, was part of the
intellectual framework of the Constitution’s founding fathers, particularly
Jefferson and Madison, the 2nd and 3rd presidents
respectively. It is here that a detailed knowledge of that key mode
of thought of that period – deism – is needed (deism is also at
the heart of the Christian response to science). Deists like Hume,
Voltaire and Jefferson are falsely assumed to be atheists by both
the Christian right and by secularists: indeed the accusation of
‘atheism’ in the US remains damning to this day. A Gallop poll showed
that a “majority of Americans say they would refuse to vote for
an atheist for president even though they would consider voting
for an African American, a woman, a Jew or a homosexual.” Jacoby
is sceptical that the public would indeed vote for a president in
the latter categories, but her point is that it is still socially
acceptable to voice prejudice against an atheist. But a deist is
not an atheist; rather they adhere to what Karen Armstrong calls
the “God of the philosophers,” or a more Hellenic than Hebraic conception
of the divine. Freethought is therefore
a spectrum of views from the unconventional religion of the deist
to the rejectionist position of the atheist.
What the religious right have succeeded in doing, according to Jacoby,
is to associate freethought (and ‘liberalism’)
in the US, not only with a crude atheism, but also with un-American
allegiances such as communism. The early battlegrounds on which the Constitution
were tested include the Sunday post and the prohibition of
state funds for religious schooling. The former is no longer an
iconic struggle, partly because the religious right also succeeded
in melding God and mammon into their ideology – losing the Sunday
post would mean lost business –, but the issue of schooling is still
very much alive. The locus of power ebbed and flowed over the period
since 1787 between the secularists and the religious conservatives.
The Constitution was the product of an uneasy alliance between freethinkers,
and evangelicals who objected to any one religious grouping holding
dominance (though it was not until 1818 that the last state church
was disestablished). The early 1800s saw a religious backlash, and
then, the period from 1875 to 1914 saw, as Jacoby puts it: “the
high-water mark of freethought as an influential movement in American society.”
This Golden Age of American freethought
was spearheaded by Robert Green Ingersoll,
a man that Jacoby would like remembered as the “American Voltaire.”
It is another success of religious conservatism that he is now a
largely forgotten figure, but his great contribution was to bridge
the theoretical deism of the founding fathers with the practical
politics of his time. Jacoby then documents the steady retreat from
this Golden Age, a victim of historical events that associated patriotism
with religious conservatism and sedition with atheism, liberalism
and freethought. The rise of Catholicism
as a political force in the US was another key factor, particularly
in the McCarthy era: its strident linking of communism with atheism
created a bridge to the non-Catholic religious right. Catholics
now had a visible Americanism, but they also had the best-organised
church hierarchy, and it is a testament to their acceptability that
Kennedy, a catholic, was elected in 1960. A useful companion to Jacoby’s book would be Susan
Budd’s Varieties of Unbelief – Atheists and Agnostics
in English Society 1850-1960, though sadly out of print. It
covers a shorter period, but shows how radically different the British
experience is of religious politics. Religious tolerance was such
that Britain never required disestablishment; while religious indifference
today is at a level apparently never seen in the US. Yet the struggle
for British secularism was intense in the mid-late 19th
century, and was epitomised by the UK counterpart to Ingersoll:
Charles Bradlaugh, founder of the British Secular Society (coincidentally
both men were born in 1833). Another key difference is that a horror
of communism never became a weapon of religious conservatism in
the UK, instead early socialist and secular groups competed with
each other in their anti-clerical efforts, both gaining widespread
support. To conclude: Freethinkers is essential reading as we reflect on the rise of religious fundamentalism in the world at large, and in particular in the US. Religious conservatism cannot be countered without contemplation of the complex forces of its historical origins and relation to US society, so admirably presented here by Jacoby.
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