Freethinkers In Europe

This volume brings together for the first time case studies on secularists of the 19th and early 20th centuries in national and transnational perspectives including examples from all over Europe. Its focus is on freethinkers taken as secular avant-gardes and early promoters of secularity. The authors of this book deal with multiple historical, religious, social, and cultural backgrounds and, in these contexts, analyze freethinkers' organizations, projects, networks, and contributions to forming a secular worldview, in particular, the promotion of concrete undertakings such as civil baptism or initiatives to leave church. Next to this secularist agenda, the contributions also take into account ambivalences and difficulties freethinkers were faced with, namely, the tensions between a national self-image and the transnational direction the movement has taken; the regional base of many projects and their transregional horizon; freethinkers' cultural programs and their immanent political mission; and the dialogue with respectively the conceptual distinction from other secularist groups. Readers interested in the history of secularity will learn that it was a heterogeneous enterprise already in its beginnings. This set the course for later European and global developments.

This book provides the first comprehensive overview of atheism, secularity and non-religion in Central and Eastern Europe in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. In contrast to scholarship that has focused on the ‘decline of religion’ and secularization theory, the book builds upon recent trends to focus on the ‘rise of non-religion’ itself. While the label of ‘post-communism’ might suggest a generalized perception of the region, this survey reveals that the precise developments in each country before, after and even during the communist era are surprisingly diverse. A multinational team of contributors provide interdisciplinary case studies covering Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Russia, Ukraine, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia, Romania and Bulgaria. This approach utilises perspectives from social and intellectual history in combination with sociology of religion in order to cover the historical development of secularity and secular thought, complemented with sociological data. The study is framed by methodological and analytical chapters. Offering an important geographical perspective to the study of freethought, atheism, secularity and non-religion, this wide-ranging book will be of significant interest to scholars of twentieth-century social and intellectual history, sociology of religion and non-religion, cultural and religious studies, philosophy and theology.

Freethinkers and secularists may believe that theirs is a relatively modern philosophy. But as A Short History of Freethought, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 2 of 2 explains, freethought has a long and dignified history and has survived many previous attempts by government and churches to stifle reason and logic. Volume 1 traces the philosophies that were prevalent in the ancient world and Volume 2 describes freethought during the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. J. M. Robertson was a Liberal member of Parliament, journalist and advocate of rationalism and secularism. He authored several books, including one on the historicity of Jesus. According to Robertson even some of history's most celebrated thinkers, like John Stuart Mill, had a tendency to timidly "speak out without really speaking out" about their secularist beliefs. This problem is still ever present in our own time. Volume 2 opens with the rise of modern freethought in Italy and throughout Europe, partly as a reaction to the Reformation. Robertson does a good job of explaining the political, religious and social forces that affected the freethought movement. Although the Church fought freethinkers, scientists like Copernicus and Galileo gave new life to secular ideas. The chapters on British Freethought in the 17th and 18th Century are rigorous and cover every major figure of the time and many minor ones that are less familiar to readers. This is particularly true in the chapters tracing secularism in the rest of Europe, as conditions in Poland, Portugal and Switzerland are included in the Volume. The discussion of early freethought in the United States is a helpful summary of scholars and statesmen who framed the Constitution, most of whom espoused deism, actively rejecting divinely-inspired texts. Their disavowal of established religious practices was just as revolutionary as their political declaration of independence from the United Kingdom. The book ends with the waves of freethinkers in the 19th Century, again reviewing the situation in most of the major countries around the world. A Short History of Freethought, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 2 of 2 is still the most comprehensive book on the intellectual history of freethought and skepticism. Secularist readers will recognize that the arguments levied against these skeptics are the same ones brought to bear in our current century. This book is a must-read for secular humanists, atheists and skeptics. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

A new history that overturns the received wisdom that science displaced magic in Enlightenment Britain--named a Best Book of 2020 by the Financial Times In early modern Britain, belief in prophecies, omens, ghosts, apparitions and fairies was commonplace. Among both educated and ordinary people the absolute existence of a spiritual world was taken for granted. Yet in the eighteenth century such certainties were swept away. Credit for this great change is usually given to science - and in particular to the scientists of the Royal Society. But is this justified? Michael Hunter argues that those pioneering the change in attitude were not scientists but freethinkers. While some scientists defended the reality of supernatural phenomena, these sceptical humanists drew on ancient authors to mount a critique both of orthodox religion and, by extension, of magic and other forms of superstition. Even if the religious heterodoxy of such men tarnished their reputation and postponed the general acceptance of anti-magical views, slowly change did come about. When it did, this owed less to the testing of magic than to the growth of confidence in a stable world in which magic no longer had a place.

Black Freethinkers is the first study to offer a comprehensive historical treatment of African American freethought (including atheism, agnosticism, and secular humanism) from the nineteenth century to the present.

An authoritative history of the vital role of secularist thinkers and activists in the United States, from a writer of "fierce intelligence and nimble, unfettered imagination" (The New York Times) At a time when the separation of church and state is under attack as never before, Freethinkers offers a powerful defense of the secularist heritage that gave Americans the first government in the world founded not on the authority of religion but on the bedrock of human reason. In impassioned, elegant prose, celebrated author Susan Jacoby paints a striking portrait of more than two hundred years of secularist activism, beginning with the fierce debate over the omission of God from the Constitution. Moving from nineteenth-century abolitionism and suffragism through the twentieth century's civil liberties, civil rights, and feminist movements, Freethinkers illuminates the neglected accomplishments of secularists who, allied with liberal and tolerant religious believers, have stood at the forefront of the battle for reforms opposed by reactionary forces in the past and today. Rich with such iconic figures as Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Clarence Darrow—as well as once-famous secularists such as Robert Green Ingersoll, "the Great Agnostic"—Freethinkers restores to history generations of dedicated humanists. It is they, Jacoby shows, who have led the struggle to uphold the combination of secular government and religious liberty that is the glory of the American system.