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This chapter examines three important strands of progressive thought in the late nineteenth century to reveal the tensions between ideas about progress, religion, and science, and resulting predictions about America's religious future. This chapter first delineates a populist‐secular group of thinkers, exemplified by Robert Ingersoll, “the great agnostic” proponent of freethinking, whose prophecies blended the older jeremiad form with a heightened emphasis on atheistical science and Enlightment rationality. The second strand of thought explored in this chapter came from the ranks of progressive intellectuals, represented in part by the powerful pragmatic philosophy of religion developed by William James in his book, Varieties of Religious Experience. Finally, this chapter argues for a third diverse group comprised largely of ministers and social gospel activists, such as Walter Rauschenbusch, who attempted to reform the nation along explicitly Christian lines.

This chapter examines how the development of biblical criticism in Europe and criticisms of slavery in America contributed to the creation of the radical historical Jesus. It devotes most of its attention to Ernest Renan and Robert Ingersoll and the premium that each thinker placed on the imagination. The discussion of Renan focuses on his Life of Jesus because the biography provided radical religionists in America with the inspiration and freedom to embellish and expand on the material contained in the Gospels. The exploration of Ingersoll’s thought is more wide-ranging because he was a rational religious activist who created a climate conducive to the growth of the radical historical Jesus by providing support and encouragement to secular-minded religionists and unconventional Christians.

Shortly after the Supreme Court handed down the Civil Rights Cases in 1883, a mass meeting was called for Lincoln Hall in the nation's capital. Two prominent Republican orators—one black and one white—were the featured speakers. Frederick Douglass—the runaway slave who had become an avid student of the Constitution in the course of his career as an abolitionist—spoke first. Robert G. Ingersoll—highly valued as a Republican orator despite his outspoken atheist views—closed the program. In some ways, the event was a political rally, similar to others that had characterized both the long battle against slavery and the heady early days of Reconstruction. However, this day was different, for everyone present in the hall named for the nation's “Great Emancipator” knew that it marked the end of an era—and not a satisfying conclusion at that. It was a wake without any happy accompanying festivities.

In postbellum decades the number of individuals who rejected traditional reverence of the Scripture increased; Robert Ingersoll was a notable example. Books drawing on Scripture became runaway bestsellers, the prime example being Lew Wallace’s Ben-Hur. American newspapers continued to employ many scriptural expressions, with phrases from the New Testament much more popular than from the Old. Artists like Henry Ossawa Tanner, the first Black painter to be exhibited in major American galleries, often turned to biblical themes. Novelists and poets drew on Scripture in many ways as material for their works, with the poet Emily Dickinson especially noteworthy. Although the Bible’s salience for the law decreased, it still occasionally appeared as at least a casual reference in court decisions.