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 The Gilded Age and Progressive Era: Mastery, Modern Doubt, and the Costs of Progress

Christopher McKnight Nichols

in Prophesies of Godlessness: Predictions of America's Iminent Secularization from the Puritans to Postmodernity

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 ... More

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.Less

Medicine in the Boudoir: The Marquis de Sade and Medical Understanding ­after the Reign of Terror

Sean M. Quinlan

in Morbid Undercurrents: Medical Subcultures in Postrevolutionary France

This chapter begins with discussing the Marquis de Sade's La Philosophie dans le boudoir. It argues that Sade used medicine for specific political and ideological reasons rooted in the revolutionary ... More

This chapter begins with discussing the Marquis de Sade's La Philosophie dans le boudoir. It argues that Sade used medicine for specific political and ideological reasons rooted in the revolutionary experience. While drawing upon several of Sade's pornographic works, the chapter focuses primarily upon his La Philosophie dans le boudoir. La Philosophie dans le boudoir belonged to his corpus of “clandestine” or pornographic works. Within the book, Sade expressed his moral, philosophical, and even political opinions with a clarity and conciseness rarely encountered in his other writings. The chapter then examines how the La Philosophie dans le boudoir helped usher in a new world of medical writing and subcultures following the Reign of Terror, connecting medicine and culture in the post-revolutionary moment. The chapter analyses how he took medical ideas about individual health and hygiene and used them to defend libertinism, as a form of philosophic freethinking and sexual free-living, in a project that bordered upon a medical apologia.Less

Eve’s Curse

Kimberly A. Hamlin

in From Eve to Evolution: Darwin, Science, and Women's Rights in Gilded Age America

Chapter One argues that the Genesis creation story played a defining role in debates about women’s rights for generations and that this is why so many women responded enthusiastically to Darwinian ... More

Chapter One argues that the Genesis creation story played a defining role in debates about women’s rights for generations and that this is why so many women responded enthusiastically to Darwinian evolutionary theory in the second half of the nineteenth century. By refuting special creation and asserting human-animal kinship, Darwin offered attentive readers with a new way to think about the differences between women and men and an alternative, naturalistic creation story. Ultimately, Darwinian evolution inspired some freethinking (a nineteenth-century term referring to agnostics and atheists) feminists to renounce Christianity all together, forcing a split in the women’s rights movement. After 1890, in the wake of the controversy caused by Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s Woman’s Bible, the women most influenced by Darwinian evolution were ousted from the largest suffrage organization, the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA). This chapter establishes the enthusiasm that a variety of women had for evolutionary theory in the 1870s and 1880s and why, after the 1890 merger of NAWSA, the women who continued to speak and write about the feminist applications of evolutionary theory did so in free thought, sex reform, and socialist venues, rather than within the suffrage movement.Less

Freethinking feminists: women in the Freethought movement

Laura Schwartz

in Infidel feminism: Secularism, religion and women's emancipation, England 1830–1914

This chapter introduces the women who form the subject of this study – tracing their class and denominational backgrounds, examining their lives in the context of wider female involvement in the ... More

This chapter introduces the women who form the subject of this study – tracing their class and denominational backgrounds, examining their lives in the context of wider female involvement in the Secularist movement, and identifying areas of continuity and change in the role of ‘Freethinking feminists’ between 1830 and 1914. Leading female Freethinkers were on the whole from the upper-working and lower-middle class, and for them, a commitment to Freethought often entailed financial insecurity. They were united in their firm rejection of all forms of orthodox religion, especially Christianity.Less

Preachers of truth: women's activism in the Secularist movement

Laura Schwartz

in Infidel feminism: Secularism, religion and women's emancipation, England 1830–1914

This chapter examines the journeys of the women in studies from Christianity into the organised Freethought movement and examines their attempts to carve out a ‘public’ role as prominent lecturers, ... More

This chapter examines the journeys of the women in studies from Christianity into the organised Freethought movement and examines their attempts to carve out a ‘public’ role as prominent lecturers, journalists and authors. It positions the struggle of Freethinking feminists to access male-dominated intellectual and religious domains in relation to wider attempts by women to intervene in the public sphere. The chapter argues that the Freethinking emphasis on freedom of discussion opened the way for women to participate in conversations on science and reason while simultaneously marginalising the ‘feminine’ from this discourse.Less

Freethinking feminists and the women's movement

Laura Schwartz

in Infidel feminism: Secularism, religion and women's emancipation, England 1830–1914

This chapter examines the contributions of Freethinking feminists to the women's rights movement and how they negotiated its predominantly Christian culture. The Freethinking emphasis on the sanctity ... More

This chapter examines the contributions of Freethinking feminists to the women's rights movement and how they negotiated its predominantly Christian culture. The Freethinking emphasis on the sanctity of individual private judgement and moral autonomy shaped attitudes towards the social purity campaigns that came out of repeal work, deterring some Secularists from endorsing the more repressive aspects of this movement. Remaining true to a longstanding, ultra-democratic tradition, Freethinking feminists tended to cohere around the radical fringes of the new suffrage organisations emerging in the early 1900s. The legacy of their commitment to female enfranchisement was evident across the twentieth-century suffrage movement.Less

Conclusion

Laura Schwartz

in Infidel feminism: Secularism, religion and women's emancipation, England 1830–1914

This chapter notes that first-wave feminism involved a fierce battle of ideas over religion, a battle which was itself crucial in the creation of modern understandings of religion and secularisation. ... More

This chapter notes that first-wave feminism involved a fierce battle of ideas over religion, a battle which was itself crucial in the creation of modern understandings of religion and secularisation. It suggests that Freethought was a significant current in the women's movement, existing alongside and in competition with the Christian values which dominated it. The Woman Question became a key ground upon which Christians clashed with Secularists over which belief system offered most to women. The stories of the Freethinking feminists traced a distinctive and continuous tradition of Freethinking feminism from the 1830s through to the First World War. The chapter concludes that the Secularist rejection of God-given gender roles and Christian-influenced ideas about marriage, birth control and sexual morality enabled alternative visions of relations between the sexes.Less

Introduction: Literary Culture, the Classical Past, and the Rise of Restoration Freethinking

in The Fringes of Belief: English Literature, Ancient Heresy, and the Politics of Freethinking, 1660-1760

This chapter introduces the main themes of the book, arguing that in the English imagination, it was possible to reject Christianity as divine truth while defending the necessary authority of the ... More

This chapter introduces the main themes of the book, arguing that in the English imagination, it was possible to reject Christianity as divine truth while defending the necessary authority of the Anglican Church. It contends that this rapprochement between religious skepticism and the interests of the Protestant establishment represents a crucial and untold chapter in the larger history of secularization. It describes the way in which English freethinking's emphasis on the utility of religious observance looked back to the theological inheritance of the ancient pagan philosophers. This chapter also offers a broad contextual overview of English freethinking in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, one that considers didactic pamphlets, theological polemics, and philosophical writing as well as current historiography.Less

Rochester, Blount, and the Faith of Unbelief

in The Fringes of Belief: English Literature, Ancient Heresy, and the Politics of Freethinking, 1660-1760

This chapter argues not only that Rochester's religious stance deserves an attention it has not yet received, but also that his condemnation of religion, evident also in his conversations with ... More

This chapter argues not only that Rochester's religious stance deserves an attention it has not yet received, but also that his condemnation of religion, evident also in his conversations with Burnet, is less starkly iconoclastic than it initially seems. Examining the “Addition” to the “Satyre,” this chapter reveals that Rochester's religious doubt is closer to the conservative skepticism of Swift than previously recognized It examines the variable content of Rochester's infidelity and asks how it changes the sense of Rochester's attitude toward religion and the character of English freethinking more generally. It also looks at the writings of Charles Blount, focusing on his Anima Mundi which was considered a heretical text.Less

Pathways of Political Change

J. C. D. Clark

in Thomas Paine: Britain, America, and France in the Age of Enlightenment and Revolution

Paine showed throughout his career a historically well-informed awareness of the shortcomings of English monarchs after 1688 and 1714, whom he regarded as usurpers: it was a practical critique that ... More

Paine showed throughout his career a historically well-informed awareness of the shortcomings of English monarchs after 1688 and 1714, whom he regarded as usurpers: it was a practical critique that fed his antipathy to monarchy in general. Rather than republicanism, this chapter establishes Paine’s personal links with the ‘Patriot’ opposition to Sir Robert Walpole’s ministry, a movement that had a religiously freethinking element and drew on reconfigured Jacobitism. By contrast, Paine employed none of the other political languages available to him. Instead, Paine spoke a language of anti-Jacobitism; this chapter explores how many of his contemporaries trod a path ‘from Jacobite to Jacobin’. Nor were these old world preoccupations only; this chapter shows how they were shared in the American colonies.Less

Three Critics

Frederick C. Beiser

in David Friedrich Strauß, Father of Unbelief: An Intellectual Biography

This chapter examines the criticisms of three prominent Strauß critics: Nietzsche, Treitschke, and Schweitzer. Nietzsche’s criticism is disarmed by showing how it applies entirely to the later ... More

This chapter examines the criticisms of three prominent Strauß critics: Nietzsche, Treitschke, and Schweitzer. Nietzsche’s criticism is disarmed by showing how it applies entirely to the later Strauß; though he does not admit it, Nietzsche was inspired by the early Strauß. Treitschke’s critique of Strauß fails because it accuses Strauß of problems that he foresaw and already replied to. Although Schweitzer was very sympathetic to Strauβ‎ and truly appreciated his achievement, his criticisms of Strauβ‎—that his critique is too negative—do not carry much weight because they do not consider the problems anyone would face in coming to more positive conclusions.Less

Conclusion: Secularity and Toleration, Liberty and Freethinking

Carool Kersten

in Islam in Indonesia: The Contest for Society, Ideas and Values

The conclusion attributes the polarization of debates between progressive and reactionary Muslims to two factors. First of all, frustrations on both sides with politics in Indonesia due to the ... More

The conclusion attributes the polarization of debates between progressive and reactionary Muslims to two factors. First of all, frustrations on both sides with politics in Indonesia due to the resilience of the elites, hesitant governance and ambiguous law enforcement under the Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono administration. Secondly, problematic terminology: dichotomies or binaries such as traditionalist versus modernist Islam are not static, but lead to new designations such as neo-modernist and post-traditionalist. When discussing progressive contributions to debates on secularism, pluralism and liberalism these distinctions collapse, while the emerging discourses suggest secularity, liberty, toleration and freethinking as more appropriate alternative terms.Less