America's Greatest Gift to the World...

books:

	• Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism Susan Jacoby Metropolitan Books, 2004 - 432 pages average customer review:based on 75 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Eye-opening

My review from White Crane Journal - Summer 2008

I was a history major in college and have retained a deep interest in historical subjects. I consider myself pretty well-read in history. My time in seminary and a lifetime in the church also left me with what I thought was a pretty good sense of the religious history of the United States. Then I picked up a copy of Susan Jacoby's best-selling book Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism and discovered how little I really knew. It would seem strange that a book about the secularist history of the United States would teach me so much about American religious history but as is often the case, you need to know both sides to understand the full story. Having read and enjoyed this incredibly well-researched and thought-provoking book, I now realize that what I most love about the religious contributions to American culture were forged and informed by its progressive and open exchange with secularists and freethinkers.

Freethinkers came out in 2004 and spent some time on the New York Times best seller lists so it is widely available in paperback now. I can say without reservation that it is the best book I've read this year and perhaps the most mind-altering book of history I've read in the last ten years. I cannot think of another book that left me with a clarifying "aha!" moment on almost every single page. I tend to read a few books at a time and I've enjoyed savoring Jacoby's writing. It is laid out in chronological order but its abundance of new information of a largely overlooked section of American history makes it an almanac of sorts on those figures who stood for free expression, for reason, and for a clear separation of church and state. There were many misconceptions about religion in American history that were deflated by this book. One discovers that in the colonial period it was the South, in states like Virginia and Georgia that the power of religion and of church structures was most fought, most notably by founding fathers Jefferson and Madison. The northern states were zealous in their desire to have an established church and to have religious tests for office-holders. It was Baptists in the South who, fearing the dominance of the Anglican/Episcopal church, wanted no church sponsorship of religion. Of course this geographic split would be reversed in a generation in ways that would echo the culture wars we are currently living in. This is the gift of Jacoby's book. So many "how did we get here?" questions, whether we have even known to ask them, are answered in her entertaining and informative writing.

Along the way Jacoby recovers some astounding exemplars of freethought--people like Robert Ingersoll. Known in his day as "the Great Agnostic," he drew enormous audiences to his live talks around the country and had the admiration of Mark Twain and Walt Whitman, who said that Ingersoll was "from head to foot [sic] is flushed with the square -- every line of him--of his books--bathed in justice, love of right, human generosity, to a degree I fail to find in any other." Ingersoll's words still resonate more than a hundred years later:

"For while I am opposed to all orthodox creeds, I have a creed myself, and my creed is this: Happiness is the only good. The time to be happy is now. The place to be happy is here. The way to be happy is to make others so. This creed is somewhat short, but is long enough for this life; long enough for this world. If there is another world, when we get there we can make another creed. But this creed certainly will do for this life."

We are in many ways indebted to Ingersoll for the fact that we even know and read Whitman's Leaves of Grass. As an attorney Ingersoll was instrumental in battling the Comstock censorship laws that barred the distribution of materials deemed "obscene." For years it kept Whitman's work from not only finding a publisher but from receiving a wide audience by mail. Ingersoll's importance to Whitman was clarified by the fact that the great "agnostic" speaker was chosen to give the eulogy at Whitman's funeral. Jacoby, in her sole appendix item, includes Ingersoll's moving tribute to Whitman's vision and importance.

Jacoby's book is thoughtfully written and such a pleasure. She does not have an axe to grind, but just tells the stories we have never been told. The book traverses through the history of the country and ends with a very pointed critique of how much we have lost by being cheated of this important history of freethought. Liberalism and skepticism and reason--those movements or understandings that have been so instrumental to a social and cultural relaxing around sexuality--are the result of individuals and movements for a rejection of illogical dogma and towards a clear-thinking approach to living life. We owe our liberty of mind and body to those who challenged the assumptions and laws of tradition and institution. Jacoby's book should be on every reading list this year.

Jacoby's latest book, The Age of American Unreason offers up a critique of the current war on intellect that we are living through in the United States. I look forward to reviewing it for these pages. But don't wait for me. Read Freethinkers and I suspect you will seek out Jacoby's newer book soon after. It's that well-written.

Dan Vera is managing editor of White Crane. He lives in Washington, DC where he writes poetry and organizes readings and other arts and culture events. Visit him at [...]

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America's Greatest Gift to the World...

....is secular government, the separation of church and state. Jefferson said it most eloquently when he spoke of a "wall of separation," and for once his actions fully complemented his words. Author Susan Jacoby recounts: "In 1799, Jefferson proposed a bill that would guarantee complete legal equality for citizens of all religions, and of no religion, in his home state of Virginia." Jefferson himself wrote that his bill "meant to comprehend, within the mantel of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and the Mahometan, the Hindoo, and infidel..." It took seven years of debate to pass Virginia's 1786 Act for Establishing Religious Freedom, urgently supported by James Madison but opposed by the Episcopalian and other mainline churches. Curiously, the "evangelical" Christian denominations of Virginia SUPPORTED this separation of church and state, seeing it as in their interest. Jacoby continues: the Jeffersonian Act, "much to the dismay of religious conservatives, would become the template for the secularist provisions of the federal Constitution." But the orator of freedom, Patrick Henry, who opposed Jefferson's Act with a counter-bill to assess taxes on all Virginians for the support of "teachers of the Christian religion," continued in opposition to the ratification of the Constitution.

Jefferson and Madison were recognized Freethinkers, commonly accused by their opponents of being atheists. "Freethinker" is a much more gracious term than the A-word, which has always been used dismissively and pejoratively. It was the term in common parlance, throughout most of America's history, for a menagerie of disbelievers in the established faiths: deists, universalists, agnostics, skeptics and honest atheists. Jacoby argues that it was an appropriate term in its times, and that "freethinkers" have until recently been significant players in the political and social development of the United States - among the leaders of reform movements including abolition, universal suffrage, women's rights, labor rights, and civil rights. It would not embarrass Ms. Jacoby to have it said plainly that she earnestly admires such freethinkers as Jefferson, Thomas Paine, William Lloyd Garrison, Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Abe Lincoln, the almost forgotten Ernestine Rose, Robert Ingersoll, Emma Goldman, John Dewey, and Clarence Darrow. Much of Joacoby's book is devoted to brief biographies of these crusading freethinkers.

An alternate title for this review might be "The Theocratically Incorrect Guide to American History." Jacoby insists, again and again, that the critical role of freethinkers and free thought movements in American history has been marginalized, deliberately at times, over the last 80 years of historiography. The greatest triumph of free thought, unfortunately, came first, with the writing of the Constitution on behalf of "We, the People" rather than "under God." Jacoby's discussion of the writing of the Constitution is one of the most lucid to be found. She calls attention, for instance to Article 6, section 3, which declares that "no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States." That declaration preceded the First Amendment, of course, and set the character of the Constitution as a rigorously SECULAR plan of government, just as Jefferson and Madison intended.

Opposition to the ratification of the now-revered Constitution began immediately, and much of it focused on the absence of a theocratic acknowledgement of the Christian religion. In other words, the "culture wars" of today, between secularists and fundamentalists, are nothing new. The unfortunate part of the history, from Jacoby's point of view as well as mine, is that the freedoms guaranteed by the secular Constitution have been under mounting attack throughout the 20th Century and have been egregiously eroded in recent decades. Jacoby reveals plenty about the agents of erosion, the shifting alliances and oppositions of various segments of Protestantism, the role of racialists and eugenicists in discrediting free thought movements, the gradual shape-changing of Catholicism from a minority that cherished the protection of secular government to a potent interest-bloc set on legislating its version of civil society, and the eternal efforts of the religious conservatives to damn by association all liberals and all freethinkers as socialist/communist radicals. This is not a dispassionate account of history, not by any means, but it is an extremely well-researched and well-documented account.

If there's one book of American history that I urge everyone to read this year, Susan Jacoby's "Freethinkers: a History of American Secularism" is that book. Even readers who know in advance that they'll hate it, readers who know themselves to be enemies of secular humanism, owe it as a duty of conscience to read this forthright defense of America's greatest innovation, the separation of government from religion.

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Free Thinkers

Free Thinkers, a History of American Secularism by Susan Jacoby.
An easy read and very informative.
Now I know what a free thinker is, what Secular Humanism is and another part of America I never thought about.
This book is a must to understand the Secular side of America and how it influenced and changed our nation, for the good, down through history.

100 % satisfied

I read the hard bound copy from the library but I wanted my own copy. It was great to find the paperback on amazon.com. Thanks for the prompt efficient help.

Excellent read

This book was excellent in its presentation of the secularist outlook of many American freethinkers. It exposed the nonsense that is presented by many "fundamentalists" and other gullible species and emphasized how many people are led astray by alleged "moral" teaching.
I would recommend the book to all sensible readers.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

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.

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