Organized Freethought

The Religion of Unbelief in Victorian England

Shirley A. Mullen

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351628471
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Théologie et religion
• Subtopic: Religion

This title, first published in 1987, explores the phenomenon of militant freethought among England's working classes from 1840-1870. In particular, it is an effort to explain the peculiarly theological and evangelistic overtones of much Victorian working class radicalism, and the resulting emergence of a Victorian religion of atheism. This title will be of interest to students of nineteenth-century religious and social history.

II

Looking on the freethinkers from outside, one cannot ignore the factors inside the freethinkers that colored their perception of the world. The historian might easily overemphasize the subjective element in their theologizing of explanations and remedies for the world’s ills. To the freethinkers themselves, the reasons for their positions were convincingly grounded in objective data external to themselves—data that were available to be examined by all men and that would yield the same interpretation to all men whose reason was free of the corrupting influence of tyranny and superstition. Their literature is replete with all manner of indictments against existing orthodox Christianity and its established position in the political, social, and economic structure of Victorian England. Not only did the freethinkers sincerely believe in the vileness of established religion; they held that the institution of organized Christianity was the disease of which the social, political, and economic Ills of human society were merely symptoms. The source of Infection must be dealt with if efforts to treat the symptoms were to be anything but band-aid measures. So, in looking for explanations of the religious element in freethought, one cannot Ignore the freethinkers’ own view of the situation. The church merited destruction. It was an enemy to be defeated. What quicker way to engage and foil the opponent than by taking the offensive on his territory?

Though the variations on charges against the church are legion, they can be grouped under two broad headings—intellectual and moral. In the former, orthodoxy is not living up to truth, or is proving too strait to contain reality. In the latter, the church is not living up to “right.” It is holding truth dishonestly. It goes without saying that such aocusations imply that the freethinkers believed themselves privy to some standard of “Truth” and “Right” higher than established Christianity—in their case, Reason. Curiously ahd herhaps less consciously, though just as frequently, the freethinkers actually appear to be using ostensibly Christian standards of truth and right by which to measure Christian dogma and practice. They appear to be holding the faithful up to their own light—as if the frenthinkers thought themselves better interpreters, evaluators, and even practitioners of Christian truth and morality than those who claimed to be its adherents.

At the intellectuallevel, the freethinkers criticized first, orthodoxy’s failure to accommodate reality, and second, its epistemology. There were numerous areas, according to the freethinkers, in which Christian dogma simply did not deal with vast realms of homan knowledge and experience, especially as they impinged on matters perceived fundamental to orthodoxy. Further, orthodoxy was far too dependent on faith and not nearly dependent enough on reason.

To be a Christian meant to the freethinkers to choose to wear blinders while traveling through the world, to choose to ignore truth, and to choose to refuse to exercise power to do what was humanly possible to improve the world for the good of all mankind.

Christianity, as practiced by the Victorian Establishment, was removed from the real world, that is, from this world. Christians were naive, and according to the maxim, “so heavenly minded as to be no earthly good.” Belief in the afterlife, with ita notion of possible deferred reward and eventual recompense for suffering in this world, was particularly obnoxious to freethinkers. It discouraged active participation in the affairs of this world, even more so than other religions that also shared a belief in immortality.¹ It clouded existence with guilt and uncertainty.² Furthermore, because of its preoccupation with spiritual matters, it tended in its ministry to apply spiritual remedies to physical need—even to ignore physical need altogether. Though his line of argument might be challenged logically, Holyoake seizes almost eagerly on a study lamenting the number of prison inmates who had spent time in Sunday School. Holyoake concludes his commentary by saying, “The way to Heaven seems to be the way to gaol, unless spiritual Instruction be accompanied by practical knowledge of this life.”³ Freethinkers never tired of pointing to absurdities in Christian practice, including calling a national fast day to pray for relief from an outbreak of cholera,⁴ sending flannel and Watts’ hymns to the Africans,⁵ and leaving Bibles when soap would have been more appropriate.⁶ In part of a satire on the good intentions but ludicrous outcomes of so much Christian charity, one character, a “Cynical, Elderly Gentleman,” suggests to three pious ladies:

This unwashed specimen of humanity illustrates the suggestion 1 was about to render to you. Suppose that instead of giving the poor, tracts which they will not read, you were to give them soap which they could use?

Young Lady: (with a simper.) Soap, Sir!

Elderly Lady: (with severe incredulity.) Soap, Sir?

Gentleman: Soap, ladies. Instead of a tract, give them a cake or slice of soap. Let the Established Church give yellow soap, and the Dissenters stick to mottled, for the sake of distinction. Charitable ladies, who give from their own resources, and wish to convey an allegorical expression of the sweetness of their faith, could bestow honey soap on the recipients of their bounty, while the aristocratic lady-dowagers might come down with old brown Windsor.⁷

Freethinkers asserted that Christians were not only missing the point practically by allowing spiritual concerns to dominate physicallife, they were engaging in sloppy thinking as well. The natural and theological worlds are totally separate, with separate systems of cause and effect. Man, existing as he does in the natural realm, can know nothing of, and therefore can have nothing to do with, the spiritual realm. He must not, then, be continually acting as if it were relevant to this life.⁸

In clinging to orthodoxy, Christians failed to give adequate consideration to new discoveries in the realm of science. Assuming that frequency of treatment of a subject is some indication of importance attached to a subject, it is safe to say that the Oracle of Reason, especially, among the freethought periodicals, placed great importance on the findings of natural science. Their serialized edition of William Chilton’s “Theory of Regular Gradation”⁹ attempted to acquaint readers with the latest theories of biological classification and development. It is clear that Chilton espouses belief in a material origin to life, and a random development of botanical and zoological forms.¹⁰ Introducing a non-material agent in the discussion of origins merely complicated the question of causes unnecessarily. To Chilton, evidence of the development of superior forms from inferior rendered the doctrine of a creator, not only unnecessary, but even nonsensical, for “we do not find a coachmaker when he has to build a nobleman’s carriage, begin by making a mud cart or pair of trucks.”¹¹ Charles Southwell, though not a scientist himself, delighted in science’s ability to explain the world materially. In his mind, science put religion on the defensive. In his words:

If cocks by instinct distinctly crowed, ‘there is a god,’ the thing would be strange and tolerably convincing, but no such thing, it is not written anywhere, but only in books, and crowed by the cocks of humanity, the teachers of unknown knowledge, who find it very convenient to make us familiar with their god, that our eyes may be blinded to their duplicity. Finally, upon what principle, 1 ask, are we justified in wasting our energies, and corrupting our intellects by the vain pursuit of a phantom, an ignis fatuus, an ‘unreal mockery’ to the neglect of that accurate knowledge, of those virtuous delights, those unspeakable joys that lie within our reach . . .¹²

Southwell goes on to address clerics and several prominent politicians of the day, “Bring forth your ‘strong reasons,’ and show by argument that self-existent matter is an impossibility.”¹³

Besides the question of origins, freethinkers examined other issues of potential conflict between sciehee and religion, including phrenology and geology.¹⁴ Whatever the issue, the consensus among the freethinkers suggests that they overwhelmingly considered religion to be the inhibitor of science,¹⁵ and thereby the inhibitor of truth. Occasionally, a freethinker would be content to rest with the conclusion that religion and science were not contrary; they were merely separate.¹⁶ More often they were treated as mortal enemies, with mutually exclusive claims. Religion was the dark villain oppressing science, the helpless victim. Primarily because of its a priori claims to infallibility, religion discounted itself in the face of scientific evidence. According to Malthus Q. Ryall, “Science and religion, then, in whatever close or distant relationship they may have appeared to subsist, are, when brought to the test of analysis, essentially irreconcilable.”¹⁷ In typical “Oracular” style of overly graphic imagery, Thomas Paterson describes the stage at which a young science encounters the Church:

Then comes the time of tribulation—then has the infant science most to fear from the embraces of its new foster-mother—the church, whose boa-constrictor like gripe [sic] nearly proves fatal to the tender nurseling, who is often long in recovering from the spasm.¹⁸

If the church did attempt to endorse the discoveries of science, freethinkers were equally critical of what appeared to be merely accommodation of expedience. Joseph Barker states, in his article on “Geology and Christianity,” that the church did in the field of geology only what they had done in other sciences. They waited until they had lost the fight, then “Invented new and unnatural meanings ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Introduction Organized Freethought in Summary and in Context
• I Child as Father of the Man
• II Orthodoxy: Immoral and Untrue
• III Personalities, Posturing, and Principles
• IV Choosing a Creed and a Cause
• V Orthodoxy “Out–Orthodoxed”
• Conclusion
• Appendix
• Bibliography
• Index