Atheism and Deism Revalued

Heterodox Religious Identities in Britain, 1650-1800

Wayne Hudson, Diego Lucci

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317177579
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: History of Religion

Given the central role played by religion in early-modern Britain, it is perhaps surprising that historians have not always paid close attention to the shifting and nuanced subtleties of terms used in religious controversies. In this collection particular attention is focussed upon two of the most contentious of these terms: 'atheism' and 'deism', terms that have shaped significant parts of the scholarship on the Enlightenment. This volume argues that in the seventeenth and eighteenth century atheism and deism involved fine distinctions that have not always been preserved by later scholars. The original deployment and usage of these terms were often more complicated than much of the historical scholarship suggests. Indeed, in much of the literature static definitions are often taken for granted, resulting in depictions of the past constructed upon anachronistic assumptions. Offering reassessments of the historical figures most associated with 'atheism' and 'deism' in early modern Britain, this collection opens the subject up for debate and shows how the new historiography of deism changes our understanding of heterodox religious identities in Britain from 1650 to 1800. It problematises the older view that individuals were atheist or deists in a straightforward sense and instead explores the plurality and flexibility of religious identities during this period. Drawing on the most recent scholarship, the volume enriches the debate about heterodoxy, offering new perspectives on a range of prominent figures and providing an overview of major changes in the field.

Acknowledgements

The idea for this collection of essays grew out of some conversations we had over the past few years, starting after the publication of our monographs on deism in 2008–2009. Since then, we have run up various debts to all the persons who made possible the publication of this book. We are grateful to the contributors to this volume for promptly writing and delivering their chapters and for working with us with dedication, seriousness and a positive and cooperative spirit. We wholeheartedly thank Professor Jonathan I. Israel and Professor Margaret C. Jacob for graciously accepting our invitation to write, respectively, the foreword and the afterword to this volume. We would also like to thank the staff of the various libraries and institutions that provided assistance to all those who have contributed to this volume. In addition, a big ‘thank you’ goes to Tom Gray, Philip Stirups, Beatrice Beaup, Emma Gallon, Brenda Sharp and the rest of the staff at Ashgate for their courtesy, kindness and efficiency. Last but not least, we are grateful to our families for helping us to make this book possible with their unconditional and loving support.

Wayne Hudson

Diego Lucci

Jeffrey R. Wigelsworth

Chapter 1 Introduction: Atheism and Deism Revived

Wayne Hudson, Diego Lucci and Jeffrey R. Wigelsworth

DOI: 10.4324/9781315568256-1

In recent years there has been a rebirth of interest in the histories of atheism and deism. Long neglected, and sometimes caricatured, atheists and deists are again the objects of scholarly concern, although the pattern of the scholarship differs in the two instances. In this chapter we draw attention to methodological challenges raised by new approaches to the study of atheism and deism and then introduce the chapters in the book against this critical background.

Revaluing Atheism and Deism

Atheism and deism are back in vogue, partly because the role of heterodoxy in the Enlightenment and in the emergence of modernity is now debated throughout the world. Further, in recent years scholars have problematized concepts and labels that used to be employed without much consideration of historical usage or the ambiguities implicit in the standard definitions. ¹ Nonetheless, there is still more work to be done on different usages in different European languages and on differences between sixteenth-century and nineteenth-century usages of terms such as ‘deist’, ‘atheist’ and ‘infidel’.

This volume concentrates on heterodoxy in England, but with the aim of raising issues which reverberate, albeit somewhat differently, elsewhere – for example, in Europe, in the Americas and in the Pacific. Deism in England had its own characteristics, although there were resemblances with European deisms and some interactions as well. Many eighteenth-century writers resorted to negative definitions. Atheists and deists were not true Christians and wished to dismantle all that was good and decent in society. Edward Goldney, for example, in a 1759 work dedicated to George II, hoped that ‘my Epistle to the Deists may also be a means of undeceiving Practical Atheists and Deists … and for the furthering and promoting of Real Vital Christianity in all your Majesty’s Subjects’. ² In other words, deism could be conquered by the promotion of true Christianity. If one shouted loudly enough, deism and atheism would be defeated.

Such a view could be seen generations earlier in the writings of Mungo Craig, whose book, A Satyr Against Atheistical Deism (1696), contained part of his testimony against fellow University of Edinburgh student Thomas Aikenhead, the last person executed for blasphemy in Scotland. Craig saw deism as ‘nothing’ but ‘A Bodiless Shirt wanting the Sleeves’ and containing ‘Amputation of all Realities’. ³ Others took a more moderate tone: deism was indeed an issue requiring attention, but the Church of England itself had fallen into a spiritual negligence that allowed deism and atheism, with their sharp critiques of religion, to gain footholds. William Stephens, for example, stated that the deists with whom he was acquainted ‘conceiv’d so great a Prejudice against the Christian Faith, from the Behaviour of the Clergy’. ⁴ By the end of the eighteenth century atheism and deism were firmly rooted in the fabric of society. John Ogilvie spoke for many when he claimed in 1783:

That the opinions of Deists and Sceptics have spread more universally during the last part of the last century, and in the present, than at any former era since the resurrection of letters, is a truth to which the friends and enemies of religion will give their suffrage without hesitation. ⁵

In due course the existence and spread of atheism and deism came to be taken for granted by historians, who saw the growth of critical attitudes toward established religion as a crucial step on the road to modernity. But what did it actually mean to be an atheist or a deist? If early modern writers who lived in the thick of the ideological battles struggled with the question, modern observers gazing back over several centuries were further hamstrung as the subtleties of the intellectual debates and nuanced word usage became faded and then lost to be replaced by generalizations and expected definitions. More than twenty years ago, Michael Hunter commented that the meaning of ‘atheism’ ‘invites confusion’, ⁶ while James Force urged a ‘comprehensive definition of deism’ and yet the task would be difficult because, as Force phrased it, ‘deism’ was ‘one of the dirty words of the age’ conveying fear on the part of those who used it rather than specific traits of the accused. ⁷ Recently, historians, philosophers and other scholars of early modern Europe have taken a renewed look at concepts and labels that their predecessors employed without much consideration of historical usage or the various shading of definitions. Among the words receiving renewed inquiry are ‘orthodox’, ‘radical’, ‘atheist’ and ‘deist’, along with their respective ‘isms’. ⁸ Such labels are now seen as carrying fine distinctions, which have not always been preserved by scholars, and careful work has shown that their original deployment and usage were more complicated than conveyed in the literature.

Atheism and deism in Britain between 1650 and 1800 are topics of the first importance, partly because both have been written about in caricatural terms by historians prejudiced against them and partly because the nature of atheism and deism in Britain between 1650 and 1750 goes to the heart of contemporary attempts to reinterpret the Enlightenment. If it is relatively simple to determine who were atheists and who were deists in this period and if atheism, broadly conceived, was the future of humanity preappearing in repressive societies, then those who see the Enlightenment as an historical telos gain considerable support. If, however, atheism and deism are rather difficult to study in this period because the issues at the time were not the issues now nor even the issues which the modern historian might initially assume, then this goes to how the case for the global significance of the Enlightenment should be made. The editors of this volume support the view that the Enlightenment was of enormous significance for humanity and a turning point in global history. However, they are also conscious that detailed historical scholarship in this area requires considerable historical sensitivity, not least because actual contexts are often different from those many historians tend to assume.

Both atheism and deism were shifting designators in this period and often cannot be understood in twentieth-century or even twenty-first-century terms. Further, the relationship between atheism and deism remains relatively underexplored, even though work in this area may sometimes undermine both categories.

By revaluing atheism and deism the editors seek to rehabilitate figures long either misinterpreted or overlooked. Atheism is suddenly hyper-fashionable and this in itself will contribute to revisionist histories. On the other hand, the philosophical and theological dimensions of atheism are still little understood by historians, many of whom find technical philosophy dull and technical theology unreadable. In both cases what looks like a matter of taste arguably limits attempts to reconstruct British thought between 1650 and 1800. In a similar way, disinterest in classical culture, especially classical Greek, sometimes leads historians with well-stocked modern minds not to discern the classically oriented thinking of writers they discuss and to attribute to them levels of optimism unlikely in classically trained thinkers.

Over all, large parts of the historiography of atheism remain problematic. Many books on the history of atheism are either introductory or written with reference to Christian theology, rather than from the perspective of those whom contemporaries called ‘atheist’. ⁹ Moreover, in recent historiography ‘atheism’ is often used as an alternative label for thinkers who had heterodox, deistic or sceptical views instead of a category of its own. What is more, some historians with secularist sympathies deploy ‘atheism’ as a term of approval to characterize the thought of a mind that has awakened to the delusions of religion. But the term ‘atheism’ arguably cannot be used in this way without qualification with reference to Britain in this period, because ‘atheism’ was a shifting designator and we need to know how a particular thinker saw matters, not how they appear to modern intellectuals. In many contexts the term ‘atheism’ cannot be used both to designate analytically a generic intellectual position and to describe contextually how the writers understood their own stances, at least not without considerable caution. Those who thought of themselves as atheists do not always meet generic definitions, while those who meet generic definitions did not always think of themselves as atheists.

The case with deism is somewhat different because hardly any contemporary historian thinks of themselves as a deist. Deism is past, in a way in which atheism is not. This means that it is easier to register the historical complexities for deism than for atheism. Moreover, the justice issue is acute. Deism has long been both trivialized and neglected. In much of the historiography it has been seen as a halfway house between theism and atheism. Many of the eighteenth-century Boyle Lecturers, as the distinguished work of Margaret Jacob shows, took this view when they placed ‘deism’ and ‘atheism’ on a sliding scale with the former the inevitable precursor of the latter. ¹⁰ Recent studies, several by the editors of this book, have restored deism as an intellectual category in its own right. ¹¹ Although this work has done much to alter current understanding of deism in England and help to create renewed interest in the subject, there remains much that has not been addressed. A wealth of new scholarship on ‘deism’ has emerged since the last edited collections of deism studies appeared several years ago. ¹² Indeed, detailed examinations of deism reveal how much scholars have taken for granted in this area and, therefore, challenge and problematize often ‘totalizing’ or ‘teleological’ interpretations of various thinkers commonly labelled ‘deists’.

On the other hand, atheism and deism were important in and across many contexts and their appearance as possible subject positions marks structural shifts of major historical significance. Once individuals could describe themselves as deists or atheists the social character of religious belief began to change. Moreover, the new subject positions were associated in many contexts with radical programmes of political, social and cultural reform, as Jacob’s classic study first revealed. ¹³ More recently, and to a greater ex...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Table Of Contents
• Atheism and Deism Revalued
• Acknowledgements
• Index