Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism by Susan Jacoby

From the Publisher

"Jacoby accomplishes her task with clarity, thoroughness, and an engaging passion."


-Los Angeles Times Book Review

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 traces 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 achievements of secularists who, allied with tolerant believers, have led the battle for reform in the past and today.

Rich with such iconic figures as Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Paine, and the once-famous Robert Green Ingersoll, Freethinkers restores to history the passionate humanists who struggled against those who would undermine the combination of secular government and religious liberty that is the glory of the American system.

The New York Times

Ardent and insightful, Ms. Jacoby seeks to rescue a proud tradition from the indifference of posterity. Her title was shrewdly chosen. "Freethinker" is what rebels against spiritual authority once called themselves, and it ennobles the breed with, if she'll excuse the term, the holiest adjective in the lexicon of American politics. Her pantheon of skeptics includes names like Jefferson, Paine, Darrow and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, author of The Woman's Bible that ridiculed the sexism of the apostles. And she rediscovers such figures as Robert Ingersoll, the Gilded Age orator who drew huge audiences with calls for "a religion of humanity" that would venerate only "inquiry, investigation and thought." — Michael Kazin

The Washington Post

The great virtue of Susan Jacoby's book is that it succeeds so well in its own original intent: showing that secularism, agnosticism and atheism are as American as cherry pie. — Christopher Hitchens

Publishers Weekly

Is America really one nation under God? Not according to Pulitzer Prize-finalist Jacoby (Wild Justice, etc.), who argues that it is America's secularist "freethinkers" who formed the bedrock upon which our nation was built. Jacoby contends that it's one of "the great unresolved paradoxes" that religion occupies such an important place in a nation founded on separation of church and state. She traces the role of "freethinkers," a term first coined in the 17th century, in the formation of America from the writing of the Constitution to some of our greatest social revolutions, including abolition, feminism, labor, civil rights and the dawning of Darwin's theory of evolution. Jacoby has clearly spent much time in the library, and the result is an impressive literary achievement filled with an array of both major and minor figures from American history, like revolutionary propagandist Thomas Paine, presidents Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Robert Green Ingersoll. Her historical work is further flanked by current examples-the Bush White House in an introduction and the views of conservative Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia in a final chapter-that crystallize her concern over secularism's waning influence. Unfortunately, Jacoby's immense research is also the book's Achilles heel. Her core mission to impress upon readers the historical struggle of freethinkers against the religious establishment is at times overwhelmed by the sheer volume of characters and vignettes she offers, many of which, frankly, are not very compelling. Still, Jacoby has done yeoman's work in crafting her message that the values of America's freethinkers belong "at the center, not in the margins" of American life. (Apr.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Accomplished author and journalist Jacoby (Wild Justice: The Evolution of Revenge) turns her attention to the history of American free thought. Starting with the deism of America's Founding Fathers, she masterfully chronicles 200 years of religious doubt in the United States, including in her discussion many historical figures overlooked as freethinkers, such as Abraham Lincoln, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Robert Green Ingersol. Also significant is Jacoby's excellent overview of freethinkers' involvement in such issues as abolition, feminism, civil rights, and the separation of church and state. Despite her painstaking research, those familiar with the Founding Fathers will be surprised at her omission of Benjamin Franklin. As an admitted deist and trusted colleague of Jefferson (e.g., see Albert Post's Popular Freethought in America or Walter Isaacon's Benjamin Franklin: An American Life), he would have made Jacoby's chapter on the Founding Fathers much stronger were he included. Despite this small criticism, however, this is a much needed addition to the literature that restores many freethinkers to their rightful place in American history. Highly recommended for academic libraries or larger public libraries.-Brad S. Matthies, Butler Univ. Lib., Indianapolis Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

A lively history of American antispiritualism, with a stellar cast. "The first six presidents of the United States did not invoke the blessings of the deity as frequently in their entire public careers as President Bush does each month," writes freelance journalist Jacoby (Half-Jew, 2000). Bless their innocent souls, those six presidents took the constitutional separation of church and state seriously, even as a couple of them-Jefferson and Madison-harbored deistic notions (God may not be dead, but he's probably not well) that weighed against their invoking the divinity. Jacoby hails Thomas Paine as our exemplary "revolutionary secularist," omitting God whenever he could as certain compatriots in the new US worried that unless the chief executive took an oath to some organized Protestant church, "a Turk, a Jew, a Roman Catholic, and what is worse than all, a Universalist, may be President of the United States," as one speaker at the Massachusetts constitutional convention put it. Jacoby examines the opaque religious beliefs of the Founders, recalling that Jefferson excited opposition in the 1800 presidential campaign for his apparent indifference to religion, as well as his remark that "it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg." She enlists Abe Lincoln in the secularist roll, although some scholars will object. She traces the origins of state mottos like "In God We Trust" and "one nation under God," the one a sop to clerics during the Civil War, the other one of "a new, bland, and compulsory set of quasi-religious rituals" meant to serve as a Cold War repudiation of Soviet atheism. Jacoby closes by remarkingthat although the line between church and state now seems to be fading, most Americans regard that separation as desirable and "oppose the religious right's attempts to sacralize decisions on such matters as biomedical research." Balm for doubting Thomases-and a welcome addition to American cultural history. Agent: Georges Borchardt

Product Details

• ISBN: 0805077766
  
• ISBN-13: 9780805077766
• Format: Paperback, 448pp
• Publisher: Henry Holt & Company, Incorporated
• Pub. Date: January 2005
• Sales Rank: 26,110

• Table of Contents
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Table of Contents

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