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This article explores the contributions of Zora Neale Hurston to African American freethought during the early to mid-twentieth century. Focusing on her personal (ir)religious development as well as her anthropological studies of Black religion, it demonstrates that she was a central figure in a burgeoning secular movement of this era, especially in the close ties she posits between Black feminism and Black freethought. The presence and growth of Black secularism, as indicated in Hurston's work, should push scholars to further reexamine the importance of the conversion moment in Black religion and the boundaries of African American religious studies.

Freethought was a transnational movement that developed particularly in the second half of the nineteenth century, spreading across Europe and other world regions and promoting new models for society. The present article proposes an investigation of the contours and developments of the freethought movement in Romania before World War I. This is an important area of research given that most analyses performed to date have considered only the Western world and not the Eastern European context.Our intention is to elucidate to what extent the European models influenced this movement and to uncover their impact on the Romanian society of the time. The paper highlights the criticisms of the clerics (especially Orthodox) upon freethought, showing that the development of this current in Romania as a national movement represented not simply imitation of the European models, but an adaptation of those models to Romanian realities. The Romanian freethinkers can be seen trying to develop some of the most radi...

Canada has a long history of religious unbelief. This paper offers a social historical survey of its organized, activist forms. The radical thought of the Enlightenment was imported in the late eighteenth century, which saw Voltairean deists like Fleury Mesplet criticizing the Catholic Church in the French-speaking colony of Lower Canada. A long tradition of anticlericalism followed in Quebec even though (or because) the Church was massively influential. The rest of Canada saw freethought and rationalist movements, often organized by working-class autodidacts, developing in the nineteenth century with American and British influences. This tradition continued into the first half of the twentieth century when secularists grappled with fundamentalism and the challenge of radical politics. After World War II the language of secular humanism was deployed and organizations were run by highly educated professionals instead. The position of activist unbelief began to change as Canada shifted from being one of the Western world’s most religious countries to being one of the least in the latter half of the twentieth century. Unbelief became unremarkable, though the persistence of religion meant that the twenty-first century saw a revival of militant atheism. This survey shows that unbelief was never just a pure philosophical position but has always been shaped by the social status quo it evolved in or was opposing. Nor was opposition ever enough; activist unbelievers inevitably had to offer the undecided a vision of the secular world they were working towards, and this meant getting involved in some form of politics.

Over four nights in December 1891, two men traded verbal barbs at the Tuam Street Hall. At dispute was the worth of belief in God. The wrangling largely turned on how their audiences understood science.

“Rationalism” became the subject of intense debate in nineteenth-century Britain. This article asks why this was so, by focusing on the usage and implications of the term in contemporary argument. Rationalism was successively defined and redefined in ways that reached to the heart of Victorian epistemological and religious discussion. By treating rationalism as a contextually specific term, and examining how its implications changed between the 1820s and the early twentieth century, the article brings new perspectives to bear on the development of nineteenth-century freethought and countervailing religious apologetic. It underlines the importance of history, and constructions of intellectual lineage, as ways of establishing the relationship between rationality and religion in a progressively wider-ranging Victorian debate about the sources of knowledge and value.

This paper presents a study on history of spiritual and practical activities of so-called free-religious communities (freireligiösen Gemeinden) created in 1840s in Germany by «the German Catholics» and Protestant «friends of light» — originally separate movements, opposite to Catholic and Protestant orthodoxy respectively. The analysis presents a complete picture of development of the free-religious movement, starting from its emergence during the Vormärz period. The span of research covers intense activity during the revolution of 1848–1849, the period of political reaction following soon after the suppression of revolution, the ultimate ban by national-socialists in fascist Germany, reaching up to our days. Additionally, focus is given to the preceding tradition of the German free-thinking and its connection with the free-religious movement. It is shown that one of the distinctive features of the free-religious movement is the variety of world-view among ideologists of its different communities. Thus, this movement falls under a special category, intermediate between religion and secular outlook. As a result of the analysis the author comes to a conclusion that the ideology of the free-religious movement can be characterized by interweaving of religious and political motives in its program, and the deviation that the views of its adherents take from orthodox Christianity — to pantheism and even materialism.

The Reflector of Palmyra, New York, was an important contributor to the American Freethought Movement, a philosophical viewpoint informed by science, facts, and reason. The editor and publisher, Abner Cole, used the Reflector to promote the movement and its principles of mental improvement, equality of all citizens, and moral values informed by learning and a respect for life and nature. In so doing, he also advocated free speech, freedom of the press, and civil and religious liberty. Cole and other Freethought Movement editors tested and refined the limits of free-speech theory in its earliest American stages as they enhanced their local marketplace of ideas with alternative perspectives.

Freethinkers ranked among the main critics of Catholicism in the second half of the nineteenth century. Whereas the various Western European freethought movements have been relatively well studied on a national level, their cross-border relationships remain substantially unexplored. A study of these connections can shed new light on transnational anti-Catholicism in general and moreover help us to conceptualise this phenomenon in a European perspective. In this article, I will use the example of freethinkers in order to illustrate the difficult process of establishing transnational anti-Catholic networks. The article begins with an outline of the various forms of connections of European anti-Catholicism, concentrating in the following section on the first major international conference of freethinkers, the so-called anti-Council, which took place as a protest against the first Vatican Council (1869–1870). Attention is brought to the international dimensions of the meeting and to the reasons behind its rapid failure. In the third section, transnational anti-Catholicism is studied in general in France, Spain, and Germany. I will focus especially on one constraint to cross-border relationships. This will allow me to show that anti-Catholicism was not only a secular endeavour, but was also inseparable from the widespread search for a religion more suited to a society undergoing rapid changes. This understanding of anti-Catholicism offers a way of overcoming the still deep gap in historiography between the bi-confessional countries and the Latin mainly mono-confessional countries.

This article examines the transnational solidarity campaign for Francisco Ferrer, the Catalan anarchist and educator who was sentenced to death for his alleged involvement in Barcelona's ‘Tragic Week’ of 1909. The international scale of the protests against Ferrer's execution was much remarked upon by his contemporaries. While historians have examined both the nature of demonstrations in support of Ferrer and the way in which he was commemorated, they have mostly focused on specific national contexts. This article takes a different approach: it investigates the transnational dimensions of the campaign. It places the protests within the framework of the ‘culture wars’ surrounding church–state relations. These cleavages were inherently transnational, and the structures developed by the international freethought movement, for example, played a significant role in sustaining the Ferrer campaign. The article also draws attention to other factors that shaped the protests and transcended national categories: fro...

This article locates the hitherto unknown manuscript poem “Blind Zeal or Party Enthusiasm” within the political context of 1710 and, in turn, examines Henry Sacheverell’s impact on Deism and Freethought in light of “Blind Zeal.” A complete text of the poem, with certain historical and critical annotations, is offered below. Finally, I offer an interpretation of the poem that may narrow our possibilities for attribution—focusing, most crucially, on the author’s construction of the poem’s speaker: an earnest and sententious individual compelled, by the violence of the religious schisms of 1709, to a fraught meditation on brotherhood. For years, John Toland and other Freethinkers had chronicled the rise of faction, and the Sacheverell Affair seemed to bring their worst nightmares to life. The poet of “Blind Zeal” draws on these very real anxieties—using a locus communis from Virgil’s Eclogues as a classical touchstone—but offers a glimmer of optimism in his valedictory invocation of Aesop, an author imitated by both the Earl of Shaftesbury and Toland.

Existing research has primarily focused on sport teams as brands, overlooking the branding of professional sport leagues. Professional sport leagues are required to build and leverage their brand associations to be sustainable and to help affiliated teams. This study integrated existing team brand association research with brand architecture literature to examine league brand associations from a consumer perspective. A freethought listing pilot test (N = 22) was followed by semistructured interviews (N = 26) to uncover 17 brand associations linked with professional sport leagues. Online questionnaires among consumers of four sport leagues in Australia (N = 1182) were used to support 17 distinct identified league brand associations. One sample t tests and correlation analyses empirically revealed that 17 league brand associations were linked with attitudinal and behavioral outcomes related to sport leagues. Finally, ANOVAs identified that some league brand associations differed between four leagues as perceived by consumers, reflecting league specific characteristics.

This paper was originally prepared for oral presentation at the Houston Church of Freethought - April 9, 2006, service. The HCOF members include humanists, atheists, agnostics, and other freethinkers. The paper argues that compassion is consistent with Freethought and supplies some suggestions for bringing it to the fore in everyday life.

Aquest article contextualitza i reprodueix les cinc corresponsalies fins ara desconegudes que Francesc Ferrer i Guàrdia realitzà al periòdic mataroní El Progreso (1888-1891) durant el seu exili a París. La seva anàlisi permet conèixer molt millor la formació de la seva mentalitat revolucionària basada en una particular lectura del republicanisme progressista en clau obrera., This article contextualises and reproduces five articles that Francesc Ferrer i Guàrdia wrote in El Progreso (1888-1891) during his exile in Paris. Its analysis offers us a more in depth knowledge of how his revolutionary mind worked based on a specific lecture from progressive republicanism during the workers strikes.

American studies journal; Vol. 60, No. 12, 2016. 2199-7268, Special Edition: Lincoln in Europe

This essay examines Secularism as developed by George Jacob Holyoake in 1851–1852. While historians have noted the importance of evolutionary thought for freethinking radicals from the 1840s, and others have traced the popularization of agnosticism and Darwinian evolution by later Victorian freethinkers, insufficient attention has been paid to mid-century Secularism as constitutive of the cultural and intellectual environment necessary for the promotion and relative success of scientific naturalism. I argue that Secularism was a significant source for the emerging new creed of scientific naturalism in the mid-nineteenth century. Not only did early Secularism help clear the way by fighting battles with the state and religious interlocutors, but it also served as a source for what Huxley, almost twenty years later, termed ‘agnosticism’. Holyoake modified freethought in the early 1850s, as he forged connections with middle-class literary radicals and budding scientific naturalists, some of whom met in a ‘Confidential Combination’ of freethinkers. Secularism became the new creed for this coterie. Later, Secularism promoted and received reciprocal support from the most prominent group of scientific naturalists, as Holyoake used Bradlaugh's atheism and neo-Malthusianism as a foil, and maintained relations with Huxley, Spencer and Tyndall through the end of the century. In Holyoake's Secularism we find the beginnings of the mutation of radical infidelity into the respectability necessary for the acceptance of scientific naturalism, and also the distancing of later forms of infidelity incompatible with it. Holyoake's Secularism represents an important early stage of scientific naturalism.

This study was conducted to determine if American public libraries located in an area of the country hostile to atheist (freethought) ideas collect atheist books at a lower rate than a region of the country more open to such ideas. The US General Social Survey was consulted to locate the contrasting regions. New York Times Best Seller lists were used to select recent (since September 11, 2001) atheist publications and contrasting books favorable to religion. Public library catalogs were then checked for holdings of these books. Purchases of atheist material differed significantly between the two regions, while purchases of religious materials showed no statistically significant difference. Possible explanations for the difference are explored, including censorship pressures, the exclusion of atheist thinking from the discourse of the community, and budgetary considerations.

Toward the end of Olive Schreiner's The Story of on African Farm (1883), Lyndall writes to the father of her child, from whom she has separated, to refuse his second proposal of marriage. She tries to imagine a different kind of love from his that might call "into activity" the "higher part" of her nature (204).Though it is clear by this point in the novel that Lyndall is dying, she begins the letter confident of finding such love in the future and anticipates its transformative power: "One day—perhaps it may be far off—I shall find what I have wanted all my life; something nobler, stronger than I, before which I can kneel down. You lose nothing by not having me now; I am a weak, selfish, erring woman. One day I shall find something to worship, and then I shall be—" (247). Here, Lyndall breaks off.The letter remains unfinished and unsent upon her death. Its significance lies in Lyndall's conflation of religious and sexual structures. Her failure to complete the sentence signals her inability to imagine herself, specifically her sexual self, outside of the Christian framework, which she rejected as a young girl. In attempting to reconfigure her desire for the "strong ... stranger," she falls back on the language of worship and finds herself wanting—sexually, spiritually, and morally (206—08). Given Lyndall's defiance of the Christian strictures regulating women's sexual behaviour by refusing to marry her child's father, her difficulty in reconciling her sexual self with her disbelief is crucial to reading the narration of women's political struggle for sexual autonomy in New Woman fiction. By the time Lyndall was designated the forerunner of the New Woman in the mid1890s, freethought had become a literary signifier of advanced wom anhood, partly because of Schreiner's "poignant exploration of faith and its loss" in African Farm (deVries 196). As Jacqueline deVries points out, the close relationship between religious orthodoxy and patriarchy in Victorian fiction led New Woman novelists to challenge "both male dominance and received Christian truths" (196, original emphasis). Deliberately confronting religious authority, their fictional counterparts "helped to construct a feminist discourse on religion in which individual choice, rational reflection and doubt were central features in the expression of a feminist worldview" ( 196). However, Lyndall's reliance on the language of faith to articulate sexual feeling sug gests that this was an area in which feminism's confrontation with religious

But liberty, when men act in bodies, is power. --Edmund Burke (1) OF THE MAJOR ROMANTIC WRITERS, PERCY SHELLEY IS MOST READILY associated with atheism. The word was still an epithet in the early nineteenth century, yet Shelley courted it. The Necessity of Atheism, the 1811 pamphlet that got Shelley and Thomas Jefferson Hogg kicked out of Oxford, recapitulated familiar arguments from Locke and Hume; the title itself, however, had the desired effect. Five years later, when Shelley signed himself in the hotel registers in Chamonix and Montanvert as "Democrat, Philanthropist, and Atheist," it was the final word that caused the uproar. (2) For in the history of early modern thought in the West "atheism" is an almost magical word. This essay is about Shelley's poem Mont Blanc, though I will have little to say about the content of that poem. This is only in part because a great many intelligent things have already been said about it. It is also because in this poem content is not really the issue. Indeed, the best gloss on Shelley's poem is an oft-quoted passage from Fredric Jameson's The Political Unconscious: History is therefore the experience of Necessity, and it is this alone which can forestall its thematization or reification as a mere object of representation or as one master code among many others. Necessity is not ... a type of content, but rather the inexorable form of events .... the formal effects of what Althusser, following Spinoza, calls an "absent cause." Conceived in this sense, History is what hurts, it is what refuses desire and sets inexorable limits to individual as well as collective prams .... [T]his history can be apprehended only through its effects .... This is indeed the ultimate sense in which History as ground and untranscendable horizon needs no particular theoretical justification: we may be sure that its alienating necessities will not forget us, however much we might prefer to ignore them. (3) Mont Blanc's obscure meditations on power, necessity, and death have sent critics scurrying for source texts, but Jameson suggests that "necessity is not a type of content." No content: only experience, which takes the form of history. To read history we look to its effects, what the poem calls the "flood of ruin" that spills down the mountain. Or, as Shelley puts it a few lines later, "the power is there, / The still and solemn power of many sights, / And many sounds, and much of life and death." (4) Atheism as Unbelief With Shelley's poem as my inspiration, I want to work my way back to Jameson's distinction between content and experience, particularly its reference to Spinoza and the milieu of the radical enlightenment. My argument will be that Shelley is actually superior to the radical enlightenment on this score because he is able to leave its atheism behind. In Chamonix's hotel register and in Prometheus Unbound, Shelley hints at a radical embodiment that goes some way toward undoing atheism's longstanding association with heroic freethought. Because this is a rather counter-intuitive argument, it will be best to begin on familiar ground. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the heavily-touristed Vale of Chamonix was thought to facilitate religious awe, even perhaps to cure atheists of unbelief. Such notions inspired Coleridge's "Hymn Before Sunrise, in the Vale of Chamouni," which offered this thought as part of its lengthy headnote when it first appeared in 1802: "Who would be, who could be an Atheist in this valley of wonders!" (5) Notoriously, Coleridge had never in fact been to Chamonix; even more notoriously, his poem partly plagiarizes Sophie Christiane Friedericke Brun's much shorter poem on the same subject. (6) When Shelley signs the hotel register "Democrat, Philanthropist, and Atheist," then, he is not only resisting the conventional piety to which Coleridge had given voice; like the subtitle added for the poem's 1817 publication, "Lines Written in the Vale of Chamouni," Shelley's signature in the guest book marks the fact that he was there, and thinking for himself. …

As I have suggested, mid-century Secularism as founded by George Jacob Holyoake in 1851–1852 was a post-Enlightenment development, both an extension of Enlightenment rationality, and a response to its failed promises for extending reason across the public and private spheres to the exclusion of religious belief and practice. In order to comprehend this development, I begin by examining some salient post-Enlightenment discourse and activity in early nineteenth-century Britain. This chapter counter-poses two exemplary, late Romantic-age and seemingly antithetical successors to the Enlightenment legacy. One epitomizes the late Romantic response to what Romantics deemed an overweening faith in Enlightenment rationality, as expressed in terms of scientific materialism, Political Economy, and a Utilitarian ethical ‘calculus’. The other represents the extension of Enlightenment promises to the ‘popular Enlightenment’ and the expression given it in the artisanal freethought movement, a movement that would eventually lead, circuitously, to Secularism proper. Respectively, the two figures — the ‘Victorian sage’ and cultural critic Thomas Carlyle and the Romantic-age, plebeian, Paineite radical, Richard Carlile — will serve to represent these currents. While apparently diametrically opposed, the standpoints of Carlyle and Carlile demonstrate a range of secular possibilities in the period.

The facts about George Jacob Holyoake’s founding and early leadership of Secularism have been well documented. Yet, to date, Secularism has not been appreciated for its significance in terms of general secularism or modern secularization. In this chapter, I aim to explore Secularism not so much for its success or lack thereof at converting religious believers to its fold, or in terms of its institutional structures and organizational apparatuses. Social historians of Secularism, especially Edward Royle, have done well to demonstrate in great detail such social facts about Secularism.1 Instead, my focus will be on Secularism as a particular cultural and intellectual formation or constellation. I am interested in Secularism as a historic signpost for what it can tell us about the configuration of the elements involved in its construction, the secular and the religious, and how these interacted with each other and other factors under Secularism’s banner. My approach to the structure of Secularism thus lies somewhere between cultural history, intellectual history, and cultural critique. I look for what Secularism can reveal about its historicity as a cultural, intellectual, religious, and social development and what that development suggests about the configuration of what we now understand as modern secularity.

Cet article montre que, pour la Fédération Internationale de la Libre Pensée, l'Amérique latine fut un objectif stratégique. L'Argentine et le Brésil furent les têtes de pont de ce déploiement. Certains réseaux maçonniques furent la plateforme, le support social de cette opération. Le 11° congrès international de la libre-pensée, en 1904, marqua une charnière en provoquant une mobilisation massive, en élargissant son programme et sa doctrine, et en intégrant d'une manière inédite l'Amérique latine, représentée par l'Argentine, et notamment par Manuel B. Ugarte. Il s'agit donc d'une étude préliminaire destinée à démontrer l'intérêt d'approfondir cette dimension très peu connue de l'histoire culturelle des relations internationales contemporaines. This article shows that, for the International Free Thought Federation, Latin America was a strategic objective. Argentina and Brazil were the bridgeheads of this deployment. Certain masonic networks were the platform, the social support of this operation. The 11th freethought international congress, in 1904, marked a hinge by provoking a massive mobilization, by widening its program and its doctrine, and by integrating in a new way Latin America, represented by the Argentina, in particular by Manuel B. Ugarte. It is thus about a preliminary study intended to demonstrate the interest to deepen this little known dimension of the cultural history of the contemporary international relations.

"Dear Miss Wixon," wrote ten-year-old Susie Cox from Minnesota in June 1893, "I heard about you from papa. He said I should write a letter for the Children's Corner. ... Papa takes The Truth Seeker, Investigator, Secular Thought, and the Freethinker's Magazine. We have the 'Freethinker's Pictorial Text-Book' and 'Old Testament Stories Comically Illustrated.' ... My teacher here said we were wicked people, because we did not read the Bible. I send best wishes to you and all friends."' One of the thousands of children who sent letters to juvenile periodicals during the last quarter of the nineteenth century, Cox is significant because she represents part of a critically understudied population: the children of freethinkers. In the past decade, historians of freethought Lori D. Ginzberg, Susan Jacoby, and Evelyn Kirkley have begun the process of reconsidering the movement's significance in American cultural life, but their focus has been on the experiences of adults.2 This essay expands and complicates our understanding of freethought's history by examining it through the prism of children. Drawing upon children's books and periodicals, published children's letters, adult discussions of children's reading, and manuscript population census records, I argue that adult freethinkers used

La cuestión del vínculo entre religión y cultura o civilización suele mostrarse controvertida. En el caso del protestantismo, ha sido mucho lo escrito sobre sus implicaciones sociopolíticas, especialmente en el caso de Alemania, cuna de la Reforma. En este sentido, un aspecto relevante es la influencia que la cosmovisión protestante ha podido tener sobre las líneas de pensamiento filosófico y político, la educación y el carácter mismo de la sociedad alemana. Su huella “teológica”, podría decirse. El propósito fundamental de este trabajo es el de constituir una síntesis de los principales planteamientos publicados hasta el momento entorno a esta cuestión. Algunas de las propuestas planteadas aquí son de sobra conocidas, no obstante, ciertos matices o interpretaciones pretenden aportar una nueva luz a una cuestión que no está, ni mucho menos, cerrada y cuyas consecuencias son todavía hoy (o, quizás, especialmente hoy) de un notable calado, en un mundo globalizado y con una notoria tendencia homogeneizadora. Por último, si bien el título hace referencia al “protestantismo” en general, debe señalarse que, dado que se trata de analizar su impacto en lo alemán, este trabajo se centrará en la vertiente luterana del protestantismo, The problem on the link between religion and culture or civilization usually it appears to becontroversial. Regarding Protestantism, much has been written on its socio-political consequences, especially in the case of Germany, the cradle of Reformation. In this regard, an outstanding aspect is the influence of the protestant worldview on philosophical and political lines of thinking, education and the very nature of the German society. Its “theological” footprint, as it can be said. The chief goal of this work is to constitute a synthesis of the main approaches appeared until today in connection with this question. Some of the suggestions here exposed are well known, however, some nuances or interpretations try to bring some new light in to a debate far to be closed and whose consequences have a great impact even today (maybe, especially today), in a globalized world and with a remarkable homogenizer trend. Lastly, it must be pointed out that, while the title makes a reference to “Protestantism”, considered in general, as the work tries to analyze its impact on the german issue, it will be focused on the lutheran denomination of Protestantism

The problem on the link between religion and culture or civilization usually it appears to becontroversial. Regarding Protestantism, much has been written on its socio-political consequences, especially in the case of Germany, the cradle of Reformation. In this regard, an outstanding aspect is the influence of the protestant worldview on philosophical and political lines of thinking, education and the very nature of the German society. Its “theological” footprint, as it can be said. The chief goal of this work is to constitute a synthesis of the main approaches appeared until today in connection with this question. Some of the suggestions here exposed are well known, however, some nuances or interpretations try to bring some new light in to a debate far to be closed and whose consequences have a great impact even today (maybe, especially today), in a globalized world and with a remarkable homogenizer trend. Lastly, it must be pointed out that, while the title makes a reference to “Protestantism”, considered in general, as the work tries to analyze its impact on the german issue, it will be focused on the lutheran denomination of Protestantism La cuestión del vínculo entre religión y cultura o civilización suele mostrarse controvertida. En el caso del protestantismo, ha sido mucho lo escrito sobre sus implicaciones sociopolíticas, especialmente en el caso de Alemania, cuna de la Reforma. En este sentido, un aspecto relevante es la influencia que la cosmovisión protestante ha podido tener sobre las líneas de pensamiento filosófico y político, la educación y el carácter mismo de la sociedad alemana. Su huella “teológica”, podría decirse. El propósito fundamental de este trabajo es el de constituir una síntesis de los principales planteamientos publicados hasta el momento entorno a esta cuestión. Algunas de las propuestas planteadas aquí son de sobra conocidas, no obstante, ciertos matices o interpretaciones pretenden aportar una nueva luz a una cuestión que no está, ni mucho menos, cerrada y cuyas consecuencias son todavía hoy (o, quizás, especialmente hoy) de un notable calado, en un mundo globalizado y con una notoria tendencia homogeneizadora. Por último, si bien el título hace referencia al “protestantismo” en general, debe señalarse que, dado que se trata de analizar su impacto en lo alemán, este trabajo se centrará en la vertiente luterana del protestantismo

Rosario de Acuña’s articles and essays in the freethinking press illustrate her radical and heterodox writing and criticism of Catholicism. The writer supported the free-thinking cause and stressed that women should actively participate in the debate. The gender perspective connects the two main intellectual concerns of this writer who believed that the emancipation of women and religious liberty were the two burning issues of the age. Acuña wrote numerous essays and articles that actively defended the need to remove barriers between sexes in order to aspire to an ideal of equality and fraternity., La colaboración de Rosario de Acuña en la prensa librepensadora define su escritura radical, heterodoxa y crítica con el catolicismo. La autora apoyó la causa del librepensamiento recalcando que la mujer debía ser participar activamente en el debate. Este matiz de género permite unir dos de las preocupaciones básicas de una escritora que consideraba que la emancipación de la mujer y la libertad religiosa eran las dos cuestiones palpitantes de ese contexto histórico. Acuña escribió numerosos ensayos y artículos apoyando activamente la necesidad de anular las barreras entre los sexos para aspirar a ideales de igualdad y fraternidad universal.

S’il est bien, dans l’Angleterre victorienne, une position intellectuelle politiquement incorrecte, c’est la revendication ostensiblement affirmée d’athéisme. Par essence iconoclaste, le rejet affiché de l’existence de Dieu n’a pas seulement une dimension théologique ; il a aussi des implications éthiques et sociales majeures qui le rendent encore peu courant, tout particulièrement dans le contexte de renouvellement de la foi qui a été induit, depuis le milieu du xviiie siècle, par les formes évangéliques de spiritualité. Même si l’idée de doute « honnête » fait progressivement son chemin à l’époque, l’image de l’athée reste foncièrement négative. Chez Charles Bradlaugh (1833-1891), président de la National Secular Society de 1866 à 1890, le débat intellectuel induit par la question de l’existence de Dieu se double d’un combat politique et d’un engagement militant de chaque instant. À partir de l’évocation de son itinéraire de même que de celui de son prédécesseur George Jacob Holyoake (1817-1906), qui avait été à la tête, quant à lui, de la London Secular Society, on s’efforcera d’évaluer l’impact de ce courant de pensée à l’époque. On s’intéressera à ses origines et on se demandera jusqu’à quel point il réussit à s’imposer en tant que position « respectable » à l’époque. In the Victorian period, atheism was certainly one of the most transgressive, politically incorrect intellectual positions that were professed. Not only did it have a theological dimension, but it also had major ethical and social implications that still made it rather uncommon at the time, particularly in the context of the renewal of faith that had been induced by evangelical forms of spirituality since the 18th century. This position was perceived as violating both the norms of the proper conduct of reason as well as those of virtuous action. Even if the idea of ‘honest doubt’ had been gradually making its way, the reputation of the atheist was still mainly negative. Charles Bradlaugh (1833-1891), who became the most famous representative of atheism at the time, embodied both the intellectual debate induced by the question of the existence of God and a constant, militant involvement in favour of other causes that were just as radical and transgressive, such as republicanism or artificial birth control. In 1880, when he became an MP, Bradlaugh never stopped professing an atheistic position, which prevented him from occupying his seat in the House of Commons for six years, although he was later re-elected no less than four times. In 1888, he passed a law that enabled future MP’s to take a non-religious oath. This article explores the ideological impact of Bradlaugh’s intellectual evolution, as well as that of his predecessor George Jacob Holyoake.

This diploma thesis deals with so called "transfer movement" in Mělník in 1921. The term "transfer movement" refers to a strong campaign which tried to persuade people to leave the Roman Catholic Church before the census of February 1921 in or der to the emancipation of our nation from the Church would have been expressed. The general principle of the movement was that the Rome had always been our enemy, that the reformation is the very essence of our national identity and that the Catholic Church had been an ally of the Habsburg dynasty. The thesis tries to explore the role of the leading groups of the "transfer movement" (especially Czechoslovak Church, Evangelical Church of Czech Brethren and Freethought) and of the press in Mělník as well as the reaction of the local catholic clergy. The core of the work is based mainly on primary sources (both archive and published). It was found that the transfer movement was rather successful. No violent clashes were reported. The local press played an important role and supported the transfer movement. Keywords: transfer movement, Mělník, Czechoslovak Church, Evangelical Church of Czech Brethren, Freethought, discourse analysis

An essay exploring the failure of the Freethought Movement to repell the Religious Right in American politics

This paper will try to address the question of the sincerity of John Toland’s public Christianity and relate it to his private and unorthodox beliefs: the public and the private in Toland’s thought have been bifurcated for too long. One result of this reconstruction of Toland’s religious ideas will be to suggest that his religious opinions (whether public or private) were intimately related to a political agenda. Much historical attention has focused upon the critical aspects of his assault upon the priestcraft of “protestant popery” but very little interest has been paid to the idea of Toland as a “Christian reformer”. By exploring Toland’s precise definition of pantheism and relating it to his neo-stoic doctrines of civic politics the paper hopes to revise current thinking about the significance of public Christianity in the freethinking polemic.

Studies in the history of physical education show that it was often promoted for socio-political reasons: to stimulate nation-building or increase economic productivity and/or military strength. By contrast, a different kind of motivation has received little attention in historical studies: the importance of physical education for the perfection of the individual, as expressed by the German neohumanistic word ‘Bildung’. This article presents a case study in which the debate on the importance of physical education in the Netherlands in the mid-nineteenth century is examined. Ideas on the importance of Bildung in physical education especially existed within the freethinkers’ movement. With arguments derived from their naturalistic worldview, freethinkers contested educational approaches that obstructed the natural development of the child. This case study aims to contribute to a better insight into the history of physical education in the Netherlands and into the diversity of reasons for promoting physical education in the past.

This article examines the previously unexplored current of Freethinking feminism in the second half of the nineteenth century. Active in the women's movement of this period, Freethinking feminists were nonetheless viewed as a liability—an attitude that contributed to their exclusion from much of the subsequent historiography. Such marginalisation was due not only to their vocal opposition to all forms of religion, but also their openness to discussing new ways of organising heterosexual relationships. This article focuses on Freethinking feminist critiques of marriage and support for free unions. It demonstrates that these issues continued to be debated in the Secularist movement at a time when many other radical organisations—including much of the women's movement—kept silent on such topics. In this way, Freethinking feminists kept alive the more radical and libertarian critiques of traditional sexual morality developed by Owenite feminists in the 1830s and 40s. The author argues that the ideology of Freethought propelled its adherents to readdress questions of sex within a new 'Secularist' ethical framework. Fierce debate ensued, yet commitment to freedom of discussion ensured that 'unrespectable', libertarian voices were never entirely silenced. Freethinking feminism might, then, be viewed as the 'missing link' between early nineteenth-century feminist visions of greater sexual freedom and the more radical discussions of sexuality and free love that began to emerge at the fin de sicle.

Laura Schwartz’s Infidel Feminism opens with a provocative scene: In 1869, Mrs. Harriet Law, a leading speaker of the Freethought movement, publicly reinterpreted Eve’s rebellion against an authori...