Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #10292 in Books
• Published on: 2005-01-07
• Released on: 2004-12-23
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 448 pages

From 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.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The Washington Post

When the Supreme Court recently listened to debate about the words "under God" as they appear in the Pledge of Allegiance, it heard arguments from those who think that the expression endorses religion, and thus violates the "establishment" clause of the First Amendment, and from those who believe that acknowledgment of the Almighty is somehow beyond religion and/or no bad thing. What is generally overlooked is that the Pledge was initially composed without those two words, which were inserted only during the Red scare of the 1950s. Or to put it another way, the United States managed to survive two world wars, a depression and the first decade of the Cold War without any such invocation. Thus those who want the Pledge restored to its authentic version can claim to be acting as strict constructionists with a solid defense of "original intent."

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. Indeed, this is the first and only country to adopt a Constitution that specifically excludes all reference to a higher power. (I say "specifically" because those meeting in Philadelphia did consider, and did decisively reject, any such reference.) Many were the bishops and preachers of the time who warned that God would punish such profanity, but many were the preachers who said the same about the Virginia Statute on Religious Freedom, which did no more than state that no citizen could be obliged to pay for the upkeep of a church in which he did not believe.

Two of the great books of the 18th-century Enlightenment were Thomas Paine's The Age of Reason and Constantine Volney's The Ruins. Thomas Jefferson wrote in praise of the first and helped translate the second from the French. Abraham Lincoln read both, and we have his great colleague William Herndon's word for it that his own agnosticism was the result of Lincoln's persuasion. I think it could fairly be said, however, that American schoolchildren are not taught that Jefferson and Lincoln were unbelievers, or that Jefferson took a razor blade and cut out all the passages of the New Testament that he found offensive to reason or common sense -- leaving him with a highly condensed version. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, co-founder of the movement for female emancipation, was to develop this idea into the Woman's Bible, which blamed the religious mentality for the degradation of her sex.

The refusal to establish any religion, or state support for same, helped spare the United States the fate of Europe, where slaughter between discrepant Christian sects had come close to extinguishing civilization. It did not, however, prevent Americans from invoking the blessing of heaven on whichever cause they favored. The Rev. Timothy Dwight, celebrated president of Yale, denounced smallpox vaccinations as a blasphemous interference with God's design. The upholders of slavery claimed (correctly) that there was biblical warrant for the "peculiar institution." The abolitionists also warred in the name of the divine. The pulpits were just as much divided during the civil rights movement of the 1950s and '60s.

In lucid and witty prose, Jacoby has uncovered the hidden history of secular America, and awarded it a large share of credit in every movement for social and political reform. It's nice to read again of the friendship between Walt Whitman and Robert Ingersoll, the greatest anti-religious lecturer of his day. It's sobering to be reminded of how many states practiced overt sectarian discrimination, against Jews, Catholics and Quakers, even after the Founding Fathers had made plain their abhorrence of all such practices. And, of course, it is salutary to be reminded of how much plain villainy and stupidity has been promulgated from the platforms of the godly, many of whom would still like to retard the elementary teaching of science.

If the book has a fault, it is the near-axiomatic identification of the secular cause with the liberal one. Susan Jacoby has what might be called ACLU politics. To read her, you would not know that two of the most prominent intellectual gurus of American conservatism -- Ayn Rand and Leo Strauss -- were both determined nonbelievers. H.L. Mencken, who if not exactly a conservative was certainly not a liberal, had vast contempt for religion but is cited only briefly here for his role in the Scopes trial in Tennessee. Still, when Billy Graham can be asked to give the address at a service for the victims of Sept. 11, and can use the occasion to say that all the dead are now in heaven and would not rejoin us even if they could, it is essential to be reminded of our rationalist tradition -- and also of the fact that our current deadliest foe is conspicuously "faith-based."

Reviewed by Christopher Hitchens

Copyright 2004, The Washington Post Co. All Rights Reserved.

From Booklist
*Starred Review* Jacoby reclaims a key facet of American culture, secularism, or freethinking, the belief that public good is "based on human reason and human rights rather than divine authority," a concept codified in the Constitution's separation of church and state. Veteran author Jacoby feels that now is the perfect time for a thorough reexamination of America's secular tradition because, as she documents, it is being severely eroded by the politics of the Christian Right. Her cogent and engaging narrative presents myriad neglected yet significant historical episodes and compelling profiles of such clarion freethinkers as Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Paine, William Lloyd Garrison, Lucretia Mott, Walt Whitman, and John F. Kennedy. Jacoby reveals how the abolitionist and women's rights movements, archetypal freethinking efforts, challenged orthodox religious institutions as obstacles to social reform, and she dissects the church's role in organized censorship and negative impact on public education, especially its opposition to the teaching of evolution. As Jacoby critiques the rise of religious correctness and tracks President Bush's assault on the line between church and state, she reminds readers that humanist values are the bedrock of democracy. Enlightening, invigorating, and responsibly yet passionately argued, Jacoby's unparalleled history of American secularism offers a much needed perspective on today's most urgent social issues. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Customer Reviews

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.

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.

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.