Old But New(ish) Variation of Friday Freethought Perennials Using Old Stuff--Quotations (II-5 of VI) (Other Leaders and Thinkers of the Founding Era)

Friday Freethought Perennial 29 November 2024

Ethan Allen (1738-1789)

Rev. Isaac Backus (1724-1806)

Elihu Palmer (1764-1806)

About the Friday Freethought Perennials in general: This subset of my blog is to answer questions, nearly always already answered by me and by many others but posed again and again—over many years and in many places—on freethought, atheism, secular humanism, secularism/church-state/”This is a Christian Nation,” and similar topics. These answers are mostly not intended to be original analyses, breaths of fresh air, so much as just putting a whole series of things on the record (I’d say “forever,” except I know better). One source for many of these answers is the 2012 Prometheus Books book by me and my son (Michael E. Buckner), In Freedom We Trust: An Atheist Guide to Religious Liberty. It’s available in many libraries and pretty readily in the used book after-market. I’ll cite writings of others that answer these things in more depth if I’m aware of them when I post these.

Today’s (and the ones that follow on future [not necessarily consecutive] Fridays) are from an older project my son Michael and I started over 30 years ago. The resulting book of Quotations That Support . . . ., published by the Atlanta Freethought Society, is no longer available (one online bookseller claims to have a copy that he’ll sell you for over $100!), though at least some of this has been published online before.

The quotations presented here, drawn in every case directly from the most original source available to the editors, should prove useful to those arguing, in a variety of ways or contexts, in favor of separation of church and state, religious freedom, and the rights of religious or, especially, irreligious minorities.

Quotations supporting atheism, deism, or unorthodox religious views are included to the extent that they might be useful in debating against those who argue that the United States was established as a Christian nation or that the “founding fathers” would have accepted government support or enforcement of any religious orthodoxy.

Not all the quotations are from humanists or freethinkers nor even from people committed to complete separation of church and state, but the quotations are all, as far as we can determine, genuine, accurate, and not distorted by being taken out of context.

These postings are of course primarily as reference rather than reading material and anyone who wants to save and use them can certainly do that. The quotations I’m re-publishing on a number of different dates here are arranged in six major parts, with some subsections within those.:

I. U.S. Constitution, U.S. Treaty,  State Constitutions (several weeks ago)

II.  Founding Fathers—Other Leaders and Thinkers from the Revolutionary Era (fifth of several subparts published today)

III. Presidents (and Other National Political Leaders) Since the Revolutionary Era

IV. U.S.  Supreme  Court  and  Other  Judicial   Rulings

V. Other Famous Americans

VI. Foreign Sources

Quotations are arranged in approximate order of historical significance in Parts I and II, with separate subsections in Part II for major leaders (Jefferson, Madison, Washington, John Adams, Franklin, and Paine) followed by a subsection of others from the era, then by a subsection of historians and others about the era in general. Parts III though VI are arranged in approximate chronological order (except with all material from or about a particular source kept together) within each part.

Other Leaders and Thinkers of the Revolutionary Era (Backus, Leland, Allen, Palmer, et al)

“Does not the core of all this difficulty lie in this,” Isaac Backus—a Separatist minister turned Baptist—asked rhetorically in replying to a detractor in 1768, “that the common people [justly] claim as good a right to judge and act for themselves in matters of religion as civil rulers or the learned clergy?”

James A. Henretta, The Evolution of American Society, 1700-1815: An Interdisciplinary Analysis, Lexington, MA: D. C. Heath and Company, 1973, p. 136.

Religious matters are to be separated from the jurisdiction of the state not because they are beneath the interests of the state, but, quite to the contrary, because they are too high and holy and thus are beyond the competence of the state.

Isaac Backus, An Appeal to the Public for Religious Liberty, 1773, as quoted by Albert Menendez and Edd Doerr, compilers, The Great Quotations on Religious Freedom, Long Beach, CA: Centerline Press, 1991, p. 7.

That religion, or the duty we owe to our Creator, and the manner of discharging it, can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence; and therefore all men are equally entitled to the free exercise of religion, according to the dictates of conscience.

Patrick Henry, 1736-1799, American patriot and statesman, Virginia Bill of Rights, June 12, 1776. From Daniel B. Baker.;, ed., Political Quotations, Detroit: Gale Research, Inc., 1990, p. 189. Patrick Henry was, it should be noted, one of the early leaders, along with men like Samuel Adams, who did seem to believe in the necessity of Christianity as a basis for government—such leaders lost the political battle to the separationists.

For the civil authority to pretend to establish particular modes of faith and forms of worship, and to punish all that deviate from the standards which our superiors have set up, is attended with the most pernicious consequences to society. It cramps all free and rational inquiry, fills the world with hypocrites and superstitious bigots—nay, with infidels and skeptics; it exposes men of religion and conscience to the rage and malice of fiery, blind zealots, and dissolves every tender tie of human nature. And I cannot but look upon it as a peculiar blessing of Heaven that we live in a land where everyone can freely deliver his sentiments upon religious subjects, and have the privilege of worshipping God according to the dictates of his own conscience, without any molestation or disturbance—a privilege which I hope we shall ever keep up and strenuously maintain.

Samuel West, Dartmouth, MA, Election Sermon, 1776, as quoted by Albert Menendez and Edd Doerr, compilers, The Great Quotations on Religious Freedom, Long Beach, CA: Centerline Press, 1991, p. 103.

Ethan Allen (1739-1789), a hero of the American revolution, signaled the combustion [of the “explosion of militant deism”] with the 1784 publication of his Reason the Only Oracle of Man, a massive (and at times incoherent) denunciation of revealed religion.

Kerry S. Walters, Elihu Palmer’s ‘Principles of Nature’: Text and Commentary, Wolfeboro, N. H.: Longwood Academic, 1990, p. 27.

In the circle of my acquaintance, (which has not been small,) I have been generally denominated a Deist, the reality of which I have never disputed, being conscious I am no Christian, except mere infant baptism make me one; and as to being a Deist, I know not, strictly speaking, whether I am one or not, for I have never read their writings . . . .

Ethan Allen, Reason, The Only Oracle of Man; or A Compendious System of Natural Religion, Boston: J. P. Mendum, Cornhill, 1854 [reprint of 1784 edition], “Preface.”

Section IV. PRAYER CANNOT BE ATTENDED WITH MIRACULOUS CONSEQUENCES. Prayer to God is no part of a rational religion, nor did reason ever dictate it, but, was it duly attended to, it would teach us the contrary.

Ethan Allen, Reason, The Only Oracle of Man; or A Compendious System of Natural Religion, Boston: J. P. Mendum, Cornhill, 1854 [reprint of 1784 edition], p. 74.

…the doctrine of the Trinity is destitute of foundation, and tends manifestly to superstition and idolatry.

Ethan Allen, Reason, The Only Oracle of Man; or A Compendious System of Natural Religion, Boston: J. P. Mendum, Cornhill, 1854 [reprint of 1784 edition], p. 124.

That Jesus Christ was not a God is evident from his own words, where, speaking of the day of judgment, he says, “Of that day and hour knoweth no man, no not the angels which are in Heaven, neither the Son.” This is giving up all pretention to divinity, acknowledging in the most explicit manner, that he did not know all things . . . . Thus he ranks himself with finite beings . . . .

Ethan Allen, Reason, The Only Oracle of Man; or A Compendious System of Natural Religion, Boston: J. P. Mendum, Cornhill, 1854 [reprint of 1784 edition], p. 125.

Every commentary and annotation on the Bible, implicitly declares its fallibility; for if the Scriptures remained genuine and entire, they would not stand in need of commentaries and expositions, but would shine in their infallible lustre and purity without them.

Ethan Allen, Reason, The Only Oracle of Man; or A Compendious System of Natural Religion, Boston: J. P. Mendum, Cornhill, 1854 [reprint of 1784 edition], p. 154.

. . . the diverse and clashing expositions of the Bible, among which are so many flagrant proofs of the fallibility and uncertainty of such teachings, as must convince even bigots, that every one of these expositions are erroneous, except their own! [Emphasis in original.]

Ethan Allen, Reason, The Only Oracle of Man; or A Compendious System of Natural Religion, Boston: J. P. Mendum, Cornhill, 1854 [reprint of 1784 edition], p. 155.

A revelation, that may be supposed to be really of the institution of God, must also be supposed to be perfectly consistent or uniform, and to be able to stand the test of truth; therefore such pretended revelations, as are tendered to us as the contrivance of heaven, which do not bear that test, we may be morally certain, was either originally a deception, or has since, by adulteration become spurious.

Reason therefore must be the standard by which we determine the respective claims of revelation; for otherwise we may as well subscribe to the divinity of the one as the other, or to the whole of them, or to none at all. So likewise on this thesis, if reason rejects the whole of these revelations, we ought to return to the religion of nature and reason.

Ethan Allen, Reason, The Only Oracle of Man; or A Compendious System of Natural Religion, Boston: J. P. Mendum, Cornhill, 1854 [reprint of 1784 edition], p. 170.

An unjust composition never fails to contain error and falsehood. Therefore an unjust connection of ideas is not derived from nature, but from the imperfect composition of man. Misconnection of ideas is the same as misjudging, and has no positive existence, being merely a creature of the imagination; but nature and truth are real and uniform; and the rational mind by reasoning, discerns the uniformity, and is thereby enabled to make a just composition of ideas, which will stand the test of truth. But the fantastical illuminations of the credulous and superstitious part of mankind, proceed from weakness, and as far as they take place in the world subvert the religion of REASON, NATURE and TRUTH.

Ethan Allen, Reason, The Only Oracle of Man; or A Compendious System of Natural Religion, Boston: J. P. Mendum, Cornhill, 1854 [reprint of 1784 edition], p. 171.

Back in Sunderland, Ethan [Allen] busied himself with his philosophical treatise, which he now called Reason the Only Oracle of Man. The book was finished, but he was having some difficulty about its publication. He had taken it down to Hartford the year before, and several printers had looked and shuddered. What was Ethan trying to do, they asked, run them all out of business and get them as well as himself hanged? The book was a wholesale attack on organized religion.

Not so, thundered Ethan as he moved about Hartford. The book was a philosophical statement to which Americans and others in the world should be exposed, to counteract the cant of the ministers of the Gospel.

Edwin P. Hoyt, The Damndest Yankees: Ethan Allen & His Clan, Brattleboro, Vermont: The Stephen Greene Press, 1976, p. 225.

A Pennsylvania mechanic wrote to the Independent Gazetter in 1784: “All of the miseries of mankind have arisen from freemen not maintaining and exercising their own sentiments. No reason can be given why a free people should not be equally independent in . . . their political as well as their religious persuasions.”

James A. Henretta, The Evolution of American Society, 1700-1815: An Interdisciplinary Analysis, Lexington, MA: D. C. Heath and Company, 1973, p. 136.

Is conformity of sentiments in matters of religion essential to the happiness of civil government? Not at all. Government has no more to do with the religious opinions of men than it has with the principles of the mathematics. Let every man speak freely without fear—maintain the principles that he believes—worship according to his own faith, either one God, three Gods, no God, or twenty Gods; and let government protect him in so doing, i.e., see that he meets with no personal abuse or loss of property for his religious opinions. Instead of discouraging him with proscriptions, fines, confiscation or death, let him be encouraged, as a free man, to bring forth his arguments and maintain his points with all boldness; then if his doctrine is false it will be confuted, and if it is true (though ever so novel) let others credit it. When every man has this liberty what can he wish for more? A liberal man asks for nothing more of government.

John Leland, “The Rights of Conscience Inalienable, and Therefore Religious Opinions not Cognizable by Law” [a pamphlet], New London, Connecticut, 1791; from Mortimer J. Adler, Editor-in-Chief, The Annals of America, Volume 3, 1784-1796, Organizing the New Nation, Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 1968, pp. 447-448. Leland, a Baptist minister, refused to support the Constitution until Madison persuaded him that it would not undermine religious liberty.

The liberty I contend for is more than toleration. The very idea of toleration is despicable; it supposes that some have a pre-eminence above the rest to grant indulgence; whereas all should be equally free, Jews, Turks [Muslims], Pagans and Christians. Test oaths and established creeds should be avoided as the worst of evils.

Baptist minister John Leland, 1820, as quoted by Samuel Rabinove, “Church and State Must Remain Separate,” in Julie S. Bach, ed., Civil Liberties: Opposing Viewpoints, St. Paul: Greenhaven Press, 1988, p. 53.

Despite his pre-eminent role in early American deism, [Elihu] Palmer (1764-1806) is scarcely remembered today. He has been overshadowed by his friend and associate Thomas Paine (1737-1809) . . . .

But Palmer was of an entirely different stripe, both personally and intellectually, and his success in disseminating deistic thought to the American public was not the flash-in-the pan Paine variety. . . . . Palmer was a tireless and eloquent orator, and during the last decade of his life he stumped from urban New York to the backwaters of Georgia to proselytize for deism. As a result, he reached a far larger audience than did Paine, who relied almost exclusively on the written word to communicate his message.

Kerry S. Walters, Elihu Palmer’s ‘Principles of Nature’: Text and Commentary, Wolfeboro, N. H.: Longwood Academic, 1990, pp. 5-6.

[Elihu] Palmer’s first major public address after moving to New York was given on Christmas Day 1796. He came out swinging, rejecting the divinity of Jesus as a “very singular and unnatural” event, and condemning as both immoral and incomprehensible the doctrines of original sin, atonement, faith and regeneration. The lecture was well attended and widely read when published. Reaction from the Christian establishment was swift and predictably hostile, but something in Palmer’s message caught on with many of his auditors and readers. Invitations to speak poured in from Baltimore, Newburgh and even Philadelphia. Palmer accepted them all, and in each place he visited he helped organize sister organizations to the New York Deistical Society. From New England to the Middle Atlantic states, Palmer’s campaign against the infamies of ecclesiastical superstition and political authorita-rianism inflamed the imaginations of some and outraged the sense of propriety of others. But an increasing number of people knew of him and what he stood for.

Kerry S. Walters, Elihu Palmer’s ‘Principles of Nature’: Text and Commentary, Wolfeboro, N. H.: Longwood Academic, 1990, p. 11.

Twelve centuries of moral and political darkness, in which Europe was involved, had nearly completed the destruction of human dignity, and every thing valuable or ornamental in the character of man. During this long and doleful night of ignorance, slavery, and superstition, Christianity reigned triumphant; its doctrines and divinity were not called in question. The power of the Pope, the Clergy, and the Church were omnipotent; nothing could restrain their frenzy, nothing could control the cruelty of their fanaticism; with mad enthusiasm they set on foot the most bloody and terrific crusades, the object of which was to recover the Holy Land. Seven hundred thousand men are said to have perished in the two first expeditions, which had been thus commenced and carried on by the pious zeal of the Christian church, and in the total amount, several millions were found numbered with the dead: the awful effects of religious fanaticism presuming upon the aid of heaven. It was then that man lost all his dignity, and sunk to the condition of a brute; it was then that intellect received a deadly blow, from which it did not recover until the fifteenth century. From that time to the present, the progress of knowledge has been constantly accelerated; independence of mind has been asserted, and opposing obstacles have been gradually diminished. The church has resigned a part of her power, the better to retain the remainder; civil tyranny has been shaken to its centre in both hemispheres; the malignity of superstition is abating, and every species of quackery, imposture, and imposition, are yielding to the light and power of science. An awful contest has commenced, which must terminate in the destruction of thrones and civil despotism; in the annihilation of ecclesiastical pride and domination . . . . Church and State may unite to form an insurmountable barrier against the extension of thought, the moral progress of nations, and the felicity of nature; but let it be recollected, that the guarantee for moral and political emancipation is already deposited in the archives of every school and college, and in the mind of every cultivated and enlightened man of all countries. It will henceforth be a vain and fruitless attempt to reduce the earth to that state of slavery of which the history of former ages has furnished such an awful picture. The crimes of ecclesiastical despots are still corroding upon the very vitals of human society; the severities of civil power will never be forgotten.

Elihu Palmer, Principles of Nature; or, a Development of the Moral Causes of Happiness and Misery Among the Human Species, 3rd ed., 1806; as reprinted in Kerry S. Walters, Elihu Palmer’s ‘Principles of Nature’: Text and Commentary, Wolfeboro, N. H.: Longwood Academic, 1990, pp. 82-83.

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