Village Atheists: How America's Unbelievers Made Their Way in a Godly Nation

by Leigh Eric Schmidt

A much-maligned minority throughout American history, atheists have been cast as a threat to the nation's moral fabric, barred from holding public office, and branded as irreligious misfits in a nation chosen by God. Yet, village atheists--as these godless freethinkers came to be known by the close of the nineteenth century--were also hailed for their gutsy dissent from stultifying pieties and for posing a necessary secularist challenge to majoritarian entanglements of church and state. Village Atheists explores the complex cultural terrain that unbelievers have long had to navigate in their fight to secure equal rights and liberties in American public life.

Leigh Eric Schmidt rebuilds the history of American secularism from the ground up, giving flesh and blood to these outspoken infidels, including itinerant lecturer Samuel Porter Putnam; rough-edged cartoonist Watson Heston; convicted blasphemer Charles B. Reynolds; and atheist sex reformer Elmina D. Slenker. He describes their everyday confrontations with devout neighbors and evangelical ministers, their strained efforts at civility alongside their urge to ridicule and offend their Christian compatriots. Schmidt examines the multilayered world of social exclusion, legal jeopardy, yet also civic acceptance in which American atheists and secularists lived. He shows how it was only in the middle decades of the twentieth century that nonbelievers attained a measure of legal vindication, yet even then they often found themselves marginalized on the edges of a God-trusting, Bible-believing nation.

Village Atheists reveals how the secularist vision for the United States proved to be anything but triumphant and age-defining for a country where faith and citizenship were--and still are--routinely interwoven.

Genres: History, Religion, Nonfiction, Politics, Atheism, Philosophy, American History

360 pages, Hardcover

First published September 26, 2016

Reviews

[Carlos · Rating 4 out of 5]

3 1/2 stars actually.
This book was a very interesting read, in it you will find a chronicle of how people who chose the label of atheist have been shunned both openly and discretely in America since it's early beginnings, this book focuses on the early 19th century, it present the weapons that atheist and secular used to try and make it in a society in which if you called yourself an atheist you could not testify in court , hold a government job or in the worst of cases not be hirable at all. One of the weapons both these movements used was caricatures , there is a big section focused on this aspect in the book. Then it goes to focus on the struggle of female atheists who had it worse both in the religious community as well as in the secular movement itself . The lack of diversity in the early movement is also noted but not expanded upon. The book ends with a dubious conclusion that both praises the strides the atheist community has reached in the early 21th century but at the same time warns that not that much has changed , in a society in which atheists are still seemed as characters of dubious moral standing , where politicians still don't dare to say they are nonbelievers , Has that much changed really?
The book was good but more examples were needed and at some points the author repeated himself .

[Steve Wiggins · Rating 4 out of 5]

I heard about Village Atheists when it first came out. It took some time to get around to reading it, and when I finally did it wasn’t exactly what I thought it would be. Leigh Eric Schmidt focuses on four atheists/freethinkers from the nineteenth to early twentieth centuries: Samuel Porter Putnam, Watson Heston, Charles B. Reynolds, and Elmina Drake Slenker. None of them are household names, but their stories are quite interesting. Up until the mid-twentieth century you could be jailed for being a non-believer, or even for writing a letter that included sexual terms to a private address. (I recall a blasphemy case came to the courts in Michigan not too many years back.) Although Schmidt doesn’t offer solutions, this is an interesting peek into life in the United States in the 1800s.

Although there are those who argued otherwise, I am not an atheist. At the same time, those who think they have the last word on that which we term “God” are deceived. A religious tradition from the time it reaches the followers ear straight from the mouth of the leader. Anyone who bothers to study religious history knows that churches keep going by re-examining and building on what has gone before. If the last word on God were known all theologians should pack up their pencils and go home. We keep studying because there is more to know.

America is an odd place. Although the majority of people are progressive, our political system has been overwhelmingly conservative, and serves the interest of evangelical Christianity. Freethinkers and atheists made the case that the non-religious deserve equal treatment under the law. Strangely, it took a very long time for this to come about. Schmidt’s book isn’t comprehensive, but the sketches show just how far we’ve come and how far we still have to go for true acceptance. I wrote more about this book here, Sects and Violence in the Ancient World, for anyone interested.

[Stella · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent addition to free thought history. While the book is primarily focused on fleshing out the lives of four particular people, their stories entwined with many other people in the atheist and freethinker communities of their time. The epilogue is an update of legal cases and atheist writings up to the early 2000s. Perhaps cartoon caricatures and tent revivals for unbelievers might make a comeback! We are still fighting many of the same battles today. My only quibble was that the author was at times more verbose than necessary. Overall an informative read.

[Charlie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Schmidt has made a career out of studying the lives of religious dissenters. His latest work, Village Atheists, lives up to his brand of interesting subject matter, serious analysis, and enjoyable prose. Here he seeks the historical reality behind a literary trope, the village atheist. The introduction establishes the need for a better approach to the history of irreligion in America. A crude secularization thesis is disowned, hagiography disallowed, and genealogy dismissed. The result is a book that can really be set with the best of cultural history.

The four body chapters of the book are micro-histories, each following a separate plucky gadfly whose bold advocacy got him (and occasionally her) into trouble. Each chapter also uses that figure to call attention to some broader aspect of America's religious landscape. Schmidt strikes a careful balance. To tell the history of the grassroots side of the atheist movement, Schmidt had to choose people minor enough to qualify but significant enough to write about. Also keeping to the trope of the village atheist, his figures tend to be isolated from their neighbors, perhaps respected but always kept at a distance at least partially self-imposed.

"The Secular Pilgrim" introduces Samuel Putnam, a lifelong religious pilgrim whose agonizing quest to discover religious truth led him back and forth between the religious pulpit and the secular platform several times. Putnam stands for many (well, a few) Americans who realized they were moving beyond the bounds of Christian orthodoxy and even theism but who did not have any clear idea of what lay beyond that territory or how to articulate it. His story also explores the difficulty of making a start as a professional infidel and navigating the internal politics of the American freethought movement.

Chapter 2, "The Cartoonist," depicts the career, work, and legacy of the popular atheist cartoonist Watson Heston, largely in service to the freethought magazine Truth Seeker. This was in my opinion the best chapter of the book. Schmidt's writing is superb, the subject matter fresh, and the analysis penetrating. Many of Heston's cartoons were preserved and are reproduced in the book. Numerous letters to Heston and the editor, as well as responses by rival publications, allow Schmidt to explore how the various cartoons were received by both sympathetic and hostile readerships. The cartoons were the first serialized, visual challenges to Christianity associated with a single author. They were also intentionally and intensely provocative. Heston's prolific career included explicit and implicit commentary on other groups: minority religions, women, and African-Americans. I suspect readers will find Heston's pointed but rather ambiguous statements on all these groups one of the richest parts of this book. Finally, comparison with the Charlie Hebdo cartoons is simply irresistible.

Chapter 3, "The Blasphemer," is built around the blasphemy trial of Charles Reynolds, former Adventist evangelist turned atheist evangelist. Schmidt presents this episode as a parallel to the Scopes trial, and the commonalities are easy to see. Reynolds was clearly guilty of violating the laws as written, there was a lack of confidence in the wisdom of the law under which he is convicted, a famous orator (Robert Ingersoll) is called to provide defense counsel, and the trial is widely perceived as a loss for the pious even though a conviction is reached and a nominal fine assessed. Reynold's blasphemy was overshadowed by the story of the Christian mob that physically attacked him and burned his tent, an act that seemed piously zealous in the moment but looked like ignorant zealotry in retrospect. This strong chapter also includes a more general survey of the occasional violence or legal discrimination faced by similar freethought advocates, as well as internal freethinker debates about the advantages of more combative or conciliatory approaches to religious persuasion.

Chapter 4, "The Obscene Atheist," follows Elmina Drake Slenker, a freethinker who came under legal sanctions for her promotion of birth control and frank discussion of sex alongside her (ir)religious advocacy. This is probably the least dramatic chapter, but it serves the important function of clarifying the range of positions on sexuality held within the freethought movement. Slenker herself favored family planning and championed atheist women as paragons of domesticity, while occasionally implying that some women might find their life's calling farther from the hearth. Her goal was to allay fears about infidels undermining the family. Other freethinkers were proponents of free love. They thought that openly embracing hedonism would both further women's causes and entice religious people, secretly resentful of prudish social norms, to come over to their side. And of course many atheists simply fell within the mainstream of opinion.

Schmidt's epilogue, "The Nonbeliever Goes His Own Way," is no mere tack-on, but a substantive piece of historical scholarship. The mode of writing shifts to legal history, and here the objective is to trace the winding path of irreligious freedom in the United States. Courts and legislatures from the nation's founding into the twenty-first century have offered conflicting opinions about the official standing of those Americans who profess no religious belief.

My first impression is that this book will require (and enable!) us to take another look at New Atheism. Or, as it looks now, not-so-new atheism. The appearance of a pugnacious and even contemptuous style of atheist engagement in the twenty-first century can now be viewed as a reappearance of the village atheist, who in the middle of the twentieth century to some degree went underground or was overshadowed by religious revivalism. The new atheists of the twenty-first century face many of the same challenges as those of the nineteenth, such as appearing to appeal primarily to educated white males and stumbling to articulate coherent views toward parallel social justice issues involving gender, race, and minority religious status. Some conversations are perennial, such as whether more aggressive or more conciliatory tactics are to be preferred.

But if the atheists do not seem to have changed all that much in the last century, perhaps the Christians have. Christopher Hitchens upset many religious people (and secularists of a more conciliatory strain) with his book subtitle How Religion Poisons Everything. But no one charged him with blasphemy. Richard Dawkins may have made theologians' eyes roll with his less than careful depictions of Christianity in The God Delusion, but bookstores still gladly carried it. And in fact, secular ideas have spread so effectively through so many small channels of print and pixel, through so many village atheists, that the selection of the Four Horseman of New Atheism seems to fit the convenience of journalists and religious apologists more than the facts. For the first time in modern Western history, the atheist competes with the believer on a relatively even legal footing. The village atheist can have hopes of someday living in a village of atheists.

[Blair Hodges · Rating 4 out of 5]

A series of fascinating portraits of unbelievers in America.

[sillypunk · Rating 5 out of 5]

100% enjoyed: https://blogendorff.com/2021/02/02/bo...

[David James · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some interesting history that focuses on four vocal atheists in the late nineteenth century. What I appreciated along with the stories - which are well-researched and quite lively - is the balanced telling on Schmidt’s part. Many of the so-called ‘New Atheist’ writers would default into making heroes of them. Schmidt instead assesses their actions and society’s responses with an even hand that lets readers see these conflicts in a broader historical light. When he does criticize them, it’s not for their beliefs but for actions that were counterproductive to their cause.

At a time when atheism is again surging, Schmidt gives us a valuable history rather than a polemic, making this a much more informative book than many others on the topic. The fact that I could not decide even to the closing page whether or not he is an atheist himself only highlights how responsibly he approached this as a historian.

The book lags in a few places, keeping it off the five star list, but overall it’s quite good.

[Kent · Rating 3 out of 5]

The topic and time period are far from my expertise, so it is difficult for me to speak on whether the author adds much to the existing literature - either a new argument or new details. The work is essentially chapter-length mini-biographies of significant men and women in the atheist/secular movements of the late 19th century. The author is at his best when he moves away from biography and connects the people to broader movements/social thought/legal history. I wish he had pushed these connections farther, particularly towards the end when he begins to try to explain how the archetype of the "village atheist" seemed to become a thing of the past. Overall, a solid work of scholarship that taught me about a subject of which I had only minimal knowledge, even if not the most engaging work overall.

[amaya the cactus · Rating 4 out of 5]

A surprisingly thorough examination of four lesser-known (but very key) characters, with nods to their idols and contemporaries, in the atheist expansion in nineteenth-century USA. This is incredibly well-researched; though it can occasionally feel like a textbook, I'm glad to have learnt so much. I also particularly enjoyed the inclusion of Heston comics; so many of them are still so relevant.

[Kay]

A fluent and informative read.

[Susan K Perry · Rating 5 out of 5]

I hadn't realized there was so much history about atheists and the whole "movement" of atheism. After reading this fascinating book (which I was sent as a review copy by Princeton University Press), I know quite a bit more, especially about the historical period most intensively covered, the late nineteenth century.

For instance, I learned that: The Boy Scouts of America, having lifted its ban on gay scout leaders last year, still won't lift their ban on atheist leaders and atheist boys themselves. A 2014 Pew survey found that atheism is still the top negative for voters in Presidential elections. Before the American Revolution, there were Colonial laws criminalizing so-called ungodliness in numerous ways. Much more recently, U.S. Supreme Court justices Rehnquist and Scalia insisted that civil religious observances should be allowed preference over secularists' claims under state laws.

A few famous infidels are highlighted in great and riveting detail by the author, including cartoonist Watson Heston, many of whose biting cartoons are shown in the book (but whose depictions of Jews and African-Americans are deplorable).

Makes me wonder if other countries have a similar past history of lone freethinkers attempting to build a movement, or if they mostly get killed and never make it into history at all. Secularists and atheists, humanists and freethinkers: we ought to know about our non-believing forebears, and this book is a huge contribution.

[Jay Dougherty · Rating 4 out of 5]

When you read about prominent 19th century atheists in America, you primarily run into biographies extolling Robert Ingersoll or a stray Mark Twain quote. This book looks at some forgotten atheists in the 19th century. The 19th century in America isn't particularly thought of as a time of the rise of atheism, but this text shows how its proponents aligned themselves with the abolition and early womens' right movements. It's excessively detailed as befitting any academic work, and is interspersed with cartoons and quotes from supporters and foes alike. It tends to drag a little towards the end, but will remain an essential text in those interested in reading the history of freethought in America.

[Abby · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well done. I wouldn't recommend this book unless you're really into the history of free thought in America. I am, so I loved it. I like how Schmidt put the experiences of the four major figures in context. The book drives home the point that both traditional religious belief and iconoclastic thought are integral parts of American history, and these two forces move in a continuous (mostly civil, but at times rancorous) push and pull.

[Fred Schein]

A long overdue examination of an often unrecognized part of America. A series of stories about each age and how atheists affected them. Great descriptioins of events, problems, public reactions, acceptance and hostility, laws and changes from colomial to present times.

It demonstrates how atheism has been part of Amrerica from the beginning. If you're an atheist, you will see yourself in story-after-story