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This book explores the life, thought and political commitments of the free-thinker John Toland (1670–1722). Studying both his private archive and published works, it illustrates how he moved in both subversive and elite political circles in England and abroad. The book explores the connections between Toland's republican political thought and his irreligious belief about Christian doctrine, the ecclesiastical establishment and divine revelation, arguing that far from being a marginal and insignificant figure, he counted queens, princes and government ministers as his friends and political associates. In particular, Toland's intimate relationship with the Electress Sophia of Hanover saw him act as a court philosopher, but also as a powerful publicist for the Hanoverian succession. The book argues that he shaped the republican tradition after the Glorious Revolution into a practical and politically viable programme, focused not on destroying the monarchy but on reforming public religion and the Church of England. It also examines how Toland used his social intimacy with a wide circle of men and women (ranging from Prince Eugene of Savoy to Robert Harley) to distribute his ideas in private. The book explores the connections between his erudition and print culture, arguing that his intellectual project was aimed at compromising the authority of Christian ‘knowledge’ as much as the political power of the Church. Overall, it illustrates how Toland's ideas and influence impacted upon English political life between the 1690s and the 1720s.
This chapter examines the ‘counter-conversions’ of women from religion to Freethought. It uses their personal narratives to ask wider questions about the relationship between Christianity and the Secularist movement, and about how people might understand the religious and irreligious beliefs of women in the past from a feminist perspective. Many renounced religion for a variety of reasons: inaccuracies found in the Bible that prevented them from accepting it as the Word of God; because supernatural dogmas could not be reconciled with modern scientific knowledge; and because they were repulsed by a God who could allow so much suffering to continue among His people. Counter-conversion also generated an entirely new way of looking at and relating to the world.
we might call the citizen’s expressive interest. This is her interest in living in authentic accordance with her religious (or irreligious) beliefs, i.e., in living her life as an expression of the MCK10 1/10/2003 10:34 AM Stuart White Page 181 181 said beliefs.3 The second is what we might call the citizen’s deliberative interest.4 This is her interest in having the opportunity to endorse her religious beliefs on the basis of informed reflection or deliberation. The correct answer to the question, ‘What is the good life?’, is hard to see and, since nobody
men and women and of high and mighty princes; it stressed the agency of the monarch’s leadership (of Deborah’s good government), but certainly did not diminish the importance of the people’s service (the troops in the battle); and it put into story form events and teachings with which the majority of the people were either unfamiliar or but poorly acquainted. For both teacher and taught it provided a framework upon which could be hung otherwise incomprehensible events, strange happenings and apparently irreligious beliefs. Supported by other Protestant works and by
Holyoake, and G.W. Foote.80 Other penalties could also await those who publicly professed their unbelief. For example, Annie Besant, one of the leading secularists in the second half of the century, lost custody of her daughter to her husband Frank Besant, from whom she was separated, because of her irreligious beliefs and her advocacy of birth control. Laws also hampered the spread of freethought. The post office could seize freethought materials sent through the mail, and some news vendors refused to stock freethought literature, while the popular press routinely
-conversions’ of these women from religion to Freethought. It uses their personal narratives to ask wider questions about the relationship between Christianity and the Secularist movement and how we might understand the religious and irreligious beliefs of women in the past from a feminist perspective. Chapter 3 follows the journeys of these women from Christianity into the organised Freethought movement and examines their attempts to carve out a ‘public’ role