The forgotten story of the nineteenth-century freethinkers and twentieth-century humanists who tried to build their own secular religion In The Church of Saint Thomas Paine, Leigh Eric Schmidt tells the surprising story of how freethinking liberals in nineteenth-century America promoted a secular religion of humanity centered on the deistic revolutionary Thomas Paine (1737–1809) and how their descendants eventually became embroiled in the culture wars of the late twentieth century. After Paine’s remains were stolen from his grave in New Rochelle, New York, and shipped to England in 1819, the reverence of his American disciples took a material turn in a long search for his relics. Paine’s birthday was always a red-letter day for these believers in democratic cosmopolitanism and philanthropic benevolence, but they expanded their program to include a broader array of rites and ceremonies, particularly funerals free of Christian supervision. They also worked to establish their own churches and congregations in which to practice their religion of secularism. All of these activities raised serious questions about the very definition of religion and whether it included nontheistic fellowships and humanistic associations—a dispute that erupted again in the second half of the twentieth century. As right-wing Christians came to see secular humanism as the most dangerous religion imaginable, small communities of religious humanists, the heirs of Paine’s followers, were swept up in new battles about religion’s public contours and secularism’s moral perils. An engrossing account of an important but little-known chapter in American history, The Church of Saint Thomas Paine reveals why the lines between religion and secularism are often much blurrier than we imagine.

In The Gospel Its Own Witness (1799), Andrew Fuller not only engaged with Thomas Paine’s attack on Christianity and on the reliability of the Bible, but also interacted with the philosophical position of a number of Enlightenment thinkers. This critical edition is based on the third edition of Fuller’s treatise (1802) and includes a detailed introduction that sets the work in its provenance.

This book studies the concept of a 'self-evident' God in American legal thought from the Revolution to the present.

According to bestselling historian Yuval Noah Harari, today’s average American has their foot in three ideological camps: nationalism, free market capitalism, and humanism. The first two might seem obvious, but the third? It’s entirely possible that most who qualify for that label would be hard pressed to explain its meaning, much less use it self-descriptively. This book is designed to serve two important purposes: First, to provide an accessible resource for anyone curious about the humanist tradition and the arguments advanced by leading contemporary proponents. Second, to address what the author believes is a critical question for our time, the era of the Anthropocene: Is humanism’s seemingly benign package of values at least partially responsible for some of the world’s most pressing problems? To answer the last question, Schuler draws from an elective collection of commentators, including life scientists, spiritual writers, public intellectuals, technologists, novelists, and even poets. In the end, this wide-ranging survey will help the reader determine whether humanism makes sense for them.

Boudinot's passionate defense of Christianity is as fresh, forceful and convincing now as the day it first appeared. Authored by Elias Boudinot as a response to Thomas Payne's The Age of Reason, The Age of Revelation is a spirited defense of Christian beliefs and principles from the perspective of a believer who had spent decades in the service of the church. Elias Boudinot was a distinguished statesman whose adherence to traditional beliefs was unstinting throughout his life. Boudinot's response is lengthy and measured, tackling Payne's thesis point-by-point. The tone he strikes is one of calm conviction, wherein he sets out a case for Christianity and against the various skeptical arguments of Payne. He demonstrates that Payne's views are not new or novel, and opines that had Payne not published the popular book Common Sense a few years prior that The Age of Reason would never have experienced a strong reception.