Reviewed by:

• The Church of Saint Thomas Paine: A Religious History of American Secularism by Leigh Eric Schmidt
• David Mislin (bio)

Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, many Americans embraced a "freethinking secularism" that sought to be "productive" and "not simply destructive" of religious impulses (ix–x). That claim is at the heart of Leigh Eric Schmidt's compelling exploration of the thought and practice of generations of freethinkers who drew inspiration from Thomas Paine's The Age of Reason (1794, 1795, 1807) and "found religion in and through their own irreligion" (xiii). Invoking Paine's ideals, proponents of this new religious vision sought to "deemphasize the supernatural" and instead "accentuate moral responsibility, intellectual freedom, cosmopolitan universality, and this-worldly progress," all while cultivating practices and building institutions that resembled those of Protestant Christianity (4). Schmidt's rich study offers a nuanced depiction of the competing religious impulses of American secularism, and it chronicles the manifold ways in which Paine and his book remained touchstones of secular freethought.

Schmidt explores three distinct manifestations of the American quest for a secular religion. The first centered on the author of The Age of Reason himself. Paine's bones—lost through a series of attempts to reclaim and move his body after burial—became relics. The desire to recover them inspired a century-long quest among his followers, which reflected, as Schmidt aptly describes it, an "act of secularist faith" (46). Likewise, Paine's followers developed a set of rituals to celebrate his birthday, and they commissioned monuments to serve as sites of pilgrimage. All these efforts revealed how Paine was imagined by nineteenth-century freethinkers. He was not merely the "slashing iconoclast" who assailed Christianity but rather represented the "religious draftsman" of a new system of practice that his followers worked to develop further (29).

Second, many freethinkers likewise sought to develop an array of secular practices, especially related to burial, that countered Christianity's rituals with "humanistic ceremonies that were equally solemn and affective" (72). As Schmidt notes, this goal proved vexing. While the French [End Page 773] positivist Auguste Comte had developed his own set of rituals, the parallels between these and Roman Catholicism rendered them "largely untenable to Protestant-descended unbelievers" in the United States (93). Paine's "philanthropic cosmopolitanism," Schmidt concludes, offered a more palatable religious substitute for American freethinkers than a ritualistic system that struck them as troublingly similar to Catholic practice (112).

And third, also important to many of Schmidt's subjects was the preservation of institutions and the cultivation of community. Many freethinkers followed the example of Octavius Frothingham, who believed that "nontheists were right to move beyond Christianity" but thought "they should retain the comprehensive notions of 'religion' and 'church' as moorings for their own secularity" (124). As Schmidt notes, however, "American freethinkers often mimicked Protestant churches and Sunday schools" when they put this desire into practice (11). Organizations like the Free Religious Association and the Society for Ethical Culture, along with numerous local institutions, reflected this impulse to create "a secular church, a humanistic church, or an ethical church," however much such things might seem "anomalous and ill-fitting," even to freethinkers themselves (160). Indeed, as Schmidt repeatedly notes, many freethinkers had no desire to adopt the trappings of religion.

Considered together, these expressions of the quest for a secular religion confirm Schmidt's assertion that "no founding figure occupied a more canonized role in the nineteenth-century secularist imagination than Paine" (25). The Church of Saint Thomas Paine would tell an important story even if it merely amplified the stories of those freethinkers whose commitment to Paine inspired their continued embrace of the practices, symbols, and institutions of Protestant Christianity.

This book does far more than that, however. As Schmidt persuasively suggests, Paine's argument in The Age of Reason created legacies that lasted long after the height of the book's popularity. Subsequent generations faced the task of negotiating the tensions of Paine's own thought. Echoing Paine's critiques of traditional religion, some freethinkers sought to "be defined by...

审阅者：

• 圣托马斯·潘恩教会：美国世俗主义的宗教史作者：利·埃里克·施密特
• 大卫·米斯林（简介）

在整个十九世纪和二十世纪，许多美国人信奉一种“自由思想的世俗主义”，寻求对宗教冲动的“生产性”而不是“简单的破坏性”（ix-x）。这一主张是利·埃里克·施密特对几代自由思想家的思想和实践进行令人信服的探索的核心，这些自由思想家从托马斯·潘恩的《理性时代》（1794、1795、1807）中汲取灵感，并“在自己的非宗教中并通过他们自己的非宗教找到了宗教”（十三）。这一新宗教愿景的支持者援引潘恩的理想，寻求“淡化超自然现象”，转而“强调道德责任、知识自由、世界性的普遍性和世俗进步”，同时培养类似于新教基督教的实践和建立机构（4）。施密特丰富的研究对美国世俗主义中相互竞争的宗教冲动进行了细致入微的描述，并记录了潘恩和他的书作为世俗自由思想试金石的多种方式。

施密特探讨了美国追求世俗宗教的三种不同表现形式。第一个以《理性时代》的作者本人为中心。潘恩的骨头在埋葬后经过一系列重新找回和移动尸体的尝试而丢失，成为了文物。恢复它们的愿望激发了他的追随者长达一个世纪的探索，正如施密特恰当地描述的那样，这反映了“世俗主义信仰的行为”（46）。同样，潘恩的追随者制定了一套仪式来庆祝他的生日，并委托建造纪念碑作为朝圣地。所有这些努力都揭示了十九世纪自由思想家是如何想象潘恩的。他不仅是攻击基督教的“猛烈的反传统者”，而且代表了他的追随者努力进一步发展的新实践体系的“宗教起草者”(29)。

其次，许多自由思想家同样寻求发展一系列世俗实践，特别是与埋葬相关的实践，以“同样庄严和情感的人文仪式”来对抗基督教的仪式（72）。正如施密特指出的那样，这个目标被证明是令人烦恼的。虽然法国[完第773页]实证主义者奥古斯特·孔德发展了自己的一套仪式，但这些仪式与罗马天主教之间的相似之处使得它们“对于美国的新教后裔非信徒来说基本上站不住脚”（93）。施密特总结道，潘恩的“慈善世界主义”为美国自由思想家提供了一种更容易接受的宗教替代品，而不是让他们觉得与天主教习俗极其相似的仪式体系（112）。

第三，对施密特的许多主题来说也很重要的是制度的保存和社区的培养。许多自由思想家效仿奥克塔维乌斯·弗罗廷厄姆的榜样，他相信“无神论者超越基督教是正确的”，但认为“他们应该保留‘宗教’和‘教会’的全面概念，作为他们自己世俗性的系泊点”（124）。然而，正如施密特指出的那样，“美国自由思想家在将这一愿望付诸实践时经常模仿新教教堂和主日学校”(11)。像自由宗教协会和道德文化协会这样的组织，以及许多地方机构，反映了这种创建“世俗教会、人文主义教会或道德教会”的冲动，无论这些事情看起来多么“反常和病态”。适合”，甚至对于自由思想者自己来说也是如此（160）。事实上，正如施密特反复指出的那样，许多自由思想家并不想接受宗教的装饰。

综合考虑，这些对世俗宗教追求的表达证实了施密特的断言：“在 19 世纪世俗主义的想象中，没有一位创始人比潘恩扮演着更神圣的角色”（25）。圣托马斯·潘恩教会将讲述一个重要的故事，即使它只是放大了那些自由思想家的故事，这些自由思想家对潘恩的承诺激发了他们继续拥抱新教基督教的实践、象征和机构。

然而，本书的作用远不止于此。正如施密特令人信服地指出的那样，潘恩在《理性时代》中的论点所创造的遗产在该书最流行之后仍持续很长一段时间。随后的几代人面临着应对潘恩自己思想的紧张局势的任务。一些自由思想家呼应潘恩对传统宗教的批评，试图“被定义为......