The first comprehensive biography of Elihu Palmer tells the life story of a freethinker who was at the heart of the early United States' protracted contest over religious freedom and free speech. When the United States was new, a lapsed minister named Elihu Palmer shared with his fellow Americans the radical idea that virtue required no religious foundation. A better source for morality, he said, could be found in the natural world: the interconnected web of life that inspired compassion for all living things. Religions that deny these universal connections should be discarded, he insisted. For this, his Christian critics denounced him as a heretic whose ideas endangered the country. Although his publications and speaking tours made him one of the most infamous American freethinkers in his day, Elihu Palmer has been largely forgotten. No cache of his personal papers exists and his book has been long out of print. Yet his story merits telling, Kirsten Fischer argues, and not only for the dramatic account of a man who lost his eyesight before the age of thirty and still became a book author, newspaper editor, and itinerant public speaker. Even more intriguing is his encounter with a cosmology that envisioned the universe as interconnected, alive with sensation, and everywhere infused with a divine life force. Palmer's "heresy" tested the nation's recently proclaimed commitment to freedom of religion and of speech. In this he was not alone. Fischer reveals that Palmer engaged in person and in print with an array of freethinkers—some famous, others now obscure. The flourishing of diverse religious opinion struck some of his contemporaries as foundational to a healthy democracy while others believed that only a strong Christian faith could support democratic self-governance. This first comprehensive biography of Palmer draws on extensive archival research to tell the life story of a freethinker who was at the heart of the new nation's protracted contest over religious freedom and free speech—a debate that continues to resonate today.

An authoritative history of the vital role of secularist thinkers and activists in the United States, from a writer of "fierce intelligence and nimble, unfettered imagination" (The New York Times) At a time when the separation of church and state is under attack as never before, Freethinkers offers a powerful defense of the secularist heritage that gave Americans the first government in the world founded not on the authority of religion but on the bedrock of human reason. In impassioned, elegant prose, celebrated author Susan Jacoby paints a striking portrait of more than two hundred years of secularist activism, beginning with the fierce debate over the omission of God from the Constitution. Moving from nineteenth-century abolitionism and suffragism through the twentieth century's civil liberties, civil rights, and feminist movements, Freethinkers illuminates the neglected accomplishments of secularists who, allied with liberal and tolerant religious believers, have stood at the forefront of the battle for reforms opposed by reactionary forces in the past and today. Rich with such iconic figures as Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Clarence Darrow—as well as once-famous secularists such as Robert Green Ingersoll, "the Great Agnostic"—Freethinkers restores to history generations of dedicated humanists. It is they, Jacoby shows, who have led the struggle to uphold the combination of secular government and religious liberty that is the glory of the American system.

Black Freethinkers is the first study to offer a comprehensive historical treatment of African American freethought (including atheism, agnosticism, and secular humanism) from the nineteenth century to the present.

A biography that restores America's foremost 19th-century champion of reason and secularism to the still contested 21st-century public square.

Another dynamic collection of contemporary essays on Humanism, Religion and Nature by former minister and chaplain Chris Highland selected from his weekly "Highland Views" columns in the Asheville Citizen-Times. Friendly Freethinker follows the publication of A Freethinker's Gospel and Broken Bridges, each presenting provocative perspectives on faith and freethought in a fractured world. Positive, incisive, hopeful and helpful, essays include "Can We Talk About Religious Supremacy?," "Having Difficult Conversations without Destroying Relationships," "Battling Bullies in Boyhood and Beliefs," "The Man Who Changed His Name to God," "Why Does the World Still Need Scriptures?," "The Friendship of an Atheist and an Evangelical," "If There is a God in Nature, Which One?," "What I Would Most Like to Believe," "Mature Christians and Grown-up Atheists," "Does Religion Begin and End in Silence?" and many more (50 essays in all). Highland draws from a deep well of experiences in chaplaincy and teaching, exploring the edges of our comfortable communities and congregations, asking the questions that stir us to more rational thinking and practical action. Though he left the ministry--and faith--Highland is happily married to a progressive minister who reads, comments and helps edit his newspaper columns. Together, they model a creative, constructive approach to bridging differences of belief. Highland's writings exemplify a commitment to secular/spiritual communication so greatly needed in our culture today.