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 GENDER in HISTORY

Series editors:
Lynn Abrams, Cordelia Beattie, Pam Sharpe and Penny Summerfield

••
The expansion of research into the history of women and gender since the 1970s
has changed the face of history. Using the insights of feminist theory and of
historians of women, gender historians have explored the configuration in the
past of gender identities and relations between the sexes. They have also inves-
tigated the history of sexuality and family relations, and analysed ideas and
ideals of masculinity and femininity. Yet gender history has not abandoned the
original, inspirational project of women’s history: to recover and reveal the lived
experience of women in the past and the present.
The series Gender in History provides a forum for these developments.
Its historical coverage extends from the medieval to the modern periods, and
its geographical scope encompasses not only Europe and North America but
all corners of the globe. The series aims to investigate the social and cultural
constructions of gender in historical sources, as well as the gendering of histor-
ical discourse itself. It embraces both detailed case studies of specific regions
or periods, and broader treatments of major themes. Gender in History titles
are designed to meet the needs of both scholars and students working in this
dynamic area of historical research.

Infidel feminism
 ALSO AVAILABLE
IN THE SERIES

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Lynn Abrams
Destined for a life of service: Defining African-Jamaican womanhood, 1865–1938
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Gender and housing in Soviet Russia: private life in a public space
Lynne Attwood
Love, intimacy and power: Marital relationships in Scotland, 1650–1850
Katie Barclay
History, patriarchy and the challenge of feminism (with University of Pennsylvania Press)
Judith Bennett
Gender and medical knowledge in early modern history
Susan Broomhall
‘The truest form of patriotism’: pacifist feminism in Britain, 1870–1902
Heloise Brown
Artisans of the body in early modern Italy: identities, families and masculinities
Sandra Cavallo
Women of the right spirit: paid organisers of the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) 1904–18
Krista Cowman
Modern motherhood: women and family in England, c. 1945–2000
Angela Davis
Masculinities in politics and war: gendering modern history
Stefan Dudink, Karen Hagemann and John Tosh (eds)
Victorians and the Virgin Mary: religion and gender in England 1830–1885
Carol Engelhardt Herringer
Living in sin: cohabiting as husband and wife in nineteenth-century England
Ginger S. Frost
Jewish women in Europe in the Middle Ages: a quiet revolution
Simha Goldin
Murder and morality in Victorian Britain: the story of Madeleine Smith
Eleanor Gordon and Gwyneth Nair
The military leadership of Matilda of Canossa, 1046–1115
David J. Hay
The shadow of marriage: singleness in England, 1914–60
Katherine Holden
Women police: gender, welfare and surveillance in the twentieth century
Louise Jackson
Noblewomen, aristocracy and power in the twelfth-century Anglo-Norman realm
Susan Johns
The business of everyday life: gender, practice and social politics in England, c.1600–1900
Beverly Lemire
Women and the shaping of British Methodism: persistent preachers, 1807–1907
Jennifer Lloyd
The independent man: citizenship and gender politics in Georgian England
Matthew McCormack
The feminine public sphere: middle-class women and civic life in Scotland, c.1870–1914
Megan Smitley
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Melanie Tebbutt
Elizabeth Wolstenholme Elmy and the Victorian feminist movement: the biography of an insurgent
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 INFIDEL FEMINISM

I F L FEM
SECULARISM, N SM
RELIGION AND
WOMEN’S EMANCIPATION,
ENGLAND
LA I M R 1830–1914
IG ON

G Laura
• N Schwartz
3 •

Manchester University Press

Copyright © Laura Schwartz 2013

The right of Laura Schwartz to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted
by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Published by Manchester University Press

Altrincham Street, Manchester M1 7JA, UK
www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data is available

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available

ISBN 978 0 7190 9728 7 paperback

First published by Manchester University Press in hardback 2013

The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for any external or third-
party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such
websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.
 Contents

list of figures page vi

acknowledgements vii

Introduction 1
1 Freethinking feminists: women in the Freethought movement 41
2 Counter-conversion: Freethinking feminists and the
renunciation of religion 73
3 Preachers of truth: women’s activism in the
Secularist movement 101
4 Infidel feminism: feminism in the Freethought movement 129
5 Freethinking feminists and the women’s movement 154
6 Freethought and Free Love? Marriage, birth control and
sexual morality 178
Conclusion 217

select bibliography 227

index 251

• v •
 Figures

1 Annie Besant page 54

[Secular Chronicle, 10 February 1878, Bishopsgate Library,
George Jacob Holyoake Archive]
2 Leicester Secular Hall 112
[Insert into Secular Chronicle vol. VIII (1877) bound volume,
George Jacob Holyoake Archive, Bishopsgate Library]
3 Hyde Park during 1866 Reform Bill Agitation 169
[Bishopsgate Library]
4 Mary Wollstonecraft as headline news 193
[Secular Chronicle, 10 February 1878, p. 145, Bishopsgate
Library, George Jacob Holyoake Archive]
5 Advertisement for contraception 206
[A. Besant, The Law of Population: Its Consequences and its
Bearing upon Human Conduct and Morals (London:
Freethought Publishing Company, 1889), Bishopsgate Library]

• vi •
 Acknowledgements

I should like to thank the University of East London and the Arts and
Humanities Research Council, for funding the PhD thesis upon which
this book is based, and St Hugh’s College, University of Oxford for the
Career Development Fellowship which made it possible to transform it
into a monograph. I am also very grateful to Kate Hodgkin and Maggie
Humm, for reading and commenting on many early drafts; Anna Davin,
Cath Fletcher and Jane Garnett, for their thoughts and encouragement;
Kathryn Gleadle, Deborah Lavin, Phyllis Mack, Janette Martin, Helen
Rogers, Marie Terrier, Will Van Reyk and Maureen Wright, for sharing
their work in progress with me; and to Jane Miller, for kindly letting me
to look at the Collet family papers. The History of Feminism Network
provided a crucial intellectual forum throughout the research, so my
special thanks to Madisson Brown, Marc Calvini Lefebvre, Esme Cleall,
Erin Cullen, Daniel Grey, Angela Grainger and Naomi Hetherington
for being such good friends and colleagues. One of my greatest debts is
to my supervisor, Barbara Taylor, who was endlessly generous with her
time, her advice, her support and her ideas. I was also lucky to have as
examiners Lucy Bland and David Nash, whose insight and encourage-
ment enabled my first venture into the twentieth century.
Infidel Feminism was originally conceived amidst protests against
the Iraq war and the intense discussions on religion and gender that it
generated. The book was finally completed in a moment of fundamental
transformation in (and potential decimation of) Higher Education
in Britain. Such events inevitably informed the questions this book
asks about what it means to be a political actor, a feminist subject and
a producer of knowledge. They also changed the kinds of relationships
that could be expected to be forged during a period of research, so that
staff at the Women’s Library also became friends on a picket line, while
the Bishopsgate Institute offered not only a wonderful archive but also
much-needed space for collectives to meet and organise. A different kind
of thanks should therefore go to Indy Bhullar, Gail Cameron and Dianne
Shepherd at the WL and especially to Stefan Dickers at the BI. This book is
dedicated with love to all those involved in Feminist Fightback, XTalk and
The Paper, who taught me that reading and writing is best done together.
laura schwartz
London, 2011

• vii •
 Introduction

I
n the spring of 1869 Mrs Harriet Law climbed onto a platform in
Newcastle upon Tyne to defend Eve’s rebellion against God. Law
informed her audience that, instead of ‘cursing’ our Biblical mother
for bringing about the Fall of Mankind, she in fact deserved our ‘rever-
ence’. For Eve’s ‘partaking of the forbidden fruit’ had brought knowledge
into the world against the will of an authoritarian God.1 For Harriet
Law, Eve’s refusal to remain in ignorance was inspiration for a growing
number of Victorian women, who, like Law herself, had rejected the
authority of religion as part of their struggle for emancipation. Law’s
deliberately provocative speech was typical of a longstanding tradition of
‘Freethinking feminists’ who combined their campaigning for women’s
rights with a militant and antagonistic renunciation of Christianity. Such
women often proudly referred themselves ‘infidels’ – reclaiming a title
initially employed as a term of abuse by their Christian opponents. Such
a name implied a refusal of faith and a betrayal of God’s law – acts which
Freethinking feminists believed to be essential to ending the subjuga-
tion of their sex.2 For them, religion, particularly Christianity, was the
primary cause of women’s oppression.
The question of ‘religion’ versus ‘secularism’ and which offers a better
guarantee of women’s rights has a long history. As currently discussed by
twenty-first-century feminists, religious leaders and world governments
such concerns are, of course, the product of a post-9/11 world, but they are
far from being new. In fact, the issue of women’s rights was integral to the
creation of modern definitions of ‘religion’ and ‘secularism’ in the nine-
teenth and early twentieth centuries, when feminists and anti-feminists,
Christians and Freethinkers battled over who had women’s best interests
at heart. Such contests were fundamental to the development of femi-
nist thought in England, but have been almost entirely passed over in
the historiography of the women’s movement. This book examines these

• 1 •
 infidel feminism

debates and offers the first ever in-depth study of ‘Freethinking femi-
nism’ – a distinctive brand of women’s rights discourse that emerged out
of the Secularist movement during this period.3
The Secularist or Freethought movement, as it was also known, was
dedicated to ridding society of false and repressive belief-systems through
the critique of orthodox religion. This book looks at the lives and work of
a number of female activists associated with organised Secularism, and
at how their rejection of religion encouraged and shaped their support
for women’s rights. These self-proclaimed ‘infidel’ feminists champi-
oned moral autonomy, free speech, and the democratic dissemination
of knowledge. Alongside their rejection of God-given notions of sexual
difference and a critique of the Christian institution of marriage, such
Freethinking principles provided powerful intellectual tools with which
to challenge dominant and oppressive constructions of womanhood.
Infidel Feminism traces this current of Freethinking women’s rights
advocacy from the 1830s through to the beginning of the First World
War; and in doing so raises a number of important questions for our
understanding of the chronology and intellectual trajectories of first wave
feminism. A fuller understanding of the important role played by infidel
feminists enables us to identify a more continuous women’s rights tradi-
tion throughout the century, connecting the ‘radical’ Owenite feminists
of the 1830s and 1840s with the ‘respectable’ post-1850 women’s move-
ment. Freethinking feminists kept alive the Owenites’ libertarian critique
of traditional sexual morality in the middle decades of the century,
when many in the women’s movement were unwilling to countenance
any form of sexual expression outside marriage. They can therefore be
viewed as a ‘missing link’, connecting early nineteenth-century feminist
visions of greater sexual freedom with the re-emergence of discussions
of Free Love and sexuality at the fin de siècle.
An anti-religious intellectual culture was profoundly important to the
development of women’s rights discourses during this period. Although
nineteenth and early twentieth-century feminism was predominantly
Christian, it was built around religious controversy and contestation
rather than a unified adherence to a particular set of religious values. This
study looks in detail at the extensive discussions that took place between
Freethinking feminists and their Christian sisters, and between Secularists
and conservative Christians. It reveals the extent to which their respec-
tive ideological stances developed not only in opposition to, but also in
dialogue with, each other. Infidel Feminism thus offers a re-thinking of the
‘religious’/‘secular’ distinction, demonstrating the need for historians to
view these categories as interdependent rather than merely oppositional.

• 2 •
 introduction

The Freethinking roots of first wave feminism

The last three decades have witnessed a ‘religious turn’ in gender history,
whereby accounts of both femininity and feminism have begun to open
up to the many ways in which religion shaped women’s ‘private selves
and public roles’.4 In the pioneering years of women’s history, social and
economic concerns often dominated over consideration of religious
factors and Christianity tended to be analysed primarily in terms of its
oppressive agenda.5 Since the 1980s, however, there has been a slowly
expanding body of research into women’s activity in the churches and the
influence of religion in the lives of female public figures in nineteenth- and
early twentieth-century Britain.6 Christianity also began to be recognised
as a key factor in the emergence of an organised women’s rights move-
ment post-1850. Historians noted how Victorian women’s involvement
in parish work expanded their activities outside the home, preparing the
ground for feminist campaigns to participate more fully in the public
sphere. They also pointed to the ambiguities of evangelical doctrines,
especially the belief that women were socially subordinate but spiritu-
ally equal to men, and identified the potential for female self-assertion
deriving from apparently reactionary teachings.7 Research has further-
more emphasised the importance of individual piety and inner faith in
providing women with the sense of self-worth and moral justification
necessary to challenging oppressive gender roles.8 Historians have also
begun to look beyond evangelical Christianity, to highlight, for example,
the role of Unitarianism in shaping women’s rights discourses during
this period.9 Recent edited collections spanning topics from female theo-
logical cultures to Christian sex manuals have nevertheless demonstrated
that there is still some way to go in assessing the breadth and depth of
encounters between gender and religion in modern British history.10
Infidel Feminism positions itself as part of this broader move in
gender history towards taking religion seriously. Yet it also marks a
departure from much existing work in that it points to the anti-religious
or Freethinking roots of feminism. Freethought has never received more
than a brief mention in histories of the post-1850 women’s movement.11
The freethinking views of prominent figures have sometimes been noted,
though without positioning them as part of a wider trend among femi-
nists during this period.12 Likewise, histories of feminist debates on
sexuality have noted the presence of Freethinkers in campaigns around
marriage and prostitution, but the possibility of a broader and more
sustained Freethinking feminist tradition has not yet been explored in
the historiography of the post-1850 women’s movement.13

• 3 •
 infidel feminism

The centrality of heterodox thought to the emergence of radical

debates on women in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century
(the period prior to the emergence of a large scale and organised women’s
movement) has been more widely recognised. Mary Wollstonecraft, for
example, was part of a critical freethinking tradition, ceasing at the age
of twenty-eight to attend the Anglican Church in which she had been
raised. Although she never adopted the atheism of her husband William
Godwin she came to practise a form of religion that was, according to
Godwin, ‘almost entirely of her own creation’. Wollstonecraft drew on a
powerful pro-woman dimension of the Christian tradition while at the
same time rejecting what she believed to be overly emotional evangelical
extremism in favour of ‘rational religious impulses’. Her emphasis on the
inner authority of the individual believer was celebrated by the Rational
Dissenters of her radical London circle but was also at the heart of more
explicitly Secularist forms of Freethought in the nineteenth century.14
Wollstonecraft and the other pro-women thinkers in her radical
coterie were part of an English radical Enlightenment which celebrated,
even if it did not fully endorse, the attacks on orthodox religion made
by European philosophes and the French Revolutionaries.15 They can be
linked to a longer tradition of ‘enlightened libertinage’ that stretched
back to seventeenth-century Freethinkers such as Pierre Bayle, and
which combined a critique of religion with an equally ‘free’ approach
to traditional sexual morality. Wollstonecraft herself notoriously entered
into ‘free unions’ and bore her first child out of wedlock, while William
Godwin and fellow atheist Percy Shelley were vocal critics of the institu-
tion of marriage.16 Nineteenth-century Freethinkers strongly identified
with these freethinking radicals and their combination of religious and
sexual unorthodoxies. Wollstonecraft was anachronistically claimed as
an out and out Freethinker17, while Shelley’s attitudes to marriage were
discussed and championed in Freethought publications.18
The revolutionary enthusiasm of Mary Wollstonecraft’s circle died
out in the late 1790s, partly in response to the terror in France, partly
as a result of government repression. Feminist ideas re-merged within
British radicalism in the 1820s, again closely tied to Freethought, as part
of Richard Carlile’s anti-Christian Zetetic movement. In the 1830s and
1840s the Utopian Socialist Owenite movement provided a freethinking
environment in which feminism was able to thrive.19 Barbara Taylor’s
work on Owenism established it as one of the key forerunners of first
wave feminism, yet posited a break between this more radical form of
feminism and the respectable post-1850 women’s movement. She argued
that, with the collapse of Owenism from 1845 onwards, the link between

• 4 •
 introduction

class emancipation and women’s freedom disintegrated so that the femi-

nism of the second half of the nineteenth century emerged as a far more
middle-class and reformist movement. 20 While it is true that the political
location of feminism shifted around mid-century, in fact the Owenite
feminists’ more radical and unrespectable brand of women’s rights
advocacy did continue as a minority current (which this book terms
Freethinking or ‘infidel’ feminism) based, after 1850, in the Secularist
movement.

Organised Freethought, 1830–1914

If histories of feminism have tended to overlook the part played by
anti-religious ideas, the role of women and feminism has also been
neglected in Freethought historiography. In part, this reflects the very
low numbers of women involved in the movement. Estimates suggest
that, nationwide, women made up no more than a quarter of the total
audience at Secularist public meetings.21 An in-depth study of Leicester
Secular Society revealed a similar pattern at a local level: women made
up only 12 per cent of the membership between 1881 and 1891, and
almost half of these were wives or daughters of male members.22 The
importance of feminism to Freethought was noted by its foremost histo-
rian Edward Royle, who simultaneously acknowledged the paucity of
existing research in this area.23 Women are also neglected in the extensive
literature that exists on the Victorian ‘crisis of faith’, which has tended
to focus on a handful of ‘great men’ – George Eliot being a rare excep-
tion.24 For Freethinking women themselves, however, the emancipation
of the female sex was at the heart of their Secularist worldview. When
Harriet Law, for example, took over a national Freethought newspaper,
she devoted a large section of her first editorial to arguing that social
progress was impossible without the full emancipation of women.25 Even
if the number of women involved was small, feminism was a vibrant and
important current within the Freethought movement.
The nineteenth century witnessed a significant rise in the number
and outspokenness of Freethinkers – the term applied to those who
questioned religious assumptions about the ordering of the world and
who, as a result, tended to reject all forms of organised religion. During
the latter half of the century such Freethought sentiment found organi-
sational expression in the Secularist movement, which campaigned for
the separation of political, cultural and moral life from religion. The term
‘Secularist’ will be used here to describe the self-identified local societies
and national organisations after the formation of the first Central Secular

• 5 •
 infidel feminism

Society in 1851, while ‘secular’ implies the general concept of secularity.

‘Freethinker’ and ‘Freethought’ is used to refer to those who actively
identified with an organised anti-religious movement both prior to and
during the establishment of Secular societies. The term ‘Freethinker’, in
lower case, will be applied to those individuals who held unorthodox
religious beliefs but who did not identify with the organised move-
ment. Secularism did not simply denote support for the separation of
Church and State based upon a neutral disregard for religious faith. The
Secularist movement had its roots in a far more partisan and embattled
debate, which was concerned not only with the role of religion in poli-
tics, but also with whether religion – specifically Christianity – could be
considered both true and morally just.
The crucial distinction between organised Freethinkers and the more
affluent ‘honest doubters’ normally associated with the Victorian ‘crisis of
faith’, was that Freethinkers ‘were political as well as intellectual radicals,
and their agitation was organised as a political movement’.26 Popular irre-
ligion had been an important part of the radical unrest that erupted in
Britain in response to the French Revolution of 1789 and it continued to
play a role in nineteenth-century radicalism. In the 1790s Thomas Paine
gave birth to a more politicised form of Freethought by disseminating
Enlightenment critiques of religion to a large and popular audience, and
nineteenth-century Freethinkers continued in this mode.27 In the 1820s
and 1830s the notorious Freethinker Richard Carlile published Paine’s
Age of Reason along with other ‘blasphemous’ works from his own pen.
He was imprisoned three times between 1817 and 1831 and on the second
occasion his wife and sister (and his children with them) were sent to
join him for continuing to distribute dangerous literature. Such persecu-
tion provoked nationwide agitation and for the rest of the century the
Freethought movement was to take a leading role in campaigns for a free
press. Carlile also found support for his Freethinking ideas among some
British radicals, who in the 1820s formed themselves into infidel Zetetic
societies dedicated to ‘seeking after truth’.28 Carlile also held feminist
views, particularly on questions of marriage and sexuality, and women
played a particularly important role in his successive campaigns against
the religious establishment.29
The next wave of Freethought occurred within the Owenite move-
ment.30 As early as 1814, Robert Owen had argued that religion should be
opposed for rational and moral reasons, but it was not until after 1828,
against a backdrop of economic depression and mounting popular unrest,
that his views came to be seen as pernicious ‘infidelism’.31 Between 1835
and 1845 the critique of orthodox religion became one of the most vocal,

• 6 •
 introduction

widely printed and publicly prominent aspects of Owenite doctrine.32

Owenism did not preach a single uniform religious position but included
millenarian, quasi-Christian and atheist viewpoints. These ranged from
belief in a messianic ‘man–woman power’33 to the idea that Socialism
was the embodiment of ‘True’ or ‘Primitive Christianity’ – the prac-
tical implementation on earth of Christ’s original message of Christian
brotherhood.34 However, from the late 1830s onwards, the Owenite
leadership began to disassociate the ‘religious’ critique of the Christian
churches from the more extreme atheism of some members. In 1839,
when the Owenite Universal Community Society of Rational Religionists
was formed, the Central Board was at pains to stress that individuals did
not have to relinquish their belief in God in order to join the Society or
to support the Socialist project. Robert Owen’s pre-conference Address
declared that ‘Provision must be made … for all individuals to worship
the Supreme Power of the Universe, according to their consciences.’35
Religion was defined in broad and largely positive terms as ‘whatever
unites men, restrains their inordinate selfishness, or promotes their well-
being … [and] the practice of goodness’.36 Condemnation of particular
churches or clergy was discouraged. Robert Owen informed the Society
that, because of the need to appear open to members of all religions,
‘[i]t consequently becomes necessary that your missionaries forbear all
future public contests on mere localised religious subjects’.37 In 1840 the
leadership also began to permit, and even encourage, Owenite lecturers
to take the dissenting preachers’ oath in order to avoid prosecution for
taking money at non-religious events on the Sabbath.38
Anyone who continued to champion an intransigent defence of
outright atheism soon came into conflict with the Owenite leadership.
Owen’s advice to forego all public confrontation with the churches was
greatly at odds with the lecturing style of Owenite ‘social missionaries’
(paid itinerant lecturers) such as Emma Martin and Charles Southwell,
who frequently challenged their opponents to debate and sometimes
invaded churches and Christian meetings to harangue the presiding
clergymen.39 Martin’s continued commitment to public and deliber-
ately controversial debate eventually jeopardised her career as a social
missionary. In 1845 she was forced to defend herself to fellow members
of the Owenite executive, who had criticised her for continuing to
confront local clergy during her tour of Scotland. Martin’s defence told
of a powerful sense of betrayal:
some of the branches had made use of her as a tool to help fill their
purses – as she had suffered much, even imprisonment, in enabling
her to do so, she thought it too bad that delegates from these branches

• 7 •
 infidel feminism

should turn round at the Congress table and say she had been the
means of doing them no good.40

Later that year her career as a social missionary ended.

Charles Southwell, similarly frustrated with the Central Board’s
increasingly ‘religious’ tone, resigned his position as a social missionary in
1841 and began editing the hard-line atheist journal the Oracle of Reason.
The journal’s commitment to an outspoken championing of atheism
led to the imprisonment of successive editors, including Southwell and
George Jacob Holyoake, for blasphemous libel. The New Moral World
failed to fully condemn these attacks on the free speech of their fellow
Owenites. In 1841, an editorial commenting on Southwell’s impris-
onment hastened to add that ‘We are no admirers of the spirit which
prompts too violent attacks upon the opinions of our fellow-beings,
for we know that they cannot avoid having these impressed upon their
minds…’41 In response to the leadership’s inaction, the Anti-Persecution
Union (APU) was established in 1842, by advocates of Southwell and
Holyoake’s position, to support those charged under the blasphemy
laws.42 Leading Freethinking feminists Emma Martin and Margaret
Chappellsmith also supported the APU. The Oracle of Reason attacked
‘the milk-and-water, namby pamby infidelity’ of certain sections of the
Owenite movement, claiming that ‘Deists are only the more contempt-
ible, because they affect the language, while they ruthlessly sacrifice the
only admissible principles, of philosophy.’ Its editors clearly positioned
themselves as the enemies of more moderate Owenites: ‘We say then to
those reformers who seek to establish political justice, without striving
or caring to destroy every vestige of superstition – you must fail.’43 Martin
also defied her Owenite critics, refusing to renounce the title of ‘infidel’.44
The more militant Freethought commitment to cleansing society
of religion survived the collapse of the Owenite movement after 1845.
As editor of The Movement and then The Reasoner, Holyoake began to
develop his idea of ‘Secularism’, which sought to abandon the old adver-
sarial and negative connotations of the term ‘infidel’ and to argue instead
for Secularism as a positive agenda and alternative value system, inde-
pendent of religion.45 Secularism was to teach ‘the law of humanity, the
conditions of human progress, and the nature of human duty’: ‘The term
Secularism expresses this object … The term freethinking expresses how
we think – Secularism why we think. Our object is to promote personal
morality.’46 In 1851 Holyoake organised the first meeting of the Central
Secular Society, which declared its commitment to science and reason
and opposition to the arbitrary authority of religion. Over the next

• 8 •
 introduction

fifteen years, the Secularist movement took the form of a loose network
of local societies (many of which had existed in a previous incarnation
as local Owenite branches), sustained by branch activities and sporadic
lecture tours by national Freethought figures.
This period also witnessed the rise of Charles Bradlaugh as a leading
champion of Secularism. In 1866 he organised the first conference of the
National Secular Society (NSS), which promptly elected him president.
The founding statement of the NSS declared:
That human improvement and happiness cannot be effectively
promoted without civil and religious liberty; and that, therefore,
it is the duty of every individual … to actively attack all barriers to
equal freedom of thought and utterance for all, upon Political and
Theological subjects.47

Over the next few years the majority of local Secular societies were
incorporated into this national structure. For the rest of the century
Secularism was dominated at a national level by the exploits of the
charismatic Bradlaugh and, from 1874, the equally compelling Annie
Besant, another Freethinking feminist. These included their trial for the
publication of a birth control pamphlet in 1877 and Bradlaugh’s bids to
become the MP for Northampton from 1868 onwards. He was elected as
the official Liberal candidate in 1880, after which he was forced to run
a long campaign to win his right to take his seat in parliament against
those who ruled that as an atheist he was permitted neither to take the
Judeo-Christian oath, nor to swear a secular affirmation.48
Such events brought Secularism onto the national stage and
attracted new members. Yet not everyone in the movement approved
of Bradlaugh’s ascendancy, nor of his tactics. The rivalry between the
movement’s two most prominent figures, Charles Bradlaugh and George
Jacob Holyoake, was both personal and ideological. As mentioned,
Holyoake wished to work towards a society independent of, though not
necessarily in conflict with, religion. Although he did not personally
believe in any form of divine being, he preferred Secularism to rest on
the agnostic principle that, since it was impossible to know whether or
not God existed, it was better simply to focus on ‘this-worldism’ and to
avoid theological controversy.49 Bradlaugh, in contrast, revived the more
adversarial infidel spirit and argued that Secularism should actively
proclaim a ‘positive’ atheism in opposition to the untruths spread by
religion.50 This difference in outlook informed tensions in Secularism
throughout the century. Yet it should not be overstated as a fundamental
division within the movement. Some individuals moved from one ‘camp’

• 9 •
 infidel feminism

to another; others remained loyal to Holyoake for historical reasons or

because they resented Bradlaugh’s authoritarian style of leadership. Most
rank and file members engaged with both Holyoake’s vision of positive
Secularism at a local level and Bradlaugh’s struggles on the national.51
The Secularist movement reached the height of its powers in the
1880s, by which time Charles Bradlaugh had come to figure as one of
the heavyweights of Victorian politics.52 In the early 1880s his name was
virtually synonymous with radicalism, winning the NSS new members
and placing it at the centre of popular politics. His journal, The National
Reformer, became more focused on parliamentary political issues
and more sober in its reportage, but the older iconoclastic and adver-
sarial Freethought traditions were kept alive elsewhere in pages of The
Freethinker. This journal was edited by G. W. Foote, who had opposed
Bradlaugh’s leadership in 1876, forming the British Secular Union with
George Jacob Holyoake the following year, and only returning to the NSS
in 1880 to fight the exclusion of atheists from the House of Commons.53
In 1883 Foote was prosecuted for blasphemy and sentenced to one year
in Holloway prison – a reminder of a more embattled period of persecu-
tion earlier in the century which rallied the movement and boosted NSS
membership to its highest level yet.
Between 1883 and 1884 the NSS boasted 2,845 subscribers. From
there in, however, it began to decline so that by 1889 there were only
fifty-nine branches, half the peak total in 1883.54 Foote became President
in 1890 and many blamed the shrinking membership on his lack of
charisma, though Secularism was also the victim of more general shifts
within radical politics, particularly the rapidly growing interest in
Socialism (to which Bradlaugh and Foote were adamantly opposed).
Competition also came from the Ethical societies, freethinking organi-
sations brought to the UK by Stanton Coit in 1888 which remained
unaffiliated to existing Secularist organisations. Instead, they worked
closely with the Labour churches and Positivist societies, tapping into
a less aggressive, less overtly anti-Christian freethinking identity.55. A
range of freethinking views were, by this period, becoming more accept-
able to and common within upper-middle-class educated society. Earlier
in the century the Secular societies had provided a sense of kinship and
solidarity among those whose rejection of religion had often entailed a
break with their families and local communities. The incremental but
nonetheless significant shift towards the intellectual and political main-
stream decreased the need for such provision. In 1899 the NSS had under
a thousand members, and it was further damaged by its opposition to the
Anglo-Boer War (1903–6), which marked a more general turn towards

• 10 •
 introduction

conservatism in British popular culture. By the onset of the First World

War Freethought had ceased to be a significant national movement.56
It is impossible to assess the general impact and significance
of the Secularist movement based upon membership figures alone.
Membership tended to be unstable: between half and a quarter paid-up
members in any one year were new recruits, with older sympathisers
perhaps remaining active without bothering to join formally. This
meant that local societies had a much larger circle of adherents than
membership figures suggest.57 Leading Freethought journals such as The
Reasoner and The National Reformer would have circulated beyond these
networks in lending libraries and mechanics’ institutes.58 The controver-
sial and entertaining style of Freethought public lecturers also drew in
audiences who might otherwise have no connection with Secularism,
and by 1871 Old Street Hall of Science, the central London Freethought
venue, regularly filled its capacity of 1,200 on occasions when Bradlaugh
spoke, leading to the decision to add further galleries to accommodate
400 more people.59 Royle has concluded that in the period prior to the
formation of the NSS there was a maximum of 20,000 people actively
associated with Freethought, rising to 100,000 if sympathisers are
included. But figures for a committed core should be estimated at only
2,000 or 3,000.60 After 1866, the members of the 120 local branches of
the NSS at its height, plus a generous estimate of the numbers of non-
members each branch managed to draw in and influence on a regular
basis, might have amounted to 60,000.61
Secularism was relatively small compared to contemporary radical
organisations and cannot in any sense be considered a mass movement.
Yet it wielded influence out of proportion to its size in the nineteenth-
century radical milieu.62 Secularists played an active role in most of the
‘causes’ of the period, including Owenism and Chartism in the earlier part
of the century, Co-operation, the campaign for the repeal of the taxes on
knowledge, republicanism, franchise reform, freedom of the press, and
education. This was in addition to explicitly Secularist campaigns such
as anti-Sabbatarianism, the abolition of compulsory church rates and the
introduction of legal oaths that did not require pledging faith in God.63
Secularists tended to come from the lower-middle or upper-working
classes.64 Susan Budd’s analysis of the obituaries of 263 Secularists between
1852 and 1965 found 40 per cent to be semi-skilled or unskilled workers,
20 per cent skilled or craft workers, 20 per cent white collar workers, and
15 per cent owners of small businesses, leaving 3 per cent rural workers
and under 2 per cent from the professional classes.65 Royle’s study of
local societies in the period 1866–1914 found a smaller proportion of

• 11 •
Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
 Anthropology - Revision Notes
Summer 2024 - Center

Prepared by: Researcher Johnson

Date: August 12, 2025

Section 1: Comparative analysis and synthesis

Learning Objective 1: Ethical considerations and implications
• Learning outcomes and objectives
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
Formula: [Mathematical expression or equation]
Learning Objective 2: Critical analysis and evaluation
• Case studies and real-world applications
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
Learning Objective 3: Research findings and conclusions
• Case studies and real-world applications
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
Learning Objective 4: Key terms and definitions
• Assessment criteria and rubrics
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
Learning Objective 5: Comparative analysis and synthesis
• Interdisciplinary approaches
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
Formula: [Mathematical expression or equation]
[Figure 5: Diagram/Chart/Graph]
Important: Interdisciplinary approaches
• Research findings and conclusions
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
Practice Problem 6: Key terms and definitions
• Theoretical framework and methodology
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
Practice Problem 7: Ethical considerations and implications
• Fundamental concepts and principles
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
Formula: [Mathematical expression or equation]
Important: Research findings and conclusions
• Comparative analysis and synthesis
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
Formula: [Mathematical expression or equation]
[Figure 9: Diagram/Chart/Graph]
Note: Research findings and conclusions
• Experimental procedures and results
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
Conclusion 2: Case studies and real-world applications
Practice Problem 10: Case studies and real-world applications
• Learning outcomes and objectives
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
Formula: [Mathematical expression or equation]
Definition: Comparative analysis and synthesis
• Learning outcomes and objectives
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
[Figure 12: Diagram/Chart/Graph]
Note: Problem-solving strategies and techniques
• Interdisciplinary approaches
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
Formula: [Mathematical expression or equation]
Important: Study tips and learning strategies
• Current trends and future directions
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
[Figure 14: Diagram/Chart/Graph]
Note: Theoretical framework and methodology
• Ethical considerations and implications
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
[Figure 15: Diagram/Chart/Graph]
Definition: Case studies and real-world applications
• Ethical considerations and implications
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
[Figure 16: Diagram/Chart/Graph]
Definition: Fundamental concepts and principles
• Comparative analysis and synthesis
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
[Figure 17: Diagram/Chart/Graph]
Practice Problem 17: Study tips and learning strategies
• Theoretical framework and methodology
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
[Figure 18: Diagram/Chart/Graph]
Key Concept: Theoretical framework and methodology
• Fundamental concepts and principles
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
Formula: [Mathematical expression or equation]
Example 19: Statistical analysis and interpretation
• Statistical analysis and interpretation
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
Formula: [Mathematical expression or equation]
Module 3: Case studies and real-world applications
Definition: Assessment criteria and rubrics
• Historical development and evolution
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
Remember: Case studies and real-world applications
• Fundamental concepts and principles
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
[Figure 22: Diagram/Chart/Graph]
Example 22: Experimental procedures and results
• Fundamental concepts and principles
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
Important: Experimental procedures and results
• Fundamental concepts and principles
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
Remember: Learning outcomes and objectives
• Theoretical framework and methodology
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
Remember: Historical development and evolution
• Historical development and evolution
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
Practice Problem 26: Assessment criteria and rubrics
• Assessment criteria and rubrics
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
Formula: [Mathematical expression or equation]
Example 27: Research findings and conclusions
• Statistical analysis and interpretation
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
Definition: Interdisciplinary approaches
• Best practices and recommendations
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
Practice Problem 29: Critical analysis and evaluation
• Key terms and definitions
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
Formula: [Mathematical expression or equation]
Conclusion 4: Critical analysis and evaluation
Remember: Problem-solving strategies and techniques
• Best practices and recommendations
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
Formula: [Mathematical expression or equation]
Important: Best practices and recommendations
• Statistical analysis and interpretation
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
Example 32: Interdisciplinary approaches
• Literature review and discussion
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
Note: Case studies and real-world applications
• Historical development and evolution
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
Formula: [Mathematical expression or equation]
[Figure 34: Diagram/Chart/Graph]
Example 34: Historical development and evolution
• Study tips and learning strategies
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
Example 35: Literature review and discussion
• Statistical analysis and interpretation
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
Example 36: Assessment criteria and rubrics
• Key terms and definitions
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
Practice Problem 37: Fundamental concepts and principles
• Theoretical framework and methodology
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
[Figure 38: Diagram/Chart/Graph]
Key Concept: Theoretical framework and methodology
• Learning outcomes and objectives
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
Practice Problem 39: Theoretical framework and methodology
• Critical analysis and evaluation
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
Section 5: Theoretical framework and methodology
Key Concept: Critical analysis and evaluation
• Interdisciplinary approaches
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
Note: Assessment criteria and rubrics
• Case studies and real-world applications
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
Example 42: Current trends and future directions
• Practical applications and examples
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
Formula: [Mathematical expression or equation]
Practice Problem 43: Practical applications and examples
• Practical applications and examples
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
Formula: [Mathematical expression or equation]
Practice Problem 44: Critical analysis and evaluation
• Study tips and learning strategies
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
Key Concept: Assessment criteria and rubrics
• Comparative analysis and synthesis
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
Example 46: Ethical considerations and implications
• Critical analysis and evaluation
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
Definition: Critical analysis and evaluation
• Best practices and recommendations
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
Formula: [Mathematical expression or equation]
Note: Assessment criteria and rubrics
• Comparative analysis and synthesis
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
Remember: Research findings and conclusions
• Theoretical framework and methodology
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
Quiz 6: Interdisciplinary approaches
Important: Statistical analysis and interpretation
• Literature review and discussion
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
Important: Current trends and future directions
• Learning outcomes and objectives
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
Practice Problem 52: Best practices and recommendations
• Experimental procedures and results
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
Definition: Ethical considerations and implications
• Case studies and real-world applications
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
Example 54: Statistical analysis and interpretation
• Theoretical framework and methodology
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
Formula: [Mathematical expression or equation]
Important: Critical analysis and evaluation
• Practical applications and examples
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
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