Atheism and its origins in nineteenth century England and Scotland
Principal Investigator
Professor David Nash
School of History, Philosophy and Culture
Oxford Brookes University
Start and end dates: 1 February 2023 – 1 May 2024
Award: £32,993
How atheism has moved from philosophical position to practical belief system in England since 1819 has not been investigated historically. Previous studies of the Freethinking/Atheist Press and print culture in Victorian England used it only to investigate a radical broadly defined secularist movement. This project aims to fill this considerable gap by analysing the content of this print culture around the issue of atheism’s definition and its origins discussed amongst the like-minded. These past discussions prompted clear and articulate affirmations of beliefs which are an important source for research. This project investigates the beliefs of atheists and agnostics in Britain from approximately 1841 until 1910. In particular it concentrates upon the factors that led to an individual deciding that they were atheist or agnostic.
This range of print resources (ten periodical titles) can illustrate how individuals in the nineteenth century explained the origins of atheism to themselves and to each other. This was accomplished through print media, through lectures and public disputation with religious opponents (the latter two reported in the former). Importantly, this was a dialogue between speaker/writer and audience, with questions asked in lectures and engagement with ideas evidenced in exploratory articles, and correspondence pages showing responses from a variety of places and circumstances. This indicates what these opinion leaders, and subsequently opinion followers, thought the causal origin of atheism to be, what convinced them and how they thought about the process. This project allows us to observe in these sources the causality of the articulated choices individuals made around ‘absence of belief’, ‘moral judgements around the immorality of “religion”’ and ‘social identities that feature “atheism.”’
The project examines contemporary statements of belief in the historical past, offering greater understanding of the most powerful predicting factors (using historical data) of those who turned (and now turn) to forms of non-theism. It also offers past critiques of supernatural phenomena (such as spiritualism), the relative value of ‘strong agnosticism’ and the benefits or otherwise of investigating comparative religion. In the time period concerned, the growth of other world views (such as Rationalism, Humanism, Ethicism, Marxism and Scientism) and their impact upon atheism is also examined. This rich qualitative information can also be used to potentially test and map past occurrences of motivational and psychological explanations offered about contemporary society under section III of the call. This extensive information also illuminates issues from the ‘Understanding Unbelief Programme’ around the past choices made by atheists. These include considering themselves potentially religious, the ideological and strategic avoidance of ‘atheism’ as a label and the objective existence of human rights.
Investigating this in England is to investigate atheism becoming a multifarious belief system in the most fully developed atheist/secularist culture of the nineteenth century. This importance is magnified since this culture had ripple effects across the English-speaking world, the British Empire (especially India) and to a lesser extent some European societies.
