Title: The National reformer
Description: No selection of primary source materials on nineteenth-century religion would be complete without the freethinkers' periodical vilified as religion's most consistent opponent. According to Wheaton College professor of theology Timothy Larsen, Charles Bradlaugh (1833-1891) was the single most important figure in the journey toward the acceptance of atheism in Britain (p. 127). The "National Reformer," the periodical Bradlaugh founded and nurtured from April 1860 until his death, played the same decisive role in print. In order to help us imagine the social and cultural work carried out by Bradlaugh and his newspaper, Larsen reminds us that in the first decade of the nineteenth century, the only two universities in England required assent to Anglican doctrines from every undergraduate and that every member of Parliament had to take a Christian Protestant oath to serve as an MP. The most radical freethinkers of the eighteenth century, such as Thomas Paine, had been Deists, not atheists. The best-known freethinker in nineteenth-century Britain prior to Bradlaugh was George Jacob Holyoake, who, according to Larsen, coined the term "secularism" precisely to avoid the label of "atheist" (p. 129). Thus, Larsen concludes, Bradlaugh nearly single-handedly created British atheism as an organized movement, and the National Reformer, along with the National Secular Society, was a key tool. The social reformer Annie Besant coedited the newspaper for more than a decade, adding to its prestige. The National Reformer, described on its masthead as a "Radical Advocate and Freethought Journal," was successful in part because it was more than a mouthpiece for the philosophical musings of an individual (Royle, p. 219). It grew out of the work of the most active branch of the National Secular Society in Sheffield and was viewed a real newspaper. A typical and densely packed issue might carry opinionated but detailed coverage of wars in Africa, updates on legislative campaigns in Parliament, editorials regarding the conditions of the working class and civil liberties, book reviews, meeting notes from Secular Society branches, a guest columnist, and a calendar of upcoming lectures by Bradlaugh. (Bradlaugh's decades-long fight to be seated in Parliament despite his refusal to take a Christian oath is well chronicled, of course.) At the same time, a reader could be assured of long regular features that drew on nineteenth-century rationalist biblical criticism. A March 8, 1877 front page, for example, carries a consideration of the contradictions and "irreconcilable claims" regarding the Christian notion of "Heaven." The January 26, 1873 issue gives the same treatment to the theme of "The Deluge." That the National Reformer remained an activists' paper, and not really a commercial success, is suggested by the funds appeals that appear regularly. Students of modern British religion, civil liberties, and working-class and parliamentary politics will have much to stimulate and sustain their research in this electronic collection of the National Reformer.
Subjects: Atheism, Newspapers, Civil rights, Secularism
Places: Great Britain