Whatever prejudice may warp our wills, the simple voice of nature and reason will say what is right. —Thomas Paine, Common Sense
Free America without Thomas Paine is unthinkable. —Marquis de Lafayette
In 1975, America was preparing to celebrate its bicentennial, and I wanted to write something special for the occasion. Given my training in theology, I decided that I would research the religious views of our founding thinkers. Read the results and additional articles at bit.ly/3OPnPwR.
Today, I wish to feature Thomas Paine (1737-1809), whose writings, especially Common Sense, inspired the American colonists to persist in their revolt against the British Crown. First published on January 10, 1776, an estimated 500,000 copies of this short book were distributed and read throughout a highly literate population of about 2.5 million.
During the horrible winter at Valley Forge (1777-78), Gen. George Washington chose the words of Thomas Paine to rally his troops. Washington read these famous lines: “These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country... The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.”
Regarding the separation of church and state, it was, as one source summarized, Paine’s views, “essential to liberty, reason, and the prevention of oppression. He believed that all organized religion was a tool for monopolizing power, profiting from believers, and oppressing the people.”
Paine’s book, Age of Reason: Being an Investigation of True and Fabulous Theology, was also widely read, but this time Americans, in an incredible display of religious intolerance, turned against the man they once celebrated. Paine quickly realized that, contrary to his prediction, the revolution for complete religious liberty and freedom of thought had not followed upon the heels of the political revolution.
Paine’s reputation did not improve as Americans, who read Age of Reason, looked back in retrospect. Theodore Roosevelt called Paine “a dirty little atheist,” but also added: “There are infidels, but Paine belonged to the variety that apparently esteems a bladder of dirty water as the proper weapon with which to assail Christianity.”
If one reads Age of Reason, one must agree that Paine’s criticism of Christianity is not a model of diplomatic scholarship. The tone of the book is aptly portrayed in this statement concerning the virgin birth: “Jesus Christ, begotten, they say, by a ghost, whom they call holy, on the body of a woman, engaged in marriage... a theory which, speaking for myself... is as fabulous and false as God is true.”
Behind irreverent rhetoric like the above, there are some interesting and, at least for me, some compelling points. Paine makes it clear that he is not an atheist. In fact, he claims that his book is designed to counter the effects of atheism. In his opinion, Christianity is founded on such poor arguments that it, rather than subduing atheism, unwittingly promotes its spread in the world.
The first axiom of Paine’s theology is that there is God and his creation and “no more.” This is what he meant by this: no idolatry of the Bible as the Word of God, no deification of Jesus the man and moral teacher, no miracles, no angels, no Hell, no original sin, no Trinity, and no Virgin Mary. All these additions are erroneous or mythical and are detrimental to the cause of religion.
Perhaps the most interesting points that Paine makes are the objections he raises against the concept of divine revelation. Orthodox Christians take the entire Bible as a direct and immediate message from God. Paine observes, however, that most of the Bible is straightforward historical fact or fancy and not divine communication.
For Paine, the only divine revelation is nature itself. Human language cannot serve as God’s medium; it is too fragile and inadequate. Nature, however, is “an ever-existing original which every person can read. It cannot be forged; it cannot be counterfeited; it cannot be lost; it cannot be altered; it cannot be suppressed.”
Such was the new gospel of the great patriot, Thomas Paine. But because of this fully rational religion, Paine was vilified by a people whom he had helped to become free.
Religious liberals such as John Adams rejected him; the sponsor for his return to America, Thomas Jefferson, who agreed with his religious views, shunned him out of political expediency; and his own Quakers refused to bury him. Only six people attended his burial, and two of them were African Americans.
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