Nash, D. 2019. Secularist History: Past Perspectives and Future Prospects. Secularism and Nonreligion, 8: 1, pp. 1–9. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5334/snr.113 RESEARCH ARTICLE Secularist History: Past Perspectives and Future Prospects David Nash This article provides a survey of the growth and development of historiography about both Secularism and the wider secular movement since the onset of the nineteenth century. It analyses and highlights the main themes and their advocates as well as suggesting what historiographical developments we might be likely to see in the future. It is a great pleasure to write an opening piece for this last gasp of social history and history from below, then themed issue because it serves to signal the arrival of secu- the Marxism which overshadowed this outlook had little larist history as, at the very least, a sub-discipline of the time for religious radicalism. Writers like Christopher history of ideology and belief. One hesitates to suggest Hill, when he considered the tide of religious discus- that it is an offshoot of religious history, largely because sion unleashed by the English Revolution, was anxious religious history generally ignored its existence for quite to see how these individuals invented species of politi- a sustained period. It was thus frequently relegated to the cal education through their interaction with religious category of apostasy from religion, or instead labelled texts and ideas. Similarly E.P. Thompson was famously with the semi-religious category of doubt. Agnosticism dismissive of Methodism, further adding to the con- was the earnestly church-bound term for the honest ception that any radical historian who interested them- doubting Christian, a flavour of which we can sometimes selves in such things had veered off the beaten path into recapture in the musings of our current Archbishop of a blind and dangerous cul-de-sac. Writers like Patricia Canterbury Justin Welby. Atheism was highlighted as per- Hollis, someone more receptive to the nuances of press taining to the conclusions, lifestyles and predilections of and the popular than most, saw only the political side of the ‘isolated’ individual – with a very firm emphasis on Richard Carlile and Henry Hetherington (Hollis 1970). If the term ‘isolated’. Secularism as an idea, as an ideology class based history was on the wane it would surely be or, alternatively, as the spur for a whole movement culture replaced by another paradigm of similar importance in was scarcely realised nor properly catalogued. Moreover, the fullness of time. Such hopes (or for me fears) seemed as the nineteenth century turned into the twentieth cen- eminently realised by engagement with Barbara Taylor’s tury, Christian denominations began looking over their Eve and the New Jerusalem. This involved itself in con- shoulder at the threatening manifestations of the secu- siderable discussion of Robert Owen and his utopianism, lar life and thus ignored the ideology of secularism that yet comparatively neglected the enlightenment-inspired wanted forms of confrontation. From this situation of critique of religion that crucially informed his thinking. neglect, however, things have changed considerably and Whilst this pursued a feminist agenda, the coming para- as a senior historian in this area I am grateful to suddenly digm of a few sentences ago, it managed to neglect the see the subject so full of vibrant and engaged enthusiasts, work of the female figures associated with freethought as well as those bringing important perspectives from – women who might perhaps have felt they had a right other related disciplines and controversies. to a place in the roll call of nineteenth-century feminist When I commenced work in 1983 the whole subject trailblazers (Taylor 1983). area of Secularism in Britain was a backwater, substan- Despite this worrying impression of a mistaken cul- tially neglected by the history written in the 1970s and de-sac surrounded by the high buildings of ideological 1980s. In contemplating this I could never wholly decide purity, in brighter moments I was courageous enough to what the reason for this sustained neglect really was. In think differently. It was possible to see secular history as darker moments this area felt like an obvious backwater, an exciting, if undiscovered, neglected or overlooked gem. ignored for a host of good reasons for something more One that, if studied for long enough, and deeply enough, ‘interesting’ and something that more obviously seemed would very likely become a free-standing area of study. to ‘lead somewhere’. If you were, like me, a part of the However free-standing as a subject in its own right this was never enough, and should scarcely have been the outer limit of ambition. Just as the history of political Oxford Brookes University, GB movements is somewhat sterile without new happenings [email protected] in the history of ideas and political ideology, so the history Art. 1, page 2 of 9 Nash: Secularist History of secularism requires both its background and overarch- with anthropologists or, perhaps more recently, with ing events to propel it into the spotlight. some medical historians. Thus, secular historians seem One reason for neglect and ignorance was the inescap- more likely to find themselves engaging with sociologists able link between secular history and the debates that far more than historians of religion do. After all, the act centre around religious history. Whilst the latter had of acquiring a belief and becoming religious is a process ignored the former the upsurge of interest in the return described in theological terms; the secular has been read- of the religious inevitably spelled good news for secular- ily characterized as a social process (Budd 1977). Too often ist history. However the sheer lack of interest and ‘move- focus upon the individual and their range of both rational ment’ within religious history before this point still needs and irrational choices has largely eluded research agen- a larger explanation. Religious history was substantially das. Once again this social process approach strikes me moribund because so many historians believed it to be as an assumption further calculated to rob a worldview of colonized by the biased, and also substantially devoid of significant agency. historical problems. The sociological advocates of the sec- Nonetheless secularists themselves, at various times, ularization thesis convinced most historians that the issue have made attempts to survey and portray the history was somehow settled. Part of this argument was a series of of secular outlooks – primarily as a justification and the decline and catastrophe stories that portrayed religion’s search for a past, something we will hear more of as an own serious implosion. Because it was religion that had imperative later on in this introduction. In a sense this collapsed and failed, this unwittingly became a situa- also comes out of an older version of liberalism that is also tion that robbed secularist history of agency. Moreover, cultural. This essentially exists as a strong Whig improve- whilst religion had failed to disappear completely, secular- ment motif that we will also hear more of later on, a phe- ist history was further robbed of such agency by various nomenon we might term Liberalism’s Marxism. Central liberalising Christian narratives. These similarly gave the figures in the secular movement, like George Holyoake impression that it was a belief system that had consciously and Charles Bradlaugh, to an extent kicked this off with destroyed itself to save itself. rudimentary but not really sustained forays into the his- Thus a significant array of tall ideological and historio- tory of unbelief. These were fragmentary attempts to place graphical buildings had been erected around this subject themselves in context and likewise fulfilled the function leaving it, at least comparatively, in the shadows for some of inspirational and instructive ‘copy’ for a highly literate time craving some daylight. Although it has taken years, constituency.1 This audience was partly held together by the convening of the first conference of the International the ‘imagined community’ created by the secular press Society for Historians of Atheism, Secularism, and and a pamphlet culture that enabled such views to be Humanism (ISHASH) at Conway Hall in June 2016 dem- consumed and meditated upon in private. onstrated that some significant developments were now These were followed with more historically engaged, capable of moving the subject forwards in a fruitful direc- sophisticated and professional works from Hypatia tion. At this juncture I thought it might be appropriate to Bradlaugh Bonner, Joseph McCabe and J. M. Robertson.2 offer some further reflections upon how the subject has What all these versions of secular history had in common been both shaped in the past, and indeed may shape up in was that they were essentially all from a Liberal tradition the future. Perhaps partly due to my own failings, or per- with progress motifs writ large, alongside many ideas haps also in the interest of spurring on further research, I associated with struggle. It is interesting to compare these have chosen to frame this discussion in terms of produc- with some aspects of religious denominational history ing questions, many of which intrigue now as much as where motifs of struggle always end in various species of they have over the last two centuries as both historians achievement, always ‘against the odds’. and contemporaries within the secular have sought to There were also works from some later activists who make sense of them. were motivated by an attempt to derail the ‘history of the secular as motivated and enacted by wider social change’ I model. This reflected the coincidence that some crucial In no particular order these are some of the research ques- anniversaries in British secular history were occurring at tions (or sub-questions) that really present themselves.