Samuel Porter Putnam | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | July 23, 1838 |
| Died | December 11, 1896 |
| Occupation(s) | Critic, Freethought writer |
Samuel Porter Putnam (July 23, 1838 - December 11, 1896) was an American freethinker, critic and publicist.
Samuel Porter Putnam | |
|---|---|
| | |
| Born | July 23, 1838 |
| Died | December 11, 1896 |
| Occupation(s) | Critic, Freethought writer |
Samuel Porter Putnam (July 23, 1838 - December 11, 1896) was an American freethinker, critic and publicist.
Putnam was born in Chichester, New Hampshire. His father was a minister of a Congregational church. [1] He graduated from Dartmouth College in 1861, then entered the Union Army as a private, and was promoted during the war to a captaincy. [2] In 1865 he entered the theological seminary in Chicago, where he graduated in 1868, and preached for three years thereafter as a Congregational minister in the pulpits of Illinois. In 1871 he became a Unitarian minister, and preached for several years in various states. [2]
He then renounced the Christianity and became an avowed freethinker. He attacked the Bible and Christianity upon the platform, and for 20 years probably making more speeches against them than any other American, speaking almost every day for months together. Putnam was married to Louise Howell for eighteen years, they divorced in 1885 due to religious differences. [2] They had two children.
In 1888 with George E. MacDonald he founded the Freethought journal in San Francisco. [2] It dissolved in 1891. He formed the Freethought Federation of America as president in 1892. It merged with the American Secular Union and became the American Secular Union and Freethought Federation in 1895. [2]
Historian Leigh Eric Schmidt discusses Putnam's life in Village Atheists: How America's Unbelievers Made Their Way In a Godly Nation (2016). [3]
Putnam died from a gas leakage on December 11, 1896. His body was found on the floor with twenty year old lecturer May Collins in her hotel room in Boston. They had planned to go to the theatre together but were "poisoned by illuminating gas." [2]
Freethought is an epistemological viewpoint which holds that beliefs should not be formed on the basis of authority, tradition, revelation, or dogma, and should instead be reached by other methods such as logic, reason, and empirical observation.
Joseph Martin McCabe was an English writer and speaker on freethought, after having been a Roman Catholic priest earlier in his life. He was "one of the great mouthpieces of freethought in England". Becoming a critic of the Catholic Church, McCabe joined groups such as the Rationalist Association and the National Secular Society. He criticised Christianity from a rationalist perspective, but also was involved in the South Place Ethical Society which grew out of dissenting Protestantism and was a precursor of modern secular humanism.
Anarchists have traditionally been skeptical of or vehemently opposed to organized religion. Nevertheless, some anarchists have provided religious interpretations and approaches to anarchism, including the idea that the glorification of the state is a form of sinful idolatry.
Jim Herrick was a British humanist and secularist. He studied history and English literature at Trinity College, Cambridge University, and then worked as a school teacher for seven years. He wrote or edited several books on humanism and the history of freethought.
The Secular Coalition for America is an advocacy group located in Washington D.C. It describes itself as "protecting the equal rights of nonreligious Americans."
Edwin Frederick Kagin was an attorney at law in Union, Kentucky, and a founder of Camp Quest, the first secular summer camp in the United States for the children of secularists, atheists, agnostics, brights, skeptics, naturalists and freethinkers. He served as the National Legal Director of American Atheists from 2006 until his death in 2014.
Abner Kneeland was an American evangelist and theologian who advocated views on women's rights, racial equality, and religious skepticism that were radical for his day. As a young man, Kneeland was a lay preacher in a Baptist church, but he converted to Universalism and was ordained as a minister. Later in life, he rejected revealed religion and Universalism's Christian God. Due to provocative statements he published, Massachusetts convicted Kneeland under its rarely used blasphemy law. Kneeland was the last man in the United States jailed for blasphemy. After his sentence, he founded a utopian society in Iowa, but it failed shortly after his death.
Chapman Cohen was an English freethinker, atheist, and secularist writer and lecturer.
Daniel Edwin Barker is an American atheist activist and musician who served as an evangelical Christian preacher and composer for 19 years but left Christianity in 1984. He and his wife Annie Laurie Gaylor are the current co-presidents of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, and he is cofounder of The Clergy Project. He has written numerous articles for Freethought Today, an American freethought newspaper. He is the author of several books including Losing Faith in Faith: From Preacher to Atheist.
Hector Avalos was a professor of Religious Studies at Iowa State University, cultural anthropologist, and the author of several books on religion. Avalos was an atheist and advocate of secular humanist ethics.
Thomas W. Flynn was an American author, journalist, novelist, executive director of the Council for Secular Humanism, and editor of its journal Free Inquiry. He was also director of the Robert Green Ingersoll Birthplace Museum and the Freethought Trail.
Matthew Wade Dillahunty is an American atheist activist and former president of the Atheist Community of Austin, a position he held from 2006 to 2013. Between 2005 and October 2022, Dillahunty was host of the televised webcast The Atheist Experience.
Atheist feminism is a branch of feminism that also advocates atheism. Atheist feminists hold that religion is a prominent source of female oppression and inequality, believing that the majority of the religions are sexist and oppressive towards women.
Charles Watts was an English writer, lecturer and publisher, who was prominent in the secularist and freethought movements in both Britain and Canada.
Etta Semple was an American atheist and feminist activist, editor, publisher and community leader in Ottawa, Kansas. She was the president of the Kansas Freethought Association and, in later life, founded a "Natural Cure" sanitorium for 31 patients. Semple was part of a group of people in Kansas who actively fought the intrusion of religion into United States government, when prominent religious leaders of the time were "pushing to amend the US Constitution and declare America a Christian nation."
Joseph Mazzini Wheeler was an English atheist and freethought writer.
Mattie A. Freeman was an American freethinker, abolitionist, writer, and lecturer. She became well known as a secularist speaker, was corresponding secretary of the American Secular Union, and was described by a correspondent of The Truth Seeker as a "feminine Ingersoll".
Katie Kehm Smith was an American freethought lecturer and organizer. In Samuel Porter Putnam's 400 Years of Freethought, published a year before her death, Putnam described Smith as "Probably the youngest prominent lecturer in the Freethought ranks". She initiated the First Secular Church of Portland, followed by its Secular Sunday School.
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
