Nineteenth-Century British Secularism Science, Religion and Literature [Hardcover]

Nineteenth-Century British Secularism offers a new paradigm for understanding secularization in the nineteenth century. It addresses the crisis in the secularization thesis by foregrounding a nineteenth-century development called 'Secularism'  the particular movement and creed founded by George Jacob Holyoake from 1851 to 1852. Nineteenth-Century British Secularism rethinks and reevaluates the significance of Holyoake's Secularism, regarding it as a historic moment of modernity and granting it centrality as both a herald and exemplar for a new understanding of modern secularity. In addition to Secularism proper, the book treats several other moments of secular emergence in the nineteenth century, including Thomas Carlyle's 'natural supernaturalism', Richard Carlile's anti-theist science advocacy, Charles Lyell's uniformity principle in geology, Francis Newman's naturalized religion or 'primitive Christianity', and George Eliot's secularism and post-secularism.

Nineteenth-Century British Secularism offers a new paradigm for understanding secularization in nineteenth century Britain. It argues that George Holyoake's Secularism represents a historic moment of modernity, a herald for understanding secularization and modern secularity.

Introduction: Secularity or the Post-Secular Condition
1. Carlyle and Carlile: Late Romantic Skepticism and Early Radical Freethought
2. The Principles of Geology: A Secular Fissure in Scientific Knowledge
3. Holyoake and Secularism: the Emergence of 'Positive' Freethought
4. Secularizing Science: Secularism and the Emergence of Scientific Naturalism
5. The Three Newmans: A Triumvirate of Secularity
6. George Eliot: The Secular Sublime, Post-secularism, and 'Secularization'
Epilogue: Secularism as Modern Secularity

Michael Rectenwald is Professor of Global Liberal Studies at New YolSl