The Spirituality of Thomas Paine
Edward J. Dodson
[A talk delivered to the Thomas Paine Unitarian
Fellowship,
Collegeville, Pennsylvania, 1998]
Good morning, everyone. I thank you for this invitation to tell you
something of the spirituality of one of the great socio-political
philosophers, Thomas Paine, whose ideas identifying just relations
between individuals - living in society with one another -- I have
come to describe as cooperative individualism. Paine would have been
quite satisfied, I think, to know he is thought of as the architect of
a set of principles championing individual liberty within a
cooperative societal framework.
In 1776, words Paine put to paper were read all up and down the
coastal towns and villages of North America. Those who lived in these
communities were divided, unsure which path to take. Loyalty to the
sovereign, to one's interests, or to principle? Paine's pamphlet,
which you may remember is titled Common Sense, served to
arouse the majority to action in defense of principle and the
experience of near self-government that existed throughout much of the
colonies.
Paine spoke and wrote with great certainty about the rights of
Americans and the appropriateness of resistance to unjust government.
"Society in every state is a blessing," he declared, "but
government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its
worst state an intolerable one." Powerful words from someone
without property, position or family and only recently arrived in
North America. Yet, with this one pamphlet his place in history was
probably assured.
Common Sense began a thirty year commitment by Paine to a
campaign to bring liberty to people in every society he might touch.
He was already nearing his fortieth birthday. He had come to North
America to find his destiny, his most valuable possession at the time
a letter of introduction from Benjamin Franklin, with whom he had
become acquainted in London just a few years earlier. He now thought
of himself as American and gave his pen to the cause of independence
from British authority. He was pulled along this path by events, by
inclination, by opportunity and by a sense of duty.
When the fighting began in earnest, Paine accompanied the colonial
army under General Nathanael Greene. In the wake of defeat and
retreat, Paine took on the role of war correspondent. In the first of
his open letters, what he termed Crisis Papers, he appealed to
European-Americans with language that still moves one today. Read
aloud, Paine's words reach deep within and draw on our emotion:
"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 their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love
and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily
conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the
conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we
esteem too lightly; it is dearness only that gives everything its
value."
And, as we know, much was sacrificed. Many lives were given. The
newly-sovereign (and barely united) States of America struggled to
form a new society and governments. Their first attempt recognized an
inherent distrust of central authority and affirmed the sovereignty of
the States formed out of the colonial experience. After only a few
years of what seemed to nationalists like Alexander Hamilton a state
of semi-anarchy, the States sent representatives to a convention to
discuss how to improve the Articles of Confederation.
Ironically, at this formative moment for his adopted country, Paine's
personal interests took him back to the Old World, where he would
remain until 1802. A letter of introduction from Benjamin Franklin
opened doors for Paine in Paris. He already knew Lafayette from the
war. Now, he met intellectuals of the French Enlightenment such as the
mathematician and philosopher the Marquis de Condorcet. Moving freely
back and forth between London and Paris between 1787 and 1792, Paine
became embroiled in the radical and republican politics of both
countries. In England, he befriended the great Parliamentarian, Edmund
Burke, who had argued to extend the rights of citizenship to England's
American colonials. Paine would eventually cross swords with Burke
over the French Revolution.
When Paine next returned to France, late in 1789, the upheaval had
already begun. Paine was sure the French were at the vanguard of a
broad republican revolutionary movement. Writing to Burke, he
exclaimed: "The Revolution in France is certainly a forerunner to
other revolutions in Europe." Burke, fearful that such folly
might upset all that had made Britain great, declared: "The
French had shown themselves the ablest architects of ruin that had
hitherto existed in the world."
After Burke expanded his attack on the French Revolution, Paine felt
compelled to defend what he still believed to be the French people's
struggle for liberty. In this remarkable book, Rights of Man,
Paine first touches on the link he sees between the realm of humankind
and the creator:
"Though I mean not to touch upon any sectarian principle of
religion, yet it may be worth observing that the genealogy of Christ
is traced to Adam. Why then not trace the rights of man to the
creation of man? I will answer the question. Because there have been
an upstart of governments, thrusting themselves between, and
presumably working to un-make man."
Paine agreed with the pioneering English philosopher John Locke that
people came together in society voluntarily, and formed government to
protect their rights - to life, liberty and property. It was clear to
Paine that those who governed had long ago taken from the people their
liberty and used all manner of coercive powers to maintain power.
Wherever possible, the State had embraced and captured the Church to
further cement its control.
History revealed that the State had captured and converted the
Christian religion for ends unworthy of the memory of Christ. In Rights
of Man, he wrote:
"The key of St. Peter and the key of the treasury become
quartered on one another, and the wondering, cheated multitude,
worshiped the invention."
Publication of Rights of Man catapulted Paine into the center
of the French Revolution. In Britain, he was charged with sedition. An
order for his arrest was issued in May of 1792, and all copies of his
book were to be confiscated. Paine barely escaped the grasp of the
authorities, sailing for France in September. Arriving in Calais, he
received a heroes welcome. The citizens of Calais elected him as their
representative to the National Convention. Soon, however, Paine was to
discover that the heart of the French Revolution had been stolen,
replaced by a new tyranny. Many of the people Paine came to know and
feel close to - including Condorcet -- were executed upon the orders
of the new Committee of Public Safety. Early on, Paine and Condorcet
had collaborated on a constitution creating broad political liberties
and democratic institutions. The reactionaries would have none of it;
their revolution was war against aristocrats, papal authority and
moderates alike.
On 27 December 1793 Paine was himself arrested and taken away to
prison. Seven months later, Robespierre signed the order for his
execution. Not surprisingly, Paine despaired of the Revolution in
France. He also became quite ill. Yet, before his arrest he managed to
complete the manuscript that would become the first part of his
treatise on religion, The Age of Reason. In this work, Paine
minced no words. He declared his belief in what he called natural
religion, Deism. God created the universe but we were responsible for
our own circumstances and for the improvement of the human condition.
God did not intercede. Paine attacked organized religions as attempts
at mass manipulation through the methods of superstition and
priestcraft. "All national institutions of churches," wrote
Paine, "appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to
terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit."
The time of Jesus was a time of mythology and superstition. Reason now
prevailed, and the time had come to cast aside ancient beliefs that
could not be substantiated . The myth of Mary's immaculate conception,
for example, "has every mark of fraud and imposition stamped upon
the face of it," wrote Paine. The Bible, in fact, could not be
trusted or in any way treated as divinely inspired:
"Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous
debaucheries, the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting
vindictiveness, with which more than half the Bible is filled, it
would be more consistent that we called it the word of a demon than
the Word of God. It is a history of wickedness that has served to
corrupt and brutalize mankind; and, for my part, I sincerely detest it
as I detest everything that is cruel."
Paine survived. Robespierre fell from power and was immediately
executed. But, Paine remained in prison, becoming progressively more
ill and embittered. Only after James Monroe arrived to take the
position of Minister to France, and pressure the French government for
Paine's release, did Paine regain his freedom. Once his strength
returned, Paine began work on the second part of The Age of Reason,
which he completed in the summer of 1795. He continued his attack on
the organized church:
"The study of theology, as it stands in Christian churches
is the study of nothing; it is founded on nothing; it rests on no
principles; it proceeds by no authorities; it has no data; it can
demonstrate nothing; and it admits no conclusion."
In order to understand God and the universe God had created, Paine
directed his fellow human beings to the study of science:
"We can have only a confused idea of His power, if we have
not the means of comprehending something of its immensity. We can have
no idea of His wisdom, but by knowing the order and manner in which it
acts. The principles of science lead to this knowledge; for the
Creator of man is the Creator of science, and it is through that
medium that man can see God, as it were, face to face.
"It is only by the exercise of reason, that man can discover
God. Take away that reason, and he would be incapable of understanding
any thing; ...
"The Almighty lecturer, by displaying the principles of
science in the structure of the universe, has invited man to study and
to imitation. It is as if he had said to the inhabitants of this
globe, that we call ours, 'I have made an earth for man to dwell upon,
and I have rendered the starry heavens visible, to teach him science
and the arts. He can now provide for his own comfort and learn from my
munificence to all, to be kind to each other'."
These truths were self-evident to Paine, and he credited God for
having the wisdom to provide humankind with the ability to think and
to reason, to search for truth and understanding.
While Paine announced the age of reason had arrived, he wrote that "the
age of ignorance commenced with the Christian system" which was "only
another species of mythology." In the midst of continuous attacks
from representatives of established religion, Paine's emerging
spirituality brought him to form, with other Deists, a new ethical
society they called Theophilanthrophism. Meetings of this group
consisted of discussions of moral and spiritual matters.
In 1802, Thomas Paine returned to North America, arriving first at
Baltimore. Welcomed back by Thomas Jefferson, now in the Presidency,
and by numerous others in the Jeffersonian camp, Paine's religious
writings were not mentioned in the Republican press. Jefferson's
opponents, the Federalists, were not inclined to leave Paine alone if
attacking him could harm Jefferson's reputation as well. Paine, now
over sixty years old, often ill, and sometimes ill-tempered, lashed
out in the press. His attack on the Federalists will sound familiar
from what I have read above:
"Ask a man who calls himself a Federalist, what federalism
is, and he cannot tell you. Ask him, what are its principles, and he
has none to give. Federalism, then, with respect to government, is
similar to atheism with respect to religion, a nominal nothing without
principles."
Despite the fact that a good many of the revolutionary war leaders
shared Paine's spiritual belief in Deism, they pragmatically realized
that the America of the early nineteenth century Paine's attack on
organized religion was foolish, politically. Even Paine's staunch
friend Samuel Adams broke with him because he thought Paine had
declared himself to be an athiest. Writing to Adams, Paine tried to
explain:
"The case, my friend, is that the world has been overrun
with fable and creeds of human invention, with sectaries of whole
nations against all other nations, and sectaries of those sectaries in
each of them against each other. Every sectary, except the Quakers,
has been a persecutor. ...The key to heaven is not in the keeping of
any sect nor ought the road to it be obstructed by any."
Benjamin Rush, who had been instrumental in getting Paine to write
Common Sense, refused to see Paine in Philadelphia, writing that
Paine's "principles avowed in his Age of Reason were so offensive
to me that I did not wish to renew my intercourse with him." None
of this deterred Paine. He soon joined with the Reverend Elihu Palmer
to form the Theistic Society and establish a new journal to advance
Deistic principles. His writings from this point on were almost
entirely focused on religious subjects. He continued to challenge the
stories in the Bible. Unlike the Catholic and Protestant sects that
worshipped "someone once named Jesus, deists worshipped only God."
Paine's last years were difficult. His finances dissipated. His
health continued to deteriorate. He ended his days living with
different supporters in New York City. After his death on 8 June 1809,
he his body was taken to New Rochelle, New York, and buried. Most of
his former friends chose not to publicly acknowledge his passing. In
fact, Paine's legacy of controversy was still sufficiently strong in
1813 that Thomas Jefferson refused permission to have his letters to
Paine published until after his own death, because, as he said, "they
might draw on me renewed molestations from the irreconcilable enemies
of republican government."
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