When I have
no idea what to write about, or am coming up with too many ideas and can’t
narrow them down, I ask other people what or who they would want me to look up
and write about. That’s how I did the
Eastern State Penitentiary piece (hi mom!) and that’s how we have today’s post,
courtesy of my husband. Today’s is
tricky (I think that’s part of why he picked it). I fully admit that I usually start by
Googling the topic or looking at Wikipedia.
I always try and find that information elsewhere, but Wikipedia is
actually a pretty good place to start for basic information; some of their
articles are even starred or locked, showing their accuracy. Today’s topic, Elihu Palmer, had a stub on
Wikipedia. Oooookay… Everywhere I looked had similar information,
but with some extra tidbits here and there, so we’re going to see how well I
pulled something together from little information.
Elihu
Palmer was born in 1764 in Canterbury, Connecticut. That’s about all we known about him until he
was in his twenties. Already having
issues learning about him… When he was
growing up, though, we know what was going on in the country. We weren’t the United States yet, but we were
getting there. The country would be
founded without explicit religion, and with the idea that all religions could
be practiced free of persecution. Many
of the Founding Fathers were deists, believing that the natural world and
reason and observation were all one needed to determine if there was a god or
not.
Unitarianism was also gaining in popularity at this
time. Unitarianism is a branch of
Protestantism that believes in one god, not the Trinity like Catholics believe
in. They also believe that Jesus is not
God himself, but human, though could possibly still be considered a
savior. In 1782 the first recognized
Unitarian church opened in the United States in Boston, Massachusetts. Unitarians were a very liberal branch of
Christianity and the Enlightenment helped their beliefs gain popularity. All of this is to say that even among
ministers, some very radical ideas were emerging, and some of them broke with
religion altogether.
Elihu Palmer studied to be a Presbyterian minister at
Dartmouth, and graduated in 1787, taking a position in what is now Queens in
New York. Within a year, though, Palmer
was dismissed from his position. In
1789, he moved to Philadelphia and joined a Baptist Church. Ultimately, though, the Baptists too kicked
him out. In both of these cases, it
seems that Palmer had begun speaking in more deist terms, and against the
divinity of Jesus. Palmer then “became
somewhat of a physical, spiritual, and intellectual wanderer” (1).
Palmer wound up in New York City where he became a Universalist,
but also publicly rejected Jesus’s divinity, which wasn’t part of Universalist
beliefs. Palmer and his wife worked for
deism and his ideas began to gain traction.
He even planned speeches challenging Jesus’s divinity, and published ads
for them in the local papers (2). With
all of his outspokenness though, Palmer and his followers were banned from
Philadelphia.
Palmer decided to become a lawyer, and passed the
Pennsylvania bar in 1793. Despite having
been banned, he returned to Philadelphia.
This was a fateful decision. In
1793, a yellow fever epidemic broke out in Philadelphia. Over five thousand people died, Palmer’s wife
being one of those who died. Palmer
survived, but was blinded. “His enemies
naturally saw his blindness as God’s punishment for heresy” (3), even though
there were many religious people who died in the epidemic as well.
After his blinding, Palmer couldn’t practice law anymore,
and so became a travelling lecturer for deism.
His first stop was in Augusta, Georgia and he was received favorably, or
at least cordially. Georgia had based
their separation of church and state rules on Virginia’s religious freedom act
(4). While in Augusta, Palmer also
helped to collect “materials for Dr. Jedidiah Morse’s ‘Geography’” (5); Morse
wrote geography textbooks, and his son would create Morse Code.
After lecturing in Georgia, Palmer moved back to Philadelphia,
and then on to New York, still lecturing throughout the East Coast. Palmer’s first speech in New York took place
on Christmas Day. Palmer believed this
was a day “well suited to the denunciation of both Christianity and Christ” (6). In New York in 1796, Palmer formed the
Deistical Society of New York.
Palmer was an extreme deist, though, holding positions
that many did not. He believed that “the
flawed teachings of Jesus were responsible for Christianity’s sordid history” (7)
and that belief in supernatural experiences “undermines nature’s principles and
furthers human misery by setting up unreasonable expectations” (8). He believed in natural philosophy and
criticized institutional Christianity.
Palmer was a close friend of Thomas Paine, but his beliefs were much
more extreme than Paine’s. Paine
believed there were still ethical things in the New Testament and that there
was virtue in the teachings of Jesus (9).
The two wrote similarly though, being incredibly honest about their
beliefs and pulling no punches. Palmer,
though, didn’t care about what others believed if they were against his
beliefs.
Despite his abrasiveness, Palmer was popular and was
important for secularism in the young country.
Deism was largely seen as only for educated and/or upper-class
people. Palmer brought deism down to a
level that was accessible for everyone.
The Deistical Society he formed in New York, as well as in Philadelphia
and Baltimore, had members that were shopkeepers and artisans. “With the exception of doctors, almost no
members of learned professions were recorded as members” (J). Palmer founded two newspapers in 1800 and
1803; the only reason the papers had to stop publication was because the
subscribers couldn’t pay their bills on time, not because there was a lack of
subscribers.
In addition to his speeches, Palmer wrote. He wrote the speeches he gave, he wrote
pieces for his and others’ newspapers, and he wrote a book, Principles of Nature, published first in
1801. In Principles of Nature, Palmer reiterated his belief that “‘the world
in infinitely worse’ for following Jesus” (10).
Palmer believed it was the “nonreligious advances in human thought” (11)
which led to the creation of the printing press and eventually to the
Enlightenment and the American and French Revolutions. He believed the Enlightenment had allowed for
the enfranchisement of men “who had never before been considered fit to govern
themselves” (12).
Principles of
Nature had sold out three editions by the time of Palmer’s death in 1806 at
42 while on a speaking tour. Upon his
death, his widow (he remarried shortly after the death of his first wife) was
left without property or money and only made due with the help of Thomas
Paine. Principles of Nature was still being published after Palmer’s
death. In 1819, the London publisher
Richard Carlile published it with help from his wife while he was in prison for
having published other scandalous or heretical books. In 1824, two booksellers went to prison for
three years each for selling Principles of
Nature and The Age of Reason.
That’s Elihu Palmer.
Still not a whole lot of information about him, but I’ve tried to do the
best I could. Even though we don’t know
a lot about him personally, and his seeming abrasiveness led to some unpopularity,
I think he’s important to know and know about.
Like mentioned earlier, he helped bring deism and Enlightenment ideas to
those who maybe hadn’t heard of it. He
laid foundations for freethinking and secularism in the United States, even if
we don’t know his name. I’m glad my
husband suggested him.
1, 5 - Elihu Palmer
2, 3, 4, 6, 9, 11, 12 - Susan Jacoby, Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism (New York: Henry
Holtand Company, 2004).
7, 10 - Elihu Palmer
8 - Palmer, Elihu
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