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Deism

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Enlightenment idea that God created the universe and then stood back, for it to be understood by reason alone and not revelation.

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the idea that God created the universe and then left it for humans to understand by reason not revelation. Edward Herbert, 1583-1648 (pictured above) held that there were five religious truths: belief in a Supreme Being, the need to worship him, the pursuit of a virtuous life as the best form of worship, repentance, and reward or punishment after death. Others developed these ideas in different ways, yet their opponents in England's established Church collected them under the label of Deists, called Herbert the Father of Deism and attacked them as a movement, and Deist books were burned. Over time, reason and revelation found a new balance in the Church in England, while Voltaire and Thomas Paine explored the ideas further, leading to their re-emergence in the French and American Revolutions.

With

Richard Serjeantson
Fellow and Lecturer in History at Trinity College, Cambridge

Katie East
Lecturer in History at Newcastle University

And

Thomas Ahnert
Professor of Intellectual History at the University of Edinburgh

Producer: Simon Tillotson

Available now

48 minutes

Last on

Thu 8 Oct 2020 21:30
±«Óãtv Radio 4

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LINKS AND FURTHER READING











READING LIST:

Justin Champion, The Pillars of Priestcraft Shaken: The Church of England and its Enemies, 1660–1730 (Cambridge University Press, 1992)

Justin Champion, Republican Learning: John Toland and the Crisis of Christian Culture, 1696–1722 (Manchester University Press, 2003)

Peter Harrison, ‘Religion’ and the Religions in the English Enlightenment (Cambridge University Press, 1990)

Wayne Hudson, The English Deists: Studies in Early Enlightenment (Routledge, 2008)

Wayne Hudson, Enlightenment and Modernity: The English Deists and Reform (Routledge, 2009)

Peter Gay (ed.), Deism: An Anthology (Van Nostrand, 1968)

Thomas Paine (ed. Eric Foner), Collected Writings (Library of America, 1995), especially The Age of Reason, being an Investigation of True and Fabulous Theology (first published 1794)

Roy Porter, Enlightenment: Britain and the Creation of the Modern World (Allen Lane, 2000)

David Sorkin, The Religious Enlightenment: Protestants, Jews, and Catholics from London to Vienna (Princeton University Press, 2011)

Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Harvard University Press, 2007), esp. Part II

John Toland (eds. Philip McGuinness, Alan Harrison and Richard Kearney), Christianity not Mysterious: Text, Associated Works and Critical Essays (first published 1696; Lilliput Press, 1997)

N. L. Torrey, Voltaire and the English Deists (Yale University Press, 1930)

Kerry S. Walters, The American Deists: Voices of Reason and Dissent in the Early Republic (University Press of Kansas, 1992)

Kerry S. Walters, Revolutionary Deists: Early America's Rational Infidels (Prometheus Books, 2011)

Jeffrey R. Wigelsworth, Deism in Enlightenment England: Theology, Politics, and Newtonian Public Science (Manchester University Press, 2009)


Broadcasts

  • Thu 8 Oct 2020 09:00
    ±«Óãtv Radio 4
  • Thu 8 Oct 2020 21:30
    ±«Óãtv Radio 4

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