Race in a Godless World: Atheism, Race, and Civilization, 1850-1914

by Nathan G. Alexander

Overview

A historical analysis of the racial views of atheists in the United States and Britain

During the second half of the nineteenth century popular atheist movements were emerging in the United States and Britain and skepticism about Christianity was becoming widespread. This newly embraced secularization created a paradox. How could Western civilization represent the pinnacle of human progress, as most white atheists accepted, when the majority of these societies still believed in Christianity? The result of this tension was a profound ambivalence regarding issues of racial and civilizational superiority. At times, white atheists assented to scientific racism and hierarchical conceptions of civilization; at others, they denounced racial prejudice and spoke favorably of non-white, non-Western civilizations.

This book offers a long-overdue historical analysis of the racial views of atheists and freethinkers in the United States and Britain during this time period. It provides a much-needed account of the complex and sometimes contradictory ideas espoused by this transatlantic community, tracing the complex ways in which they grappled with ideas about white superiority, and the role they played in early advocacy against racism and in favor of human rights.

This exciting book delves into an understudied aspect of secular studies, and will be welcomed by anyone seeking a better understanding of modern racism and its origins.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781479835003
Publisher:	New York University Press
Publication date:	09/20/2019
Series:	Secular Studies , #3
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Nathan G. Alexander is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Max Weber Centre for Advanced Cultural and Social Studies, University of Erfurt.

Table of Contents

List of figures i

Acknowledgments viii

Introduction: the tangled histories of Christianity, secularization, and race 1

1 Were Adam and Eve our first parents? Atheism and polygenesis 28

2 Brute men: race and society in evolution 53

3 A London Zulu: savagery and civilization 84

4 The wise men of the East: India, China, and Japan 115

5 The best friends the negro ever had: African Americans and white atheists 142

6 The curse of race prejudice: rethinking race at the turn of the century 175

Conclusion: what next for racism in a godless world? 205

Notes 217

Bibliography 264

Index 283

Editorial Reviews

"A needed and readable account of a particularly important transitional time in freethought ... it is a book well worth reading."

The Humanist

"Alexander offers this timely and important study exploring ways that racist logics intersected and diverged with freethinkers, atheists, and agnostics of the 19th and early 20th centuries. The book is incredibly well researched, and chapters provide stand-alone depictions of familiar figures and others."

Choice

"Nathan G. Alexander proposes major qualifications to this picture, in a book which aims to absolve “secularization” from the charge of fostering racism—not just at the apogee of Anglophone imperialism, but also in the present day. He does so through a fine-grained exposition of the racial attitudes of an array of British and North American freethinkers… Alexander’s research has produced something more interesting than an apology for the kind of secularization still championed by such Victorian rationalist throwbacks as Sam Harris."

Victorian Studies

"Race in a Godless World is an excellent study. This is intellectual history at its best, demonstrating how the discriminated against minority of unbelievers, at the foot of the religious pecking order, challenged racial hierarchies and championed racial minorities. The book shows that a commitment to science and reason underpinned racial views amongst both atheist and religionist intellectuals of the nineteenth century. But scepticism and contrariness drew atheists to apply the same reason in shifting towards a more inclusive and progressive social agenda. With a strong structure and vivid clarity, this is the best contribution so far to scholarly study of how racist thinking came to be linked with, but also rejected by, atheists in the USA and Britain."

Callum G. Brown

"Will no doubt become a key text for historians of freethought and race ... corrects a striking absence in the scholarly literature, while illuminating the secularism/racism debate—and does so dispassionately, insightfully, in great depth and with surgical precision."

Areo Magazine

"An exhaustively researched and gracefully written book that makes a signal contribution to our understanding of the intersection of atheism and racial thought. The first book to fully flesh out the ties between racial thought and atheism, it is a masterful achievement that will be required reading for students and scholars of race, freethought, and British and American history more broadly."

Christopher Cameron

"Many histories of secularism have emerged in recent years, but Nathan Alexander’s Race in a Godless World is the first to focus specifically on the issue of race…Alexander deftly captures the contradictions and inconsistencies within secularist culture in late-nineteenth and early-twentieth-century United States and Britain."

American Religion

"Situating the history of freethought in a fully transatlantic framework, Alexander carefully unpacks the ambivalences and contradictions of white atheist views on race and civilisation. Certain about the superiority of science over Christianity, freethinkers were far less clear about the racial and cross-cultural implications of their irreligion. Many embraced scientific racism and white supremacy, while others resisted xenophobia and race prejudice. Alexander captures these secularist complexities with admirable nuance and insight."

Leigh E. Schmidt

"An exhaustively researched and gracefully written book that makes a signal contribution to our understanding of the intersection of atheism and racial thought. The first book to fully flesh out the ties between racial thought and atheism, it is a masterful achievement that will be required reading for students and scholars of race, freethought, and British and American history more broadly."

University of North Carolina at Charlotte Christopher Cameron

"Situating the history of freethought in a fully transatlantic framework, Alexander carefully unpacks the ambivalences and contradictions of white atheist views on race and civilisation. Certain about the superiority of science over Christianity, freethinkers were far less clear about the racial and cross-cultural implications of their irreligion. Many embraced scientific racism and white supremacy, while others resisted xenophobia and race prejudice. Alexander captures these secularist complexities with admirable nuance and insight."

Washington University in St. Louis Leigh E. Schmidt

"Race in a Godless World is an excellent study. This is intellectual history at its best, demonstrating how the discriminated against minority of unbelievers, at the foot of the religious pecking order, challenged racial hierarchies and championed racial minorities. The book shows that a commitment to science and reason underpinned racial views amongst both atheist and religionist intellectuals of the nineteenth century. But scepticism and contrariness drew atheists to apply the same reason in shifting towards a more inclusive and progressive social agenda. With a strong structure and vivid clarity, this is the best contribution so far to scholarly study of how racist thinking came to be linked with, but also rejected by, atheists in the USA and Britain."

University of Glasgow Callum G. Brown