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Paine’s birthday was always a red-letter day for these believers in democratic cosmopolitanism and philanthropic benevolence, but they expanded their program to include a broader array of rites and ceremonies, particularly funerals free of Christian supervision. They also worked to establish their own churches and congregations in which to practice their religion of secularism.  All of these activities raised serious questions about the very definition of religion and whether it included nontheistic fellowships and humanistic associations—a dispute that erupted again in the second half of the twentieth century. As right-wing Christians came to see secular humanism as the most dangerous religion imaginable, small communities of religious humanists, the heirs of Paine’s followers, were swept up in new battles about religion’s public contours and secularism’s moral perils.  An engrossing account of an important but little-known chapter in American history, The Church of Saint Thomas Paine reveals why the lines between religion and secularism are often much blurrier than we imagine.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49739760468241,"sku":"NGR9780691217253","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50356436205841,"sku":"CIN0691217254G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50361193857297,"sku":"CIN0691217254VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0691217254.jpg?v=1750816771"},{"product_id":"church-of-saint-thomas-paine-book-leigh-eric-schmidt-9780691247922","title":"The Church of Saint Thomas Paine","description":"The forgotten story of the nineteenth-century freethinkers and twentieth-century humanists who tried to build their own secular religion  In The Church of Saint Thomas Paine, Leigh Eric Schmidt tells the surprising story of how freethinking liberals in nineteenth-century America promoted a secular religion of humanity centered on the deistic revolutionary Thomas Paine (1737–1809) and how their descendants eventually became embroiled in the culture wars of the late twentieth century.  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As right-wing Christians came to see secular humanism as the most dangerous religion imaginable, small communities of religious humanists, the heirs of Paine’s followers, were swept up in new battles about religion’s public contours and secularism’s moral perils.  An engrossing account of an important but little-known chapter in American history, The Church of Saint Thomas Paine reveals why the lines between religion and secularism are often much blurrier than we imagine.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49745449779473,"sku":"NGR9780691247922","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51005729833233,"sku":"NIN9780691247922","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":53156606083345,"sku":"CIN0691247927VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":53515444584721,"sku":"CIN0691247927G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0691247927.jpg?v=1750912447"},{"product_id":"holy-fairs-book-leigh-eric-schmidt-9780802849663","title":"Holy Fairs","description":"Winner of the Frank S. and Elizabeth D. Brewer Prize of the American Society of Church History, Holy Fairs traces the roots of American camp-meeting revivalism to the communion festivals of early modern Scotland. This new paperback edition of Leigh Eric Schmidt's seminal work features updated material, a dozen illustrations, and a new preface by the author.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49974634021137,"sku":"GOR006643777","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50716645818641,"sku":"GOR014046457","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51007472107793,"sku":"NIN9780802849663","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51328778273041,"sku":"CIN0802849660VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51416336990481,"sku":"CIN0802849660G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52136645198097,"sku":"NLS9780802849663","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0802849660.jpg?v=1751107932"},{"product_id":"consumer-rites-book-leigh-eric-schmidt-9780691029801","title":"Consumer Rites","description":"Slogans such as \"Let's put Christ back into Christmas\" or \"Jesus Is the Reason for the Season\" hold an appeal to Christians who oppose the commercializing of events they hold sacred. However, through a close look at the rise of holidays in the United States, this book argues that commercial appropriations of these occasions were as religious in form as they were secular. The rituals of America's holiday bazaar that emerged in the 19th century offered a luxuriant merger of the holy and the profane - a heady blend of fashion and faith, merchandizing and gift-giving, profits and sentiments, all celebrations of a devout consumption. This book offers a reassessment of the \"consumer rites\" that various social critics have long decried for their spiritual emptiness and banal sentimentality. It tells the story of how holiday celebrations were almost banished by Puritans and other religious reformers in the colonies but went on to be romanticized and reinvented in the 19th and 20th centuries. Merchants and advertisers were crucial for the reimagining of the holidays, promoting them in a grand, carnivalesque manner, which could include gargantuan fruit cakes, towering rabbits, masked Santa Clauses, and exploding valentines. Along the way Schmidt uses everything from diaries to manuals on church decoration and window display to show the ways people have prepared for and celebrated specific holidays - such as going Christmas shopping, making love tokens, choosing Easter bonnets, sending flowers to Mom, buying ties for Dad. He demonstrates in particular how women took the lead as holiday consumers, shaping warm-hearted celebrations of home and family through their intricate engagement with the marketplace.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":50425404424465,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50425406128401,"sku":"CIN0691029806G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51837296476433,"sku":"CIN0691029806VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0691029806.jpg?v=1751136196"},{"product_id":"consumer-rites-book-leigh-eric-schmidt-9780691017211","title":"Consumer Rites","description":"Offers a reassessment of the 'consumer rites' that social critics have decried. 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Yet village atheists—as these godless freethinkers came to be known by the close of the nineteenth century—were also hailed for their gutsy dissent from stultifying pieties and for posing a necessary secularist challenge to the entanglements of church and state. In Village Atheists, Leigh Eric Schmidt explores the complex cultural terrain that unbelievers have long had to navigate in their fight to secure equal rights and liberties in American public life. He rebuilds the history of American secularism from the ground up, giving flesh and blood to these outspoken infidels.  Village Atheists demonstrates that the secularist vision for the United States proved to be anything but triumphant in a country where faith and citizenship were—and still are—closely interwoven.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51005741105425,"sku":"NIN9780691183114","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":52390541394193,"sku":"CIN0691183112VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":52817453023505,"sku":"CIN0691183112G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0691183112.jpg?v=1751394377"},{"product_id":"village-atheists-book-leigh-eric-schmidt-9780691168647","title":"Village Atheists","description":"A much-maligned minority throughout American history, atheists have been cast as a threat to the nation's moral fabric, barred from holding public office, and branded as irreligious misfits in a nation chosen by God. Yet, village atheists--as these godless freethinkers came to be known by the close of the nineteenth century--were also hailed for their gutsy dissent from stultifying pieties and for posing a necessary secularist challenge to majoritarian entanglements of church and state. Village Atheists explores the complex cultural terrain that unbelievers have long had to navigate in their fight to secure equal rights and liberties in American public life.  Leigh Eric Schmidt rebuilds the history of American secularism from the ground up, giving flesh and blood to these outspoken infidels, including itinerant lecturer Samuel Porter Putnam; rough-edged cartoonist Watson Heston; convicted blasphemer Charles B. Reynolds; and atheist sex reformer Elmina D. Slenker. He describes their everyday confrontations with devout neighbors and evangelical ministers, their strained efforts at civility alongside their urge to ridicule and offend their Christian compatriots. Schmidt examines the multilayered world of social exclusion, legal jeopardy, yet also civic acceptance in which American atheists and secularists lived. He shows how it was only in the middle decades of the twentieth century that nonbelievers attained a measure of legal vindication, yet even then they often found themselves marginalized on the edges of a God-trusting, Bible-believing nation.  Village Atheists reveals how the secularist vision for the United States proved to be anything but triumphant and age-defining for a country where faith and citizenship were--and still are--routinely interwoven.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51453271605521,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51453271769361,"sku":"CIN0691168644G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51825886822673,"sku":"CIN0691168644VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0691168644.jpg?v=1750977221"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/en-gb\/collections\/author-books-by-leigh-eric-schmidt.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}