Empire and Progress in the Victorian Secularist Movement by Patrick J Corbeil

Empire and Progress in the Victorian Secularist Movement by Patrick J Corbeil

This book is the first extensive historical analysis of the relationship between empire and the Victorian secularist movement. Historians have paid little attention to the role of empire in the development of organized free thought. Secularism as it developed in Britain and its settler colonies was an overtly outward-looking, global ideology in a period marked by the rise of scientific rationalism and belief in the logic of a European civilizing mission. Recent scholarship has focused on how the empire influenced British and American atheists on the question of race. What is missing is an in-depth examination of the formation of secularist ideas about universal progress, ethics, and secular morality. Through an examination of the secularist periodical and pamphlet press, this book argues that the religious diversity of the British Empire helped to shape the ethical worldview of the secularists, providing ammunition for their critiques of Christian morality and the church and justification for their policy reform proposals both in Britain and the colonies.

Patrick J. Corbeil is an independent scholar living in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9783030852016
ISBN 10	3030852016
Title	Empire and Progress in the Victorian Secularist Movement
Author	Patrick J Corbeil
Series	Histories Of The Sacred And Secular 1700–2000
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	Springer Nature Switzerland AG
Year published	2021-12-02
Number of pages	188
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
Note	Unavailable