George Joseph Holyoake
From Philosopedia
Holyoake, George Joseph (1817—1906)
The oldest English leader of freethought and the founder of Secularism, Holyoake was an active social reformer. In 1842, he was charged with blasphemy and was sentenced to six months of imprisonment in Gloucester, after which he was a hero to radicals who opposed the laws that disallowed public statements against Christianity.
According to Lee E. Grugel, Holyoake defined secularism “as being a series of rational postulates about the world upon which all social and ethical action could rest.”
When Charles Southwell was sentenced to a year’s imprisonment, Holyoake took on in the 1840s the editorship of The Oracle of Reason. At that time, he explained, “I had not become [an atheist till after the imprisonment of Mr. Southwell, which led me to inquire into the grounds of religious opinion more closely than I had before done, and it ended in my entire disbelief.”
In one of his speeches, Holyoake said, in answer to a question, that he would put the Deity on half-pay, after which he was tried and sentenced by Mr. Justice Erskine to six months in jail. After being jailed, he wrote The History of the Last Trial by Jury for Atheism in England (1851), in which he stated, “In early youth I was religious, and as I grew up I attended missionary meetings, and my few pence were given to that cause,” a reference to his having been a Sunday School teacher while a teenager.
David Berman makes the point that Southwell and Holyoake “claimed only to disbelieve in God, because there was no sufficient reason for belief. They did not, as they put it, directly deny there is a God.” He edited Movement (1843 to 1845), Reasoner (1846 to 1872), Counselor (1861), Secularist (1876 to 1877), and Present Day (1883 to 1886).
With Charles Watts, G. W. Foote, and W. S. Ross, he edited Secular Review.
Holyoake first used the word “secularist” in 1851, and he presided over the first Secular Conference at Manchester in 1852.
J. M. Wheeler notes that Holyoake “did much to remove the taxes upon knowledge and has devoted much attention to Co-operation, having written a history of the movement and contributed to most of its journals.”
Although he was supplanted by Bradlaugh as the major secularist leader, Holyoake remained a favorite of the young. Harry Snell remarked that the young loved him “for the dangers he had passed, while seasoned reformers regarded him with the affection due to a revered colleague and teacher. . . . I remember the genial and gentle old man with great respect and some gratitude.”
He died peacefully at Brighton in the presence of his wife and daughter. They reported that during his last few weeks of life he had taken a keen interest in the general election then pending.
{BDF; EU, Lee E. Grugel; FFRF; FO; FUK; HAB; JM; RAT; RSR; VI; TRI; TYD; WSS}
