Thomas Paine and the American tradition
Even tho the American Revolution had already begun, Thomas Paine's "Common Sense" is considered a pivotal work of the era. It was not universally loved among the American Revolutionaries. Adams hated it because it called for the right to vote even for those who did not own property! How dare Paine extend this right to those who were not rich enough to buy it!
Loyalists hated it because they knew that, without monarchy, government would degenerate into...democracy.
Yet it was a best seller in the colonies. Pamphlets were cheap to produce and easy to disseminate. They were the revolutionary era version of a blog or a discussion board and their intent was to reach people and change their opinions.
Paine claimed that monarchies and aristocracies were ancient tyrannies and that revolutionaries should oppose these tyrannies. He used the rhetoric of religion to tell the revolutionaries they were "twice born" - once in their religious convictions and a second time in their political ones.
He opposed all European aristocratic institutions, most especially monarchies, yet he also met with the French King to gain financial support for the revolution in the states (and this support a huge factor in the French financial crisis that led to the French Revolution because aristocrats did not want to pay taxes to support their govt's actions, while they continued to receive their benefits because they were born into wealth.)
Yet he was not revolutionary enough for the leaders of one faction that held power (many did, for a time, until they were executed) and was jailed in France and came close to execution himself. He was one of the most important English-language voices in support of the French Revolution until he was imprisoned. While in England, he had written "Rights of Man" in support of France, and in opposition to liberals (classic liberals, not the current American usage) like Edmund Burke, who recoiled at the excesses of the French when they deposed their king. He faced arrest in Britain for this pamplet. The poet, William Blake, encouraged him to go to France. The anarchist William Godwin and others faced trial in Britain for publication of Paine's work.
When he was imprisoned in France, he published the first part of Age of Reason. He critiqued revealed religion (that same religion he appealed to in his "twice born" rhetoric.) He attacked organized religion and presented questions about the validity of the bible.
He was writing about ideas that had long been part of the conversation about religion among the educated British, French and American populations. But his pamphlet brought those ideas into a form that was accessible, and, as was his style, it was written without jargon. He argued that reason, rather than revelation, was the real work of god, because he, like many of the founders, was a deist who thought that god was just as subject to the working of the natural world as any other process found within it.
Deists argued that superstition was harmful and ritual and claims of miracles and the ornamentation that was part of religion was a seduction away from the use of reason and rational thought which the founders used as the basis for their claim to independence, and which the French Revolutionaries used to depose a king and the aristocrats and the religious leaders who upheld that system of spoils to the rich.
Paine claimed that original sin was the worst of the teachings of religion because such a claim was meant to hold people in psychological bondage by telling them they were not capable or worthy before they even had an opportunity to prove their ethical actions. This claim was akin to abuse - to hear from birth that you are somehow unworthy simply by the existence of your being.
I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish Church, by the Roman Church, by the Greek Church, by the Turkish Church, by the Protestant Church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church.
All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.
I do not mean by this declaration to condemn those who believe otherwise; they have the same right to their belief as I have to mine. But it is necessary to the happiness of man that he be mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving; it consists in professing to believe what he does not believe.
Paine claims all have the right to their belief, yet he attacks beliefs such as divine revelation. He attacks the history of the church - both its historical validity and its actions. He attacks the very foundations of Christianity - no matter the variation.
This is part of the history of democracy and the history of religious/political thought in the U.S. and it continues today.
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