Empire and Progress in the Victorian Secularist Movement: Imagining a Secular World

196 Pages·2021·4.463 MB·English

by  Patrick J. Corbeil

HISTORIES OF THE SACRED AND SECULAR, 1700–2000
Empire and Progress
in the Victorian
Secularist Movement
Imagining a Secular World
Patrick J. Corbeil
Histories of the Sacred and Secular, 1700–2000
Series Editor
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Patrick J. Corbeil
Empire and Progress
in the Victorian
Secularist Movement
Imagining a Secular World
Patrick J. Corbeil
Victoria, BC, Canada
Histories of the Sacred and Secular, 1700–2000
ISBN 978-3-030-85201-6 ISBN 978-3-030-85202-3 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85202-3
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For AM
Acknowledgements
This book is the product of many years and too many helping hands
to adequately express my full gratitude. Special thanks to Sandra den
Otter, Andrew Jainchill, Callum Brown, Amitava Chowdhury, Jeffrey
Collins, Ana Siljak, Adnan Husain, Harold Mah, Gordon Dueck, and
Aditi Sen-Chowdhury for the support and guidance they provided. I
owe a debt of gratitude to the friendship and intellectual comradery of
my colleagues in the International Society for Historians of Atheism,
Secularism, and Humanism. In particular, Elliot Hanowski, Elizabeth
Lutgendorff,NathanAlexander,andAntonJansson.AndtoMattSheedy.
This project would not have been possible without the helpful exper-
tise of the librarians and archivists at Conway Hall, the Bishopsgate
Institute, Senate House Library, the British Library, the National Co-
Operative Archive, and the Cadbury Research Library. My thanks to
Queen’s University and the Ontario Graduate Scholarship for helping to
fund the doctoral thesis this book is based upon.
This book was completed during the COVID-19 lockdowns of 2020
and2021.Iwouldliketoexpressmysincerethankstotheeditorialstaffat
Palgrave Macmillan for accepting this manuscript for publication and for
granting me the extra time to complete it in the face of unusually trying
circumstances. I would also like to thank my colleagues and comrades at
the Alberta Advantage Podcast and the Victoria Tenants Action Group
for being hopeful and productive connections through many months of
dreary and anxious isolation.
vii
viii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thanks also to my friends, and family for their love and support over
the past decade. I owe much to Sadiqa Khan, Luka Khan-Simpson, and
Doug Nesbitt for helping to make Kingston a home to miss. To Ken
Dobie, Sheryl Yu-Dobie, Ollie and James Yu Dobie, Linda Slocombe,
Bonnie Rothwell, my aunts Linda Corbeil and Diane Dippel, and my
cousinKirstenCorbeil-SalikenandherfamilyforthesameinCalgaryand
Okotoks.Loveandgratitudetomymothers-in-law,RaineyHopewelland
Margot Johnston. Thank you for being my family.
I owe too much to the love and friendship of Melanie Chernyk to
adequately express my gratitude, so I will stick to our shared passion for
Liverpool F.C. and say You’ll Never Walk Alone.
Tomymother,SamCorbeil,mydeepestlove,andgratitudeforevery-
thing. To my father, Frank Corbeil: I miss you immensely and wish I
could share this with you in person.
Thanks to the pets who have travelled all over this country with me as
I have moved for school and work. Bunsen, Tennerman, and Turtle and
the sadly departed Edie, Ilo, Herbie, and Sully have all been the finest
companions anyone could ever hope for.
Finally, this book would have been impossible without the love and
support of my partner, Anne-Marie Bennett. She has been everything.
Partner, companion, editor, and anchor. What is good in this book has
been nurtured and sustained by her love, patience, and skilled criticism.
Any errors or omissions are entirely my own. This book is dedicated to
her.
Contents
1 Introduction 1
Holyoake and Secularism 4
Chapter Descriptions 11
2 “The Assumption of an Indian or Egyptian Priest is
just as Good, to Our Thinking, as the Assumption
of a Christian Priest”: Secularism and Comparative
Religion, Imagining a Secular World 19
Comparative Religion: Enlightenment Precursors
and Victorian Parallels 22
Freethought and the Historicizing of Christianity 29
Judaism, Freethought and Anti-Semitism 34
Islam, Religious Violence, and Secularization 43
3 Grounding Non-theological Morality: Secular Ethics
and Human Progress 57
A Moral Society of Atheists 59
Articulating the Grounds of Secular Morality 64
Eastern “Secularism” and Grounding Morality in Nature 70
Unity and Disunity in Secular Ethical Discourse 76
Conclusion 83
4 Sceptical Missionaries and Republican Internationalism 91
Secular Internationalism 94
The Secularist View of India 99
ix
x CONTENTS
Secularists and Missionaries 102
The Spectre of Violence and the Importance of Secularism
to India 106
The Oath and Education 111
5 Secularism and the Limits of Universal Progress 129
New Zealand, Emigration, and Colonial Secularism 131
Race, Humanitarianism, and the Limits of Improvement 136
Missionaries, Secularists, and Ideas of Indigenous Extinction 149
Conclusion 156
6 Conclusion 167
Index 179