Epilogue: Secularism as Modern Secularity

In 1910, just four years after Holyoake’s death, the Hastings Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics included an entry on Secularism, but one that fell under the heading of Atheism. Within the subheading of Secularism, the 1910 edition rather sloppily announced the equivalence of Holyoake’s and Bradlaugh’s Secularism on the grounds of atheism, and professed both to be mistaken and problematic because they had relied on negation rather than the positing of distinct values. While Holyoake, Bradlaugh, and company surely had reasons for their hostilities and vituperations, they were essentially locked in a position of denunciation from which nothing positive could emerge.1 Thus the revision of Secularism was well underway and Holyoake’s particular contribution, in fact his construction of Secularism itself, was effectively erased and overwritten, as the two currents of Secularism were conflated.