Holyoake and Secularism: The Emergence of ‘Positive’ Freethought

The facts about George Jacob Holyoake’s founding and early leadership of Secularism have been well documented. Yet, to date, Secularism has not been appreciated for its significance in terms of general secularism or modern secularization. In this chapter, I aim to explore Secularism not so much for its success or lack thereof at converting religious believers to its fold, or in terms of its institutional structures and organizational apparatuses. Social historians of Secularism, especially Edward Royle, have done well to demonstrate in great detail such social facts about Secularism.1 Instead, my focus will be on Secularism as a particular cultural and intellectual formation or constellation. I am interested in Secularism as a historic signpost for what it can tell us about the configuration of the elements involved in its construction, the secular and the religious, and how these interacted with each other and other factors under Secularism’s banner. My approach to the structure of Secularism thus lies somewhere between cultural history, intellectual history, and cultural critique. I look for what Secularism can reveal about its historicity as a cultural, intellectual, religious, and social development and what that development suggests about the configuration of what we now understand as modern secularity.