A secularist church

Alongside the history of organised religion runs the history of organised irreligion.

In Britain, this history mostly began in the 1790s, when radical ideas of different kinds were circulating in the wake of the French Revolution. This was the era of Tom Paine and Charles James Fox. The Tory government was attempting to suppress dangerous tendencies which were current among people who had no more respect for God than they did for the King.

We now know that the conservatives won – Britain had no revolution, and church and state remained in place. But we know this only in hindsight.

In this piece, we will look at one experiment in radical irreligion which was attempted in the high days of the 1790s – an attempt to start a church for rationalists. This unorthodox institution was housed in a ‘Temple of Reason’ and held regular Sunday observances to rival those of the Christian denominations.

*

The story may have begun in the spring of 1796, although the timing is unclear. A committee of men held a series of meetings in Jewin Street in the City of London. Sadly, this street no longer exists – it was demolished when the Barbican was built.

Who the members of the committee were remains uncertain, although they apparently included two lawyers. We also know that a prominent member of the group was one John Nichols, a printer and the editor of the highly respectable Gentleman’s Magazine.

The committee founded a society with the innocent-sounding name of the ‘Friends of Morality’. In fact, the men were Enlightenment sceptics. The morality in which they were interested was secular morality – that was the gospel that they aimed at spreading. They were admirers of Tom Paine, who may indeed have been a supporter of theirs.

There is reason to believe that the Friends emerged out of an older group. John Nichols was a close friend of a maverick clergyman and philosopher named David Williams. Williams had emerged from the world of Welsh Protestantism, but he held Deistic views and was a fairly prominent freethinker in London in this period. He co-founded a ‘Deistic Society’, the members of which included Benjamin Franklin. It may be that this society helped to give birth to the Friends. [If you’re interested in knowing more about David Williams and his beliefs, see this Deist Evensong liturgy which he composed for his congregation.]

Once the Friends had been formed, they needed somewhere to meet. They appear to have had difficulty persuading a landlord to rent them premises. As a result, they ended up leasing John Nichols’ own sale room: the rent was reportedly £20 per year (more like £2,000 today). This became their ‘Temple of Reason’. According to one account, this was not their first home: it may be that they had previously been meeting, since late 1795, at a ‘Temple of Reason and Humanity’ which was located a mile or two away on Wych Street in Westminster.

Nichols’ premises for the Temple were situated in a narrow passage called White Horse Court, just off Whitecross Street – a street in Islington which was distinguished for its drink-shops and a meat market. It is still the venue of quite a good food market today.

The opening of the Temple was announced by the posting of bills. The main function of the Temple was to host talks, although members also donated books, or even wrote them specially for other patrons. There was an argument about whether speakers should be paid. Eventually, it was agreed that they should be given a fee of half a guinea (c. £55 today). This had been resisted on the grounds of élitism.

The contents of the talks delivered at the Temple have not, for the most part, been preserved. There is one surviving report from a government spy who attended a debate there. This event brought together two prominent radicals of the day, Richard Hodgson and John Gale Jones.

Some members thought that only morality should be spoken about at the Temple. It seems, however, that this faction did not prevail, and that speakers also delivered lectures on religion advocating Deism. A critical but well-informed source [William Hamilton Reid, a reactionary author writing in The Rise and Dissolution of the Infidel Societies in this Metropolis] states:

….[T]he lectures there delivered were generally compiled from the writings of Voltaire, David Williams, and other [anti-Christian] authors…. [F]rom the opening of the place, from ten in the morning till one, and on the Sunday afternoon, till the moment of the commencement of the lectures, the time was invariably spent in sarcastic or facetious conversation, across the tables, between the members; and, from the noisy approbation this entertainment occasionally produced, it was difficult to determine, whether amusement or astonishment preponderated in the minds of the audience at large.

In similar vein, one clergyman claimed that the lectures were marred by a “want of a reverent behaviour in those who delivered them, as in others that heard them”. [The source is Rev. Joseph Nightingale, London and Middlesex, although Nightingale was writing in 1815 and it is not clear where he got his information from.]

Another source, Nichols’ Gentleman’s Magazine, reported: “It must be acknowledged that some very good Lectures were delivered… with uncommon force and accuracy”. This source should not, of course, be regarded as unbiased.

At any rate, the Temple did not prosper. Attendances fell, and there was apparently an incident involving hostile intruders. The Seditious Meetings Act, a repressive measure of the Tory government which had been passed in December 1795, may also have played a part.

The Temple was closed temporarily, and this temporary closure then became permanent – although there is evidence that an attempt may have been made to set up a similar society in a port city in the west of England (Bristol?).

*

The Temple of Reason is a kind of road not taken for the British freethinking movement.

The Friends of Morality had high ambitions: they apparently hoped that St Paul’s Cathedral might eventually be made into a Temple of Reason, much as the French revolutionaries had repurposed Notre Dame and other churches across France for their Festival of Reason (Fête de la Raison) in 1793.

It turned out, however, that the time was not yet ripe for rationalist ideas. The 1790s may be seen as a period in which freethinking gained some traction in British society but failed to make lasting headway. Interest in anti-Christian radicalism was not sustained, whether because of government hostility or because of simple apathy. The freethought movement revived to some extent by the 1840s, but it was perhaps only in the 1860s and 70s that it became a real force in the cultural mainstream.

Nevertheless, the Temple of Reason remains a curious episode in British religious and intellectual history – one which should not be forgotten. If you ever find yourself on Whitecross Street, spare a thought for what might have been.