Yesterday, I talked about Shakers. At least a handful of Mother Ann Lee's followers came from Manchester in 1774, but the movement really grew in upstate New York. A large portion of upstate New York is known as the 'Burned-Over District', because the fires of the Second Great Awakening left no church, meetinghouse, or farm unaffected by religious fervour.

An awful lot of religious movements originated in this area:

• The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, or Mormons: Joseph Smith said he found the golden plates of the Book of Mormon somewhere near Palmyra, New York.
• The Millerites: William Miller said the apocalypse would come on 22 October, 1844. It, er, didn't. This was known as the Great Disappointment. The Millerite movement inspired the founding of Seventh-Day Adventists, Jehovah's Witnesses, and the International Bible Students. These groups, oddly, were on the Nazis' hit list, and members suffered under the Third Reich. The Jehovah's Witnesses are also a sore point in Greece, because a former PM's wife was one, and achieved official tolerance for her group in a country that is about 98% Eastern Orthodox. The sight of people selling Greek-language Watchtowers in Athens used to be fairly common. All thanks to people in upstate New York.
• Spiritualism (or Spiritism): The Fox sisters took to having table-rapping séances in 1848, mainly to annoy their parents. The resulting movement spread worldwide and will not go away. It's even infiltrated popular culture. You can go up to Lilydale, New York, and patronise mediums to this day. A work colleague of mine used to do it every year because of family connections.
• The Shakers: We've talked about them.
• The Oneida Society: They were a very early hippie commune. They practiced group marriage. Partners chosen by committee. The mind boggles. . .

The Burned-Over District was also home to a lot of revolutionary thought. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, from Seneca Falls, was an influential early feminist. The Social Gospel movement started in Rochester, New York (where it is still sorely needed). On the domestic terrorism side, the Hunter Patriots threatened to invade Canada in the 1830s. (Don't ask, unless you're Florida Sailor and want to write the Guide Entry.)

With all that going on, no wonder Robert Ingersoll rebelled. He became a Freethinker, also known as an agnostic. Ingersoll's dad was a preacher, and seems to have been a kind man who was badly treated by his congregation (and his wife). This left a mark on Ingersoll, a very bright kid who grew up to be a great professional orator, sort of a stand-up philosopher. Among his favourite lecture topics was challenging everyone in the audience on their rather fuzzy religious beliefs.

Some people have called Ingersoll an 'atheist'. I disagree, because I have read what he said. He was an 'agnostic', meaning 'y'all don't know all the things you think you do, and I bet you haven't even read that book.' Or similar. Contemporaries described Ingersoll and his brothers as 'deists', and not in a good way. A lot of the Founders were deists, so Ingersoll was 100% American in that. In other words, he poked holes in fuzzy thinking, and had his own ideas, which weren't any weirder than anybody else's, particularly if 'anybody else' was in upstate New York. (My parents moved up there for awhile, and the place gave me the heebie-jeebies. I think there are malicious theology-arguing pixies in the Finger Lakes.) Ingersoll was famous in his day, and bothered a lot of people. Ambrose Bierce defined the Second Commandment (in his Devil's Dictionary) as 'No images nor idols make/for Robert Ingersoll to break.' So: he was an iconoclast, was Robert.

Robert was also unwittingly responsible for the writing of Ben Hur. All those bad movies? His fault. Why? He sat down and talked to General Lew Wallace during a long train trip, and after that, the general was so 'humbled' by his own inability to counter Ingersoll's arguments about the historicity of the New Testament that he determined to do his own research. . . result: chariot races, on stage. . . bad, bad acting. . . if there are Razzies in Heaven, this pair will share one. . .

Robert Ingersoll probably wasn't the only person who got sick and tired of all these warring religious groups. Pretty soon, there was a group calling themselves 'atheists' or 'agnostics'. It being upstate New York, of course they organised. What did you expect?

Okay, But What About Hymns? Atheists Don't Have Hymnals, Right?

Did you ever wonder how 'pansy' got to be a derogatory term? Ha. The freethought movement's symbol was the pansy, because pensée=thought. And of course, any kind of reasonable or tolerant thinking is. . . well, it's just so gay. . .

Like everybody else in the 19th-century West, freethinkers had to have somewhere to go on Sunday. Some of them went to the Unitarian Church. I once made a fellow grad student livid by explaining Unitarian belief as, 'If there is a God, there's only one of Him.' But her fiancé, a Unitarian seminarian, laughed and said that was spot-on. So there. But some freethinkers just got together in freethinking meetings. And yes, yes, I'm getting to the hymnal.

Not all Freethinkers were English speakers, by the way. Clemens Vonnegut was the first president of the Indianapolis, Indiana, German Freethinker Society, begun in 1870. Clemens Vonnegut was Kurt Vonnegut's great-grandfather.

Okay, okay. Yes, they had Sunday Schools, these Freethinkers. And they had hymnbooks. To paraphrase a modern saying: 'Why should the Bible thumpers have all the good tunes?'

Some Freethinking Hymns

Here's a hymnbook I found. It's called the Truth Seeker Collection. The Truth Seeker was a Freethinker newspaper. This hymnbook is subtitled 'For the Use of Liberals'. So this argument has been going on for a long time, folks. . . and you know about arguments. You can 't have one unless you agree on the battleground. So don't tell me they aren't arguing over the same things, and on the same terms. Which probably explains why most of these hymns use the same tunes as the ones the others are singing in their assemblies. . .

Remember the Metrical Index of Tunes? Use it yourself to find suitable tunes for these gems of Liberal Hymns.

Here are some titbits:

SCIENCE.

8, 8, 6 M.


Science! thou fair effusive ray,

From the great source of mental day,


Free, gen'rous and refin'd;

Descend with all thy treasures fraught.

Illumine each bewildered thought,

And bless my laboring mind.


But first, with thy resistless light.

Disperse those phantoms from my sight


Those mimic shades of thee:

The scholiast's learning, sophist's cant,

The visionary bigot's rant,


The monk's philosophy.


O! let thy powerful charm impart

The patient head, the candid heart.


Devoted to thy sway;

Which no weak passions e'er mislead.

Which still with dauntless steps proceed


Where reason points the way.

I'm sure that was very inspiring. Oh, do they have patriotic songs, you ask? Why, sure. I've just run across the Marseillaise in there. Once I stop laughing, I'll find you another hymn. Ah. . . this is pure bliss. . . the virtue of positive thinking, and you know the tune. . .

I'LL FIND A WAY.


Tune: British Grenadiers


It was a noble Roman,

In Rome's imperial day,

Who heard a coward croaker

Before the battle, say,

'They're safe in such a fortress;


There is no way to shake it'

'Hold on!" exclaimed the hero,

'I'll find a way, or make it.'


Is fame your aspiration?

Her path is steep and high;

In vain you seek the temple,

Content to gaze and sigh;

The shining throne is waiting,


But he alone can take it.

Who says, with Roman firmness,

'I'll find a way, or make it!'

Oh, Aunt Nelly. Why does this stuff remind me of Disney musicals? 'Follow your heart.'
Okay, go rummage in there yourselves. See what you find. Report the best ones. Maybe we can form a h2g2 chorus.

Moral of this story: everybody organises, and crows about whatever they believe. And everybody sounds silly to somebody else. Give each other some elbow room, and admit you don't know everything. And never, ever, talk a retired general into writing an inspirational novel.