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The Truth Seeker D.M. Bennett: the nineteenth century's most controversial publisher and American Free-Speech Martyr.

Article Excerpt
We honestly believe Christianity to be false, to be the greatest sham in



the world, without truth in its history, without loveliness in its doctrines, without benefit to the human race. --D.M. Bennett

"Mr. Bennett was a deeply religious man," a close friend declared at the dedication of the monument erected to honor the founder of The Truth Seeker.

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This sounds preposterous considering D.M. Bennett was nineteenth-century America's most outspoken, relentless, and notorious critic of Christianity. The woman went on to explain her provocative statement by quoting Thomas Paine's motto: "To do good is my religion." If that was Paine's highest work she asserted, it made it his religion. "It is in this sense that Mr. Bennett was a religious man; and if we measure his religion by the measure of his devotion to his work, he was a deeply religious man."

DeRobigne Mortimer Bennett (1818-1882) was arguably the most revered and reviled publisher-editor during the Gilded Age. In 1873, at the beginning of the anti-religion campaign in America, Bennett founded The Truth Seeker and devoted it to Science, Morals, Freethought, and Human Happiness. The editor, like many of his fellow freethinkers, was a former devout Christian who retained a good deal of the religion's moral spirit. Bennett opposed dogmatic religion and took great pride in debunking the Bible, exposing hypocritical clergymen, and reminding Americans that the Government of the United States was "not in any sense founded on the Christian religion." He argued that Abraham Lincoln and many of the founding fathers were, like Thomas Paine, deists or infidels; the most noteworthy were Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and George Washington.

In the nineteenth century, the United States was predominantly orthodox Christian. The Church had overwhelming power and influenced or controlled nearly every aspect of American citizens' lives. Anyone courageous enough to question religion, let alone criticize in print the ubiquitous and powerful Christian institutions or their influential leaders, was regarded as an enemy of god and/or peculiar. Opponents of religion were referred to by a variety of names: atheists, agnostics, infidels, or, as they preferred, liberals or freethinkers, and were often ostracized or persecuted. There were still blasphemy laws on the books in some states, though seldom enforced. Bennett, however, was arrested after publishing his "An Open Letter to Jesus Christ"--the first of three arrests.

The period from 1776 to the late nineteenth century was a paradoxical era in the United States. Americans boasted about their freedom for all citizens, but tolerated slavery. A country proclaiming law and order, it often suffered violent mob rule. A nation proudly hailing its freedom of speech, it enforced puritanical laws and church-sponsored censorship. America, however, was also home to a minority of reform-minded citizens trying to enlighten and change the rigid and intolerant religionist majority still clinging to archaic superstitions.

Throughout his life (he lived to be nearly sixty-four), Bennett was involved with controversial movements, but it was only in his last decade that he became a lightning rod for controversy while publishing The Truth Seeker. He spent the first half of his life as a member of the United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearing, more commonly known as the Shakers. Bennett was a ministry-appointed journalist and physician during the celibate sect's most...

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