American Freethinker: Elihu Palmer and the Struggle for Religious Freedom in the New Nation

When the United States was new, a lapsed minister named Elihu Palmer shared with his fellow Americans the radical idea that virtue required no religious foundation. A better source for morality, he said, could be found in the natural world. For this, his Christian critics denounced him as a heretic whose ideas endangered the country.



One of the most infamous American freethinkers in his day, Elihu Palmer has been largely forgotten. No cache of his personal papers exists and his book has been...