Deism

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the idea that God created the universe and then left it for humans to understand by reason not revelation. Edward Herbert, 1583-1648 (pictured above) held that there were five religious truths: belief in a Supreme Being, the need to worship him, the pursuit of a virtuous life as the best form of worship, repentance, and reward or punishment after death. Others developed these ideas in different ways, yet their opponents in England’s established Church collected them under the label of Deists, called Herbert the Father of Deism and attacked them as a movement, and Deist books were burned. Over time, reason and revelation found a new balance in the Church in England, while Voltaire and Thomas Paine explored the ideas further, leading to their re-emergence in the French and American Revolutions.

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Guests

• Richard Serjeantson No other episodes
  Fellow and Lecturer in History at Trinity College, Cambridge
• Katie East No other episodes
  Lecturer in History at Newcastle University
• Thomas Ahnert No other episodes
  Professor of Intellectual History at the University of Edinburgh

Reading list

• The Pillars of Priestcraft Shaken: The Church of England and its Enemies, 1660-1730
  Justin Champion (Cambridge University Press, 1992)
• Republican Learning: John Toland and the Crisis of Christian Culture, 1696-1722
  Justin Champion (Manchester University Press, 2003)
• 'Religion' and the Religions in the English Enlightenment
  Peter Harrison (Cambridge University Press, 1990)
• The English Deists: Studies in Early Enlightenment
  Wayne Hudson (Routledge, 2008)
• Enlightenment and Modernity: The English Deists and Reform
  Wayne Hudson (Routledge, 2009)
• Deism: An Anthology
  Peter Gay (ed.) (Van Nostrand, 1968)
• Collected Writings
  Thomas Paine (ed. Eric Foner) (Library of America, 1995)
• Enlightenment: Britain and the Creation of the Modern World
  Roy Porter (Allen Lane, 2000)
• The Religious Enlightenment: Protestants, Jews, and Catholics from London to Vienna
  David Sorkin (Princeton University Press, 2011)
• A Secular Age
  Charles Taylor (Harvard University Press, 2007)
• Christianity not Mysterious: Text, Associated Works and Critical Essays
  John Toland (eds. Philip McGuinness, Alan Harrison and Richard Kearney) (Lilliput Press, 1997)
• Voltaire and the English Deists
  N. L. Torrey (Yale University Press, 1930)
• The American Deists: Voices of Reason and Dissent in the Early Republic
  Kerry S. Walters (University Press of Kansas, 1992)
• Revolutionary Deists: Early America's Rational Infidels
  Kerry S. Walters (Prometheus Books, 2011)
• Deism in Enlightenment England: Theology, Politics, and Newtonian Public Science
  Jeffrey R. Wigelsworth (Manchester University Press, 2009)

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Programme ID: m000n47b

Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000n47b

Auto-category: 210 (Philosophy of Religion)

Hello (First sentence from this episode)

Hello. In 17th century England, the public hangman would burn banned books.