Debating societies [ Clubs & Societies / Associational culture ]
… offered opportunities for discussing topics rarely, if ever, treated elsewhere, such as deism and the criticism of Christianity; Mary Thale suggests that the danger of prosecution for blasphemy must have contributed to the excitement of … ( Thale, ‘Deists, Papists and Methodists’). In the Robin Hood Society in the 1750s and 1760, some speakers attacked Christianity as a fraud and praised deism, thus giving plebeian audiences access to deist thought they could not …
Advertisement | Clubs | Debate | Eloquence | Gender | Middling sort | North America | Politics | Public sphere
Encyclopedia