Remarks by Susan Jacoby at Trinity College

Inauguration of the Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture

November 2, 2005

I am delighted and honored to help inaugurate the work of this much-needed institute for the exploration of secularism. …

There is no question that secularism and rationalism are in trouble in the United States, and it is most ironic that this should be so in the nation that gave the world its first secular government, by way of a Constitution that deliberately omitted any mention of God and instead ceded supreme authority to "We the People." …       

So what is secularism? I cannot supply any definition better than the one offered in 1888 by Robert Green Ingersoll, known as "the Great Agnostic" and the most famous orator in late nineteenth century America. "Secularism teaches us to be good here and now," Ingersoll said. "I know nothing better than goodness. Secularism teaches us to be just here and now. It is impossible to be juster than just. Man can be as just in this world as in any other, and justice must be the same in all worlds. Secularism teaches a man to be generous, and generosity is certainly as good here as it can be anywhere else. Secularism teaches a man to be charitable, and certainly charity is as beautiful in this world as it could be if man were immortal." …

I really prefer the old-fashioned "freethought" to secularism, because it seems to me that the combination of the words "free" and "thought" requires no definition and embodies the hope of a society founded not on dreams of justice in heaven but on the best human, rational possibilities for a more just earth. And one of the great weaknesses of secularism in America today is that there is no one who speaks to Americans with the combination of passion and rationalism that characterized the great nineteenth-century freethinkers.