American Freethinker: Elihu Palmer and the Struggle for R...
Fischer, Kirsten / Mcnamara, Nan
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...