Progress

Robert Green Ingersoll delivered his first speech, ‘Progress,’ in 1860, just before the American Civil War, in which he would serve with distinction. He was 27 years old and had been a lawyer in Illinois for six years.

The United States was then the second largest slaveholding power in the world. Human trafficking was both the law of the land and the foundation of the economy, not only in the South, but also in the North, where the Fugitive Slave Acts were enforced.

Slavery had been upheld continuously by the US Constitution and by every branch of government. It was the origin of the stock market. It colored every dollar in circulation and corrupted every inheritance. It was the basis of leisure and prosperity and the myth of the Protestant work ethic.

Slavery drove down wages for white workers because they felt superior to enslaved people and did not want to do the same jobs. In effect they accepted less compensation in exchange for the illusion of superiority.

And slavery was the means of production for the most important industrial commodity on earth at the time: cotton.

Under these conditions, it took a leap of creativity and compassion for any person born free, whose prospects for leisure and advancement depended on enslaving other people, to imagine a better way.

Slavery’s defenders argued that things were the same way they always had been. They said the status quo was absolutely indispensable to civilization. And they made a vigorous case.

Ingersoll was led by his education, his creativity and his compassion to make the opposite case. He argued that slavery, far from being the cornerstone of civilization, was in fact the fatal flaw of any nation that practiced it.

When the Civil War broke out, he did everything he could to prove this true: raising troops for the Union Army, serving as an officer until his capture, and risking everything to defeat the Confederacy and create an opportunity for a better nation to emerge.

We know today the results were mixed, and they still are. We know southern conservatives did everything they could after the war to keep formerly enslaved people in a condition of involuntary servitude, and they still do.

We know the work of healing our intergenerational trauma is still incomplete, and we know it probably always will be. But if we are Americans, if we are patriots, if we want liberty and justice for all our neighbors as much as we do for ourselves, then I think we know Ingersoll was a century and a half ahead of his time. And we should strive to be as far ahead of ours.

As many states have depended on slavery, so have many churches. In such nations church and state are always joined at the hip. The state upholds public trust in the economy, and the church upholds public trust in the state.

The basis of civilization is labor. Politics is how a state resolves conflicts of interest between those who direct labor and those who perform it. That is, between cities and rural communities, between blue-collar and white-collar workers, between those who have education and those who do not, between those who have the most, those who have the least and everyone in between.

And when those who have the most selfishly exploit every microcultural misunderstanding to make sure the most remains in their own children’s hands then there is a tendency to decadent collapse.

The fewer rights the labor class has, the freer the leisure class feels it is by comparison, but actually they are less free because they are under even more pressure to suppress labor.

The less freedom the leisure class has, the freer the labor class feels by comparison. The fewer rights the labor class has, the less loyal they will be to civilization in a crisis.

The less opportunity working people’s children have to join the leisure class, the more violence they will do to the leisure class when they get the opportunity and the more knowledge they will destroy in their ignorance.

In accordance with the idea that labor is the basis of all prosperity and happiness, to have a sustainable civilization, the laborer and the thinker must both be happy, and to be happy, must both be free.

In a theocracy there is no freedom either of mind or body.

Instead there is a cult of ignorance, and the church stewards the reservoir of public ignorance as a political resource in service to the state. The laborers are paid as little as possible by their employers, the state helps the employers pay even less, and the church helps the laborers accept their lot. There is no public investment in science, art or education. There are none of these things unless they help the wealthy keep their wealth.

And thus the thinkers in a theocracy are kept busy managing public ignorance instead of developing public knowledge. Wealth concentrates in fewer and fewer hands. Living standards get worse and worse while intellects are ever more cloistered by creeds and commandments.

Ignorance becomes the fabric of society. Spectacle becomes the foundation. Violence becomes the law.

It is almost impossible for most of us today to imagine how bad a theocracy can get.

We can only dimly understand by reading primary historical sources: the laws that used to be in force, the means by which they were enforced, the experiences of the victims and the beliefs of the enforcers.

When Christians first got the idea of religious freedom, they wielded it with the utmost hypocrisy. It was not a freedom they respected for others, it was a freedom they wanted all for themselves.

It was believed that troubled political times were God’s punishment come upon the community because there were too many unbelievers among the flock.

Thus it became necessary to test the faithful, to determine by trial who was a true believer and who was not.

As violence was the normal method of God’s punishment, so it was the normal method of trial.

A trial in those days was state violence administered by a church. And everyone, at least everyone in power, thought that was the only way to have a society.

Therefore, when someone in the Middle Ages suggested freedom of religion in Europe, typically they were persecuted, to the death if possible.

And the persecutors spoke of loving their enemies.

As a matter of fact whenever someone in Christendom suggested tolerating a diversity of opinion he was labeled an atheist, a heretic and an apostate, if not a witch or a wizard. Then they would be publicly tortured into recanting their sincere opinion, praising Jesus Christ and thanking the torturers for their trouble before they were allowed to die.

And then the church would take all their property and leave their family with nothing like it says in the 109th Psalm.

Christ told his followers to submit to violence. His followers told their followers, many of whom were slaves, to obey their masters like Christ himself.

And to ensure continual compliance, these good shepherds spoiled their flocks and traumatized them.

Spoiled them with unrealistic fantasies of living happily ever after atop other people’s misery.

Traumatized them with irrational phobias of fates worse than death.

Even these promises and threats were not enough to suppress the natural diversity of opinion without bringing fates worse than death into reality.

Whenever there was a natural disaster that affected the ruling class, the ruling class found it necessary to root out unbelievers and subject them to a fate worse than death in the town square. This served to keep people from questioning the social order, and everyone with a legal background thought it was the basis of civilization.

Whenever a man wanted to get rid of his wife all he had to do was call her a witch. The judges and jury would all be men, men financially supported by the husband. It would be her word against his and his word was worth more.

That is what happens with misogyny when men believe God is a man.

And whenever economic stress affected the working class, the working class also made scapegoats.

That is what happens with wealth inequality when everyone believes their social position is a gift from God.

As late as the 1800s people were still trying to get prosperity for their communities by bribing their God with ritual violence against his political opponents.

They told themselves they were better than other religions that practiced human sacrifice. They told themselves what they did to heretics and heathens was not that.

And all this time, what was really ruining their lives was the wealth inequality.

It was the regressive tax policy.

All this time the church stewarded public ignorance like a political resource. Which it was.

When the miraculous is expected around every corner, then nothing ordinary is worth retelling, nothing is too absurd to be believed, and no doubt is safe to explore.

Imagine the only thing you know about language is that all languages have the same ancestor.

This is not true, but it is what the Bible teaches. The Bible teaches that the first language was Hebrew.

Science does not begin without ending false facts such as these. And false facts such as these do not end without science.

Churches rely on false facts and public ignorance.

That is the cause of theocracy.

When a state relies on a church for legitimacy, that is the definition.

And the conclusion of theocracy is abject poverty multiplying out of control until the whole earth is used up and uninhabitable.

The advocates of theocracy claim that it gives meaning to their lives.

It gives their lives the same meaning that a vampire has.

We know history does not move in a straight line.

We know it does not necessarily arc towards justice.

We know that is up to us.

And I believe we still can.

Background art:

Daniel Interpreting to Belshazzar the Writing on the Wall, Benjamin West, 1776, St. Louis Art Museum.
Hanging Gardens of Babylon, Unknown author, 1850, Wikimedia Commons.
Pope Urban II preaching the First Crusade, Francesco Hayez, 1835, Gallerie di Piazza Scala.
Taking of Jerusalem by the Crusaders, 15th July 1099, Emile Signol, 1847, Palace of Versailles.
Interrogations in Jail, Alessandro Magnasco, c. 1710-1720, Kunsthistorisches Museum.
The Inquisition, Joaquin Pinto, Unknown date, Wikimedia Commons.
William Farel, John Calvin, Theodore Beza, and John Knox on Reformation Wall in Geneva, Switzerland, 1909, Wikimedia Commons.
Sebastian Castellio, 1515-1563, Unknown artist, Wikimedia Commons.
Portrait of Montaigne, Unknown artist, 1590, Wikimedia Commons.
Leaflet about a witch burning in Derenburg, 1559. R. Decker, Hexen, p. 52
The Inquisition Tribunal, Francisco Goya, c. 1808-1812.
Macbeth and Banquo meeting the witches on the heath, Theodore Chasseriau, 1855, Wikimedia Commons.
Exorcism, unknown artist, 1370.
An Arrest for Witchcraft in the Olden Time, John Pettie, 1866, Wolverhampton Art Gallery.
Macbeth and the Witches, Sir Joshua Reynolds, 1786, nationaltrustcollections.org/uk.
The ordeal of Cuningunde, proving her innocence of adultery, Franz Carl Stauder, 1708.
A Tale from the Decameron, John William Waterhouse, 1916, Wikimedia Commons.
Belshazzar’s Feast, John Martin, 1821, Yale Center for British Art
Balaam’s Ass, Gustave Dore, 1866.
The Confusion of Tongues, Gustave Dore, c. 1865-1868.
Robin Hood And His Merry Men Entertaining Richard the Lionheart in Sherwood Forest, Daniel Maclise, 1839.
Oliver Twist, 1948, IMDB.
Frederick Douglass, George Kendall Warren, c. 1879, Wikimedia Commons.
Erstlingsbild, Johann Valentin Haidt, 1747.
Lee Surrendering to Grant at Appomattox, Alonzo Chappel, c. 1870.
Revival service at Presbyterian church in Evergreen, AL, April 7, 1927.