America's Secular Church

It is surprising to learn that Thomas Paine, the roving revolutionary and pamphleteer for American independence, was the patron saint of an eclectic assortment of nineteenth -- and twentieth -- century free -- thinking, agnostic, atheistic, humanistic, and secular individuals and organizations who wanted not just for the old religions to wither and die but to found a new "religion of humanity, a church of humanity," that would replace them. "The world is my country, to do good my religion" had written the founding father of American free thought, and a number of Americans followed in his footsteps.