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What the Muslim world can learn from Tunisia
Atide workshop for the Tunisia Elections, October 2014. Photo: Emna Mizouni, via Wikimedia Commons On July 25, Tunisia approved its new constitution via referendum. 94.6 per cent of the voters...
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Bad Religious Education
Adoph Tidemand, Low Church Devotion (1848). Source: National Museum of Art, Architecture and design, Norway, via Wikimedia Commons Some stakeholders in the world of religious education believe that RE...
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History Month at the Freethinker
Front window of Leicester’s Secular Hall (opened April 1881), with Freethinker poster. Image: E. Park September is History Month at the Freethinker. We shall be publishing articles that consider...
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The resurgence of enlightenment in southern India: interview with Bhavan...
On 21st July, on behalf of the Freethinker, I attended the first screening of Vivesini, a southern Indian film by Laburnum Productions. Below is an interview which I conducted via email with the...
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Gay conversion therapy: how to reform the law
Cartoon by Peter WElleman (2008) via Wikimedia Commons In December 2021 the UK government announced plans for a Bill to end conversion therapy. The plans were withdrawn in early 2022, following...
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Freethought and birth control: the untold story of a Victorian book depot
This article was first given as a paper at ‘Freethought in the Long Nineteenth Century’, a conference held at Queen Mary University of London on 9-10 September 2022. Victorian Birth Control appliances...
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Long live King Charles . . . but will the British monarchy survive?
Is the British monarchy now on life support? Cartoon by Polyp. September 2022 has brought a new Prime Minister and a new monarch to Britain. Neither of them seems, on the face of it, a likely...
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Is all publicity good publicity? How the first editor of the Freethinker...
G.W. Foote, portrait in the SEcular Chronicle, 1878 In an early Freethinker editorial, George W. Foote commented that ‘The public now-a-days is in a great hurry, you must attract its attention before...
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Britain’s blasphemy heritage
The Freethinker’s themes of ‘history’ and ‘civil liberties’ this September and October provide an opportunity to reflect upon the crime which has regularly tripped up atheists, agnostics, freethinkers...
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Secularisation and Protestantism in the 2021 Northern Ireland Census
Ballyhackamore gospel hall, Belfast. Image: Albert Bridge via Wikimedia Commons One morning I found myself at a bus stop in the suburbs of East Belfast, feeling rather disconcerted. Next to me on the...
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The rediscovery of cremation in Italy and Germany
The first official cremation in Italy, at the Cimitero Maggiore, Milan. L’Illustrazione Italiana 14 (1876), 212. In January 1876, an unprecedented event took place at Milan’s Cimitero Maggiore:...
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‘Proving atheism’– talk by AC Grayling, Honorary President of Atheism UK
IMage: Atheism UK AC Grayling, the newly elected Honorary President of Atheism UK, will be giving a talk on ‘Proving Atheism’ at Conway Hall, London, on Tuesday 29th November 2022 at 19:30. Tickets...
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Charles Bradlaugh and George Jacob Holyoake: their contrasting reputations as...
Originally given as a paper to the Leicester Secular Society, 11 September 2022 George Jacob HOlyoake and Charles Bradlaugh when young. Introduction Bradlaugh and Holyoake were the two men under whose...
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Freethought in the 21st century
How might the history of freethought inspire its development in the 21st century? I was recently interviewed by Christoph De Spiegeleer via Zoom about the history of freethought and open enquiry and...
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Assisted dying: will the final freedom be legalised in France?
This is a translation of the French original, which follows below. Supporters of the ‘final freedom’ in France. Image: Libre Pensée Since the beginning of the 2000s, while the Netherlands and Belgium...
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Religious Privilege 2 : 0 Pastafarians
The Freethinker has previously discussed attempts by Pastafarians in Austria, the Netherlands and elsewhere to achieve the same rights and privileges as recognised religions – or at least to undermine...
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Secularism in Nigeria: can it succeed?
Still from the Youtube recording of a Christian witchhunting event in Ibadan, Nigeria, 25 November 2022. Nigeria’s secularism is faltering. Sadly, it holds little hope for Africa’s largest democracy,...
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Freethought and secularism
Cover of the Centenary issue of the Freethinker, May 1981, with contributions by notable humanists Harold Blackham and Margaret Knight, and Dora, the second wife of Bertrand Russell. Chapman Cohen’s...
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What is ‘religion’? Strasbourg and the Pastafarians again
‘The glorious appearing of Jesus to the Nephites‘ (one of the four groups of settlers of the ancient Americas from Jerusalem, according to the Book of Mormon). Illustration from The Story of the book...
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Freethinker talk on Pastafarianism: Central London Humanists, 16 March
‘With you always’, by Polyp. Original here. Is Pastafarianism a parody or a religion? What is a ‘religion’ anyway? Can an internet movement originally intended as a joke be used to challenge the...
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