Secular Humanism Beyond Progressive Secularism

Atheists and secular humanists have always been a minority in American society, and not the most popular one. There are still laws in several states preventing non-theists from holding office. Just as evangelical Protestants up until 100 years ago had a largely optimistic view of the future and the end times, known as postmillennialism, atheists had likewise expected that a pro-gressive, secular “kingdom ” would emerge as societies threw off a primitive theistic mindset and matured into educated adulthood. As historian Sidney Warren (1966:231) writes of atheist mo-vements in the 18th and 19th centuries: “Freethinkers never doubted the correctness of their posi-tion, for they viewed history as a continuous struggle between the forces of light and darkness. They were, they felt, carrying the torch of reason in an otherwise religious world of bigotry and superstition. ” As secular rationalism gained ascendancy in many American institutions, especial-ly universities, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the expectation of a widespread secular revolution was widely shared by organized humanist and atheist leaders and thinkers, as well as by scientists and educational leaders (Smith 2003). There are differing definitions of secularization, but atheists and secular humanists have historically used the term in the popular sense of naturalistic and scientific thought gaining pre