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[[File:Herbert Spencer.jpg|thumbnail|right|200px|[[Herbert Spencer]] ]]

[[File:Herbert Spencer.jpg|thumbnail|right|200px|[[Herbert Spencer]] ]]

Susan Jacoby wrote in her book ''Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism'' about the Golden Age of Freethought:

Susan Jacoby wrote in her book ''Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism'' about the Golden Age of Freethought:

{{Cquote|To describe the last quarter of the nineteenth and the first decade of the twentieth centuries as a golden age of freethought is to suggest not that a majority of Americans were persuaded by rationalist or antireligious arguments but that those arguments reached a much broader public than they ever had in the past. Unlike eighteenth-century [[Deism|deists]], nearly all of whom identified with [[Thomas Jefferson|Jeffersonian]] [[democracy]], American freethinkers of the late nineteenth century were anything but unified in their political views, which ran the gamut from anarchism to [[Herbert Spencer|Spencerian]] [[conservatism]]. Freethinkers might be Democrats, rock-ribbed Republicans, or, on occasion, socialists with either a capital or a small s.

{{Cquote|To describe the last quarter of the nineteenth and the first decade of the twentieth centuries as a golden age of freethought is to suggest not that a majority of Americans were persuaded by rationalist or antireligious arguments but that those arguments reached a much broader public than they ever had in the past. Unlike eighteenth-century [[Deism|deists]], nearly all of whom identified with [[Thomas Jefferson|Jeffersonian]] [[democracy]], American freethinkers of the late nineteenth century were anything but unified in their political views, which ran the gamut from [[anarchism]] to [[Herbert Spencer|Spencerian]] [[conservatism]]. Freethinkers might be Democrats, rock-ribbed Republicans, or, on occasion, socialists with either a capital or a small s.

The one political concern that did unite all freethinkers was their support for absolute [[separation of church and state]], which translated into opposition to any tax support of religious institutions-especially parochial schools. For the most part, tax support of religious schools had been a nonissue on a national basis before the Civil War-although New York City's Catholic leadership had pushed unsuccessfully in the 1840s for government subsidy, long established in many European countries, of religious education. By the 1870s, when the growth of the older [[Ireland|Irish]] [[Catholicism|Catholic]] community and new immigration from the Catholic countries of [[Europe]] began to transform the ethnic and religious makeup of most large cities, the financing of parochial school education became a divisive issue throughout the country.<ref>[http://www.beliefnet.com/faiths/secular-philosophies/the-golden-age-of-freethought.aspx The Golden Age of Freethought], Beliefnet</ref>}}

The one political concern that did unite all freethinkers was their support for absolute [[separation of church and state]], which translated into opposition to any tax support of religious institutions-especially parochial schools. For the most part, tax support of religious schools had been a nonissue on a national basis before the Civil War-although New York City's Catholic leadership had pushed unsuccessfully in the 1840s for government subsidy, long established in many European countries, of religious education. By the 1870s, when the growth of the older [[Ireland|Irish]] [[Catholicism|Catholic]] community and new immigration from the Catholic countries of [[Europe]] began to transform the ethnic and religious makeup of most large cities, the financing of parochial school education became a divisive issue throughout the country.<ref>[http://www.beliefnet.com/faiths/secular-philosophies/the-golden-age-of-freethought.aspx The Golden Age of Freethought], Beliefnet</ref>}}