| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 106.4

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 106.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

Evelyn A. Kirkley. Rational Mothers and Infidel Gentlemen: Gender and American Atheism, 1865–1915. (Women and Gender in North American Religions.) Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press. 2000. Pp. xviii, 198. Cloth $39.95, paper $19.95.

Freethought was an outlook that rejected Christianity in favor of "rationalism," or a mix of Comtean positivism and Darwinian evolutionary thought. Its popularity peaked between 1865 and 1915. Evelyn A. Kirkley examines Freethinkers' attitudes toward gender during these years. She contests scholarly claims that most Freethinkers supported women's rights. Freethinkers believed that Christianity appealed to emotions and that irrational women were its main supporters. Hence many Freethinkers viewed irrational women as an obstacle to the triumph of Freethought. 1

Despite this consensus about female religiosity, Kirkley identifies several distinct approaches to gender in Freethought. She estimates that twenty-five percent of Freethinkers were "biological determinists" who felt that women were irrational and hence the permanent dupes of organized religion. This group supported "separate spheres." Another twenty-five percent were "historical constructionists" who felt that women's allegiance to Christianity was due to their lack of educational opportunity. They supported Free Love, rejected separate spheres, and praised masculine domesticity and the New Woman. The remaining fifty percent were what Kirkley calls "sphere synthesizers" (p. 64). This group, whose gender system Kirkley lauds as "unparalleled," retained a separation of "home" and "world" yet elevated the moral worth of the home, while insisting that men and women could freely "move between" these "spheres" (p. 66). . . .

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