Atheism and activism: the life and work of Eliza Mowry Bliven.

"Women are the mothers of all the men; and the men will think wrong, choose wrong, and do wrong till the women gain common-sense enough to quit believing and teaching religious follies; and instead, teach from the cradle all through boyhood the real humanitarian principles that underlie all morality, justice, and good citizenship." -Eliza Mowry Bliven, "What Women Ought to Do Instead of Church Work," 1908

Brazen and defiant to the end of her days, Eliza Mowry Bliven spoke out before late nineteenth and early twentieth century audiences and advocated the use of reason over religion in daily life. She predicted that churches would someday be demolished by those who had outgrown the need for superstition and be replaced by "adult schools," where learning would continue after graduation from public schools. She also promoted the study of hygiene and physiology, so that the body and its functions would be better understood and disease more successfully avoided.

More than this, however, Eliza Mowry Bliven encouraged other atheists to become active in their opposition to the superstitions responsible for so much evil both in individual lives and in society. Disgusted by freethought groups whose members congregated only to "growl" about religion, she initiated a society in which action was required, attracting so many members that her Materialist Association became one of the largest freethought groups in the United States.

Bliven was born August 14, 1845, in Massachusetts. Her parents were both freethinkers: her mother, Eliza Angell Mowry, claimed Universalism as her creed but never attended any church; while her father, Daniel, had a considerable reputation throughout New England as a freethought biblical scholar. Ministers would come from miles away to debate him on religion. Little Eliza frequently witnessed the attempts of one minister after another, both orthodox and liberal--sometimes talking throughout the night--to convert her father, only to leave frustrated in the morning, thoroughly matched in their arguments. Watching her father, Eliza learned that all ideas--even those considered most sacrosanct by the public--were open to question and that one must not simply accept the words of authority figures, such as preachers and politicians, but think and research the truth for oneself

Her father was a very interesting man in other ways. Because of his radicalism, Daniel Mowry had been forced to leave his position as a newspaper editor in Providence, Rhode Island, before Eliza's birth. The crowning achievement of his reporting--and the death blow to his success as an editor in Providence--was his public denunciation of the local Methodist minister, who had seduced and then murdered a young woman. To report that a minister had acted so brutally was anathema to the public, even though it was the truth, and Daniel Mowry was forced to flee to Massachusetts.

He next tried farming but wasn't very successful. It was during this time that Eliza was born, rather late in life for her parents, who had both lost partners from previous marriages. Daniel's age and the distress he felt over his business failings contributed to his death while Eliza was yet a child.

Left a widow, Eliza's mother had few career choices as a woman. Taking what she could get, she moved in with relatives in Rhode Island, where she worked cleaning homes in the area. Determined to secure a good education for her daughter, she supplemented her income by taking in sewing, which she could do at night after her cleaning work was finished.

Thanks to her mother, Eliza attended good schools and progressed from student to teacher. The two women continued to live together after Eliza reached adulthood--her mother still cleaning and sewing and Eliza teaching to earn a living.

There is no mention that her mother ever entertained any thoughts of remarriage. Instead, she devoted herself entirely to Eliza, despite the monumental work required for a single woman to earn an income large enough to sustain even a small family. Yet, though Eliza's mother proudly refused to slow down her efforts, even after Eliza was working, age had begun to take its toll. Eliza pushed herself as hard as she could, hoping to relieve some of the work load on her mother. Finally, her health gave out from the strain of her exertions, and she left teaching to help her mother with sewing and to do what she could to ease her mother's final years. Eliza did not return to teaching until after her mother's death four years later.

Once she returned to teaching, Eliza became frustrated with her lack of knowledge. Up until this point, she had only at tended primary school, and so she enrolled in high school, graduating second in her class in 1876. It was while she was in high school studying Latin that Eliza compared the miracle stories of Greek and Roman mythology with those of the Christian Bible and decided that all miracles were simply "stories." This was one more step in her intellectual growth. After graduation, Eliza returned to teaching, which she continued for another seven years. During this time, she was constantly learning: visiting museums and institutes and even spending one summer in Europe. Unfortunately, her health again betrayed her, and she was forced to give up teaching a second time.

Eliza did not believe in coddling herself. Unable to teach, she tried housecleaning--following her mother's example--but found that her health could not sustain the heavy work entailed. It was at this point that, determined to earn a living, Eliza considered what she could do that would not endanger her health. She recalled that whenever she worked outdoors she always felt invigorated, and so she purchased land and began raising fruit, flowers, and various fowl for sale. In the following 10 years, her health was restored, and Eliza felt strong enough to begin her activity in radical causes. Always interested in health issues, she convinced local educators to teach physiology classes in their schools and wrote regularly for newspapers on hygiene and temperance, which she considered a health issue.

Although a freethinker, she joined the Women's Christian Temperance Union but gradually grew disgusted with the group because its membership used valuable work time for worthless prayer. Referring to the ineffectiveness of prayer, Eliza was later to write:

The churchgoers are continually taught to rely on

some supernatural agency to bring about all needful 

reforms and progress, and that they must submissively

bear all misfortunes as needed preparations for an

eternal happy existence after death. Thus they are kept

in ignorance of real causes, and of their own abilities,

and how to make the most of this life, and help others

to.

After she published an article explaining her views on the waste of time in the WCTU due to prayer, the churchgoing public turned against her and she was forced to leave the organization. This was especially dismaying: not only were the saloon owners and politicians against her because of her position against alcohol consumption but the very group whose goals she had attempted to promote had now rejected her.

Still, Eliza had learned a lesson we can all profit from today: just because a majority in society opposed her convictions, it did not make its viewpoint the correct one. Nor did she despair because of her isolation from the majority of her neighbors; if anything, it increased her determination. As she later wrote:

Religion makes folk blind,

submissive slaves, allowing the

increase of diseases, immoralities,

crimes, injustice, political

corruption, class clashes, and wars,

because they "cast their cares on

Jesus" and don't learn the real

causes and stop them.

As a result of her precarious health, as well as her studies of physiology, Eliza had become a vegetarian. She then fell in love with Samuel D. Bliven, who was also a vegetarian and freethinker, accepted his proposal of marriage, and moved to Brooklyn, Connecticut, with him in 1895.

Samuel Bliven was not just a freethinker but an atheist, and through Eliza's discussions with him, many of her questions concerning religion were answered. She had not yet settled in her own mind whether or not she believed in the actual existence of a god, but her husband's arguments convinced her that what was called religion by contemporaries was equivalent to what was called mythology and that both were equally fictitious. After that revelation, her anger increased when she considered the detrimental effects of organized religious beliefs both in her own life and on society as a whole.

Eliza became more active in promoting Sunday schools for adults, in which education was provided rather than church dogma. Looking forward to the day when rationality would become widespread, she wrote: "When all church work is discarded, then all humanitarian questions will have ample discussion in the Sunday meetings, which will be full of variety to promote health, happiness, and all sorts of improvements."

Eliza's articles were widely popular and appeared in the Torch of Reason, published in Oregon; the Freethought Ideal, out of Kansas; Freethought Magazine in Chicago; the Humanitarian Review of Los Angeles; the Blue Grass Blade of Kentucky; and the People's Press. She also joined freethought groups until, as mentioned earlier, she became disgusted with their inactivity and began her own group. She was determined that her organization would consist only of atheists; spiritualists, agnostics, and others who had doubts as to the nonexistence of God would not be allowed in. Explaining her position, Eliza wrote: "I am a Materialist. I believe there is not Hell, Heaven, Devil, God, nor future life. We knew nothing before we were born and we can know nothing after we are dead."

Encouraging her members to become activists, she explained how atheism should be used to destroy the negative effects of religion: "The proof that there is no God nor future life, fearlessly maintained, is the strongest weapon to destroy all the foundations on which Christian churches and all other religions are built" Her goal was to improve the lot not just of a small group of atheists but of all humanity by promoting reason and annihilating superstition.

The Materialist Association had no annual fees and emphasized local action. It quickly gained a membership of over 1,000--later to grow to even larger numbers--and held local and national conventions. It still remains a model for what humanist, atheist, or freethought activism can achieve.

Eliza Mowry Bliven, like her father Daniel and her mother Eliza, was a worker, a thinker, and a doer. This woman awoke many atheists from ineffectual complaining and torpor to become an effective force against the social evils they observed resulting from organized religion.

Unfortunately, today we find much the same sluggishness and inactivity among freethinkers that Eliza found in her day. Groups meet only to complain about religion, and only a tiny handful will actually work to combat its ill effects. Many are frightened, as in Eliza's day, even to oppose religion in the most passive ways, such as helping prepare newsletters for mailing, an activity that does not reveal their atheism to the public. Many cry, "But it will hurt my business!" or "I will lose my job!" Yet Eliza knew what is still true today: if we would unite and act to oppose the evils we claim to reject, our numbers would become so large as to make a mockery of the threat of religious persecution.

This was Eliza Mowry Bliven's goal--the goal for which she worked a lifetime, a goal as yet unachieved--to "build the enduring foundations of cooperative morality and justice; not for one chosen people, but for all humanity."

Carole Gray is a freelance writer and researcher who has been interested in freethought women's history for several years.