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H.L. Mencken on Religion

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Skip the introduction; editor Joshi strays from the topic by questioning Mencken's "fanatical loathing" of Roosevelt, while ignoring similar diatribes he wrote against Harding, Coolidge and Hoover. Page 133 of Thirty-Five Years of Newspaper Work provides Mencken's rebuttal: "....in all my life I don't recall ever writing in praise of a sitting President. Finding virtues in successful politicians seemed to me to be the function of their swarms of willing pediculae; it was the business of a journalist, as I conceived it, to stand in a permanent Opposition."

Joshi also states that the Baptists aren't behind the Ku Klux Klan. Well, of course not. Nor does the Mormon Church support polygamists, nor the Catholic hierarchy condone killing abortion doctors. But Klan members, polygamists, and doctor-killers are far more pious than their mainstream counterparts. Such activities are where extreme devotion eventually leads.

Besides, the book's title accurately describes its contents. Any additional information can be squeezed onto the dust jacket. Mencken needs no stinking introduction.

Nor does he need my analysis. Despite the introduction, this is now my favorite posthumous Mencken collection. The following quotes are some of the reasons why:

"....men become civilized, not in proportion to their willingness to believe, but in proportion to their readiness to doubt."

"That medicine saves to-day thousands who must have died yesterday is a fact of small significance, for most of them will leave no more marks upon the history of the race than so many June bugs; but that all of us have been persuaded thereby to turn from priests and magicians when we are ill to doctors and nurses -- that is a fact of massive and permanent importance. It benefits everybody worthy of being called human at all. It rids the thinking of mankind of immense accumulations of intellectual garbage."

"This doctrine of the goodness of God, it seems to me, is no more, at bottom, than an evidence of arrested intellectual development. It does not fit into what we know of the nature and operations of the cosmos today; it is a survival from a day of universal ignorance."

"The most curious social convention of the great age in which we live is the one to the effect that religious opinions should be respected. Its evil effects must be plain enough to everyone. All it accomplishes is (a) to throw a veil of sanctity about ideas that violate every intellectual decency, and (b) to make every theologian a sort of chartered libertine. No doubt it is mainly to blame for the appalling slowness with which really sound notions make their way in the world. The minute a new one is launched, in whatever field, some imbecile of a theologian is certain to fall upon it, seeking to put it down. The most effective way to defend it, of course, would be to fall upon the theologian, for the only really workable defense, in polemics as in war, is a vigorous offensive. But the convention that I have mentioned frowns upon that device as indecent, and so theologians continue their assault upon sense without much resistance, and the enlightenment is unpleasantly delayed.

"There is, in fact, nothing about religious opinions that entitles them to any more respect than other opinions get. On the contrary, they tend to be noticeably silly."

"No combat set in this world ever grows more furious and extravagant than a combat between Christians. They seem to have a special talent for hatred, almost a vocation."

"Puritanism, in its essence, was sheer brutality; there was absolutely no beauty in it, and very little decency. It revolved around the fear of Hell, and nothing else. In late years there have been many defenses of the Puritans on the ground that, for all the rigors of their theology, they yet lived more or less normal lives, and were not unacquainted with the sempiternal arts of thieving, forestalling, fighting, wine-bibbing and fornication. But all that this comes to is the confession that many of them were hypocrites. Granted. So are many of their heirs and assigns today."

"The Fundamentalist prayer is not an inner experience; it is a means to objective ends. He prays precisely as more worldly Puritans complain to the police. He expects action, and is disappointed and dismayed if it does not follow. The mind of this Fundamentalist is extremely literal -- indeed, the most literal mind ever encountered on this earth. He doubts nothing in the Bible, not even the typographical errors."

"The meaning of religious freedom, I fear, is sometimes greatly misapprehended. It is taken to be a sort of immunity, not merely from governmental control but also from public opinion. A dunderhead gets himself a long-tailed coat, rises behind the sacred desk and emits such bilge as would gag a Hottentot. Is it to pass unchallenged? If so, then what we have is not religious freedom at all, but the most intolerable and outrageous variety of religious despotism."

"To admit that the false has any standing in court, that it ought to be handled gently because millions of morons cherish it and thousands of quacks make their livings propagating it -- to admit this, as the more famous of the reconcilers of science and religion inevitably do, is to abandon a just cause to its enemies, cravenly and without excuse."

"The evangelical churches, in fact, are rapidly becoming public nuisances. Neglecting almost altogether their old concern about individual salvation, they have converted themselves into vast engines for harassing and oppressing persons who dissent from their naive and often preposterous theology. No one hears of them saving souls any more; they seem to devote their whole energies to getting bodies into jail."

"....theologians make a mess of everything they touch, including even religion."

"There was a day when Jupiter was the king of the gods, and any man who doubted his puissance was ipso facto a barbarian and an ignoramus. But where in all the world is there a man who worships Jupiter to-day?"

H. L. Mencken was not on a campaign against religion: "I have never consciously tried to convert anyone to anything," he wrote. Perhaps not, but conversions must have happened as readers sought his columns in the _Baltimore Evening Sun_, the _Smart Set_, and the _American Mercury_. He didn't write mostly on religion, of course, excoriating Americans for their general stupidity in many spheres. But his critiques of religion have been collected in _H. L. Mencken on Religion_ (Prometheus Books), edited by S. T. Joshi, and they are a stimulating, wide-ranging attack on various aspects of a particular foe. Fundamentalist Christians especially will find much offensive here, for they are Mencken's particular game, although Catholics, Methodists, Christian Scientists, spiritualists, and other more moderate sects come into scorn in their turn. If Mencken were alive today, how he would spring into attacks upon the Raelians, the TV spiritualists, the New Agers, and of course the fundamentalist Christians who are still thriving. To read these essays is to be reminded of how relatively mild such criticism has now become.

Of course Mencken was misanthropic, and of course he was bigoted. He was careful to express disdain of his own character, often saying that in studying religious ideas, he found "soothing proof that there are men left who are even worse asses than I am." One of his essays is even called "Confessions of a Theological Moron," in which he admits that unlike most of the people on the planet, he has no religious feeling whatsoever and that no sense of any divine personality enters into his thinking. "As for the impulse to worship, it is as foreign to my nature as the impulse to run for Congress." But he also made clear that he was "... anything but a militant atheist and haven't the slightest objection to church-going, so long as it is honest." He thought power grabs by religion dishonest; in his own time, he lambasted religious support of prohibition, the Ku Klux Klan, Sunday marketing laws, and divorce restrictions. "The whole history of the church, as everyone knows, is a history of schemes to put down heresy by force." Mencken was present for much of the Scopes trial in Dayton, Tennessee, or the trial of (as he repeatedly names him) "the infidel Scopes," and his columns are reprinted here. He does not come out and say it, but he favored the wall between church and state as a means of not just separating but of protecting each side from the other.

The wit and erudition displayed in these essays is a real treasure, and ought to be for believers and infidels alike. Get out your dictionary; you will read here of the roar of the catamount, the boons and usufructs of modern medicine, the pothers of the newspapers, and the head wiskinski of the wowsers. As an epilogue, here is the famous, funny, and oddly moving "Memorial Service" seeking the gravesite of the thousands of gods people have believed in, "... many of them mentioned with fear and trembling in the Old Testament." The long list, including Baal, Pluto, Odin, and Huitzilopochtli, is composed of gods "...of civilized peoples - worshipped and believed in by millions. All were theoretically omnipotent, omniscient, and immortal. And all are dead." Mencken is dead, too, but his thoughts as retained in this invigorating collection ought to last far longer that Huitzilopochtli himself managed.

What can I say? The brilliant editorialist H. L. Mencken, gone for almost half a century, shines again in vintage newspaper columns that are just as relevant now as ever. In this day and age, almost 80 years after Scopes, when it's barely legal to teach actual science in Kansas classrooms, Mencken shows what intelligent folks have known about him all along: that he was decades ahead of his time.

What would he have had to say about extremist militant theocracies like the Taliban? Or about so-called "Intelligent Design" creationist theories? Or about science textbook "disclaimers" in Mississippi schools, Trinity Broadcasting, the "Left Behind" series, the Moral Majority, and the Psychic Network? We'll never know, but we can guess!

Buy this indispensable collection for your neighborhood Fundamentalist. He could use it! I'd give it 6 stars if they'd let me. Henry, where are you now that we really need you?

Even a cursory reading of this collection reveals interesting nuances to Mencken's views on religion that both fans and foes may have missed. It is soon evident that Mencken was more of a religious skeptic or agnostic than the atheist he was frequently taken to be. He certainly did not believe in a personal god, and believed that positive evidence for the existance of a god is unlikely to appear. Nontheless, he was willing to grant the bare possibility of a god. It would seem that like Sartre's grandmother, Mencken's scepticism kept him from being a thoroughgoing atheist.

What really stirred Mencken's bile was the behavior of much of God's fan club here on Earth, many of whom he experenced as being at least intellectually dishonest (if not worse) and dishonorable. Mixed with this was a kind of bemused wonderment at the gullibility of the bulk of his fellow Americans, who seemed ever eager "to believe that Jonah swallowed the whale, or vice-versa." His early career as a Baltimore newspaper reporter observing the Christian nuisances pestering the skid-row bums (see his "Christmas Story"), 'working girls', saloon habitues, and all-around plain folk seems to have ground his rapier to a permanent sharp edge. Was he fair? I don't think he ever pretended he was. His mission, as he saw it, was to apply the lash of verifiable truth to the backs of pious frauds and their dupes. They were perfectly free to reply (and they did) using whatever sort of arguments or language they pleased.

Still, he was not an "anthopophagous atheist of the sort who goes around scaring old ladies", as he once put it. In tones that curiously echo Santayana, he expresses fulsome admiration for the Catholic Church, finding the 'poetry' of the Mass to be enchantingly beautiful; and Church insistance that doctrine was for Rome to decide to be shrewd policy. More interestingly, for a man reputed to be a sour misanthrope, he formed real and lasting friendships with clergy such as Bishop James Cannon of the United Methodist Church--an ardent Prohibitionist! (Normally Mencken consigned Prohibitionists to the lowest circle of his Inferno.)

If Mencken was neither terribly original nor especially profound on the subject of religion; still he--like Mark Twain--put the case for doubt in a frequently hilarious and unforgettable fashion that still serves to kick open otherwise seemingly-closed arguments and minds. This is probably a greater service to civilization than any number of tomes written by philosophers that fell dead-born from the press.

I've read numerous Mencken anthologies, and I think this one is the best. His commentaries on fundamentalist attacks on both evolution and the wall between church and state are as relevant now as they were when he wrote them in the 1920s and 1930s. Moreover, as anyone who's ever read Mencken can attest, the man was a brilliant stylist and frequently hysterically funny. Oh, how the man could write! In contrast to the intellectually lazy media hacks of today, Mencken is sound and fury signifying something.

An excellent read if you are looking for confirmation of the fact that all religious extremists are insane. This would, of course, include Muslim as well as Bible Belt loonies. Mr. Mencken was a long ways ahead of his time in recognising this and savages ALL religious dingbats, home grown or imported.

Considering most of the articles were written in the 1920s, one is shocked by how timely, fitting and appropriate many of his comments are. The rise of fundie thinking at the turn of last century lasted until the Scopes trial - which is brilliantly covered in this book. (Mencken attended the trial, and covered it with scathing wit) Then, it collapsed. it took the fundies until the late '80s, the 1980s that is, to return to their destructive power that they again hold in our society.

This collection is entertaining, amusing and to some extent, it makes one angry. Why? because we are having to battle with half-wits, nit-wits, baptists, and other witless religions as they try to force their ideas onto others, just as they tried and failed before. Mencken provides an interesting slice of history, as well as a wonderful view of faith healing, the inability of the fundies to hold a rational thought and the dangers of religious leaders impacting political and social policy.

I would strongly recommend this book for anyone thinking about home schooling or considering sending their poor offspring to a religious school. This book will help make up your mind.

This collection of Mr. Mencken's assault on religious orthodoxies, especially Fundamentalism, is a real treat for readers who enjoy politically-incorrect wordsmiths. Unlike the author's more academic "Treatise of the Gods," Mr. Mencken uses his considerable gift of metaphorical criticism to eviscerate religious shenanigans which took place in the 1920s and 30s. Considering that 1 in 5 of today's Americans believe Armageddon will happen in our lifetimes, I'm amazed how things have not change very much in the past 80 to 90 years. Please remember that this material has not been altered from its original state, so some words Mr. Mencken used to describe African-Americans or people of Asian descent are considered offensive by contemporary standards. The author was an agnostic libertarian who was neither a fan of Hoover, Coolidge, FDR (good god, especially FDR) and religious blowhards such as William Jennings Bryan. In fact, the viciousness of Mr. Mencken's obituary about Bryan still takes my breath away. This collect of columns has an element of redundancy. However, we are talking about a fearless artist who rarely backed down from a fight. Simply superb.

Mencken is nothing if not provocative. Good for airing out stuffy brain space cluttered with the junk your (grand)parents left you with.

In finding a common thread amongst great thinkers we discover truth. From the outlay Mencken's "On Religion" mirrors the early pages of Popper's Open Society, excusing the contextual relativism of Mencken's various vignettes and references. Yes, my boy there was an emergence from tribal mentality, although this is said at great lengths. Society as a whole isn't necessarily progressively more intelligent, more educated perhaps, but without the spirit of an Ayn Rand's Howard Roark it is but filler intelligence. Mencken addresses some of my core concerns about the actual equality of human beings. The parity system engendered is completely hyperbolic. There are so many distinctions just between one man and another that a universal equivocation sets mistruth. Karl Popper makes note of the 'modesty' needed in support of science, concerning round-off errors, misspoken generalizations which would stir a logician ragged. Mencken, being so refined and acerbically witty brings this to life in an anthropological and sociological assessment in manner of candor unseen by far. The nearest such revelations to me, without the stricture to roundabout by playing nice is Kierkegaard's "Either/Or: A Fragment of Life." Mencken has continued this legacy of candor in his observations, and for all the racism I note that he is probably less racist than most. He quite frankly is a racist akin to how a man who is physically strong disdains a weakling. This is not morally correct, but Mencken dissects this very system of morally correctness. You might react, animal-like, to such disdain but there is a distinction which undue euphemism has been shadowing for too long.