The Gospel of Christianity and the Gospel of Freethought

Annie Besant (1847-1933) was a British socialist, theosophist, freemason, women’s rights activist, educationist, a writer and a powerful orator. Regarded as a champion of human freedom, she was an ardent supporter of both Irish and Indian self-rule. She was also a prolific author with over three hundred books and pamphlets to her credit.

In 1890, meeting in Paris Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, she was converted to Theosophy, becoming a member of the Theosophical Society and a prominent lecturer on the subject. When Blavatsky died in 1891, Besant was left as one of the leading figures in Theosophy and in 1893 she represented it at the Chicago World Fair.

The Annie Besant’s essay The Gospel of Christianity and the Gospel of Freethought was published in London in 1883. It is one of the most incisive and polemical of Annie Besant’s early writings. Its content intends to be a strong defense of free thought against all dogmatism, especially against the dogmatisms of Christianity. The text shows the strong character that Annie Besant expressed in those years and her highly revolutionary spirit. We see in it all the influence of his youthful militancy in the National Secular Society.

«With many evils inherent in it - Besant writes -, the scheme around us is slowly evolving the higher from the lower; mankind are growing gradually into a nobler type; increasing knowledge is enabling us to cope with Nature’s rougher moods; nowhere is truer the axiom that “knowledge is power” than when we say that knowledge of Nature is power over Nature. (…) The facts around us not being dependent for their existence either upon our knowledge or upon our ignorance, I deny altogether that Science is to blame because much of her revelation to mankind is stern and sad. But there is a foe to Christianity in the battle-field of the world; there is a gospel, which is not Christian, which is being proclaimed to mankind; there is a banner, whose folds are just floating out upon the air of England, which is blazoned with a new heraldry for humanity. It is the gospel of Freethought, the banner of Secularism».