On August 11, 1833, John Ingersoll, a Christian pastor, and
his wife Mary became the proud parents of a baby boy, whom they named Robert
Green.
In spite of being born into a pious home in a small upstate
New York town, Robert G. Ingersoll for many years proudly bore the label “the
Great Agnostic.” And by the time of his death in 1899, he had been one of the
best known public speakers in America for decades.
I was probably still a teenager when I first heard reference
made to Ingersoll at the Baptist church, or maybe at the Baptist college, I
attended. However, I don’t remember hearing him called what many conservative
Christians dubbed him: Injuresoul.
When he was twenty years old, the Ingersoll family moved to the
town of Marion in southern Illinois. The following year both he and his older
brother were admitted to the bar.
According to Marion’s historical website, “A county historian writing 22 years later
noted that local residents considered the Ingersolls as a ‘very intellectual
family; but, being Abolitionists, and the boys being deists, rendered obnoxious
to our people in that respect.’”
The young lawyer went on to become a colonel in
the Civil War, and then in 1867 he was appointed the first Attorney General of
Illinois. He was quite active as a conservative Republican (which then meant
something quite different from what it means now). He gave a highly regarded
speech in the 1876 Republican National Convention.
That same year he engaged in an extensive
conversation with Lew Wallace, a Civil War general who had commanded the battle
of Shiloh in which Ingersoll had been captured by the Confederates. As a result
of listening to Ingersoll’s negative ideas about Christianity, Wallace decided
to write a book about the life of Christ.
Wallace’s work was published in 1880, while he
was governor of New Mexico Territory. We know it as both a book and a movie: “Ben Hur.”
For the last 30+ years of his life, Ingersoll was best known
as an exciting public speaker – and as an agnostic, rather than a deist. He is
said to have spoken in person to more people in the United States than anyone
else in the nineteenth century.
And he probably did more than anyone else in America during
that century to spread agnosticism, which has often been called free thinking. But until recently
Ingersoll has been largely unknown by most younger people.
The Robert Ingersoll website has posted an eight-minute YouTube video
under the title “Meet
the Most Remarkable American Most People Never Heard of.”
American journalist, author, and noted atheist Susan Jacoby has
sought to resurrect acquaintance with Ingersoll’s life and influence with a
book titled “The Great Agnostic: Robert Ingersoll and American Freethought.” I
read Jacoby’s work soon after it came out early this year and found it most
interesting, although misleading in places.
Still, in May, Washington Post and several other newspapers
and websites published Kimberly Winston’s article called “Meet Robert Ingersoll, America’s Most Famous
Forgotten Atheist.”
With the growth of atheists/agnostics – and “nones” – in the
U.S., there will likely be increasing interest in Ingersoll. And many of us who
are “progressive” Christians will find a number of places where we can agree with
him, as well as many places where we can’t.
At any rate, the books and other information about Robert
Ingersoll, “the great agnostic,” does make for interesting reading. And even
though he was born 180 years ago, his ideas, and how to respond to them, are
well worth considering now, a time when agnosticism is increasing.
