"Anti-God"

Last week in London took place what British Roman Catholics and some zealous Nonconformists called "a vast World Congress of the Godless"--an international meeting of the World Union of Freethinkers. Founded in 1880, the Union is a coalition of ethical societies, the National Secular Society, the Rationalist Press Association. Freethinker doctrine defines a Freethinker not as godless but as "one who rejects unverifiable authority in matters of religious opinion, accepts reason as the ultimate test and regards it as the right and duty of every individual to think things out for himself. Many Freethinkers are deists; many are not."

When the Freethinkers' congress (first to be held in England in 50 years) was announced last April. Lord Glasgow and 70 M. P.s unsuccessfully backed a Blasphemy Bill especially designed to outlaw it. The Home Secretary was petitioned to ban it. Estimates of the amount of Moscow gold backing the "atheists" ranged from 150,000 to 14,000,000 rubles. Arthur Cardinal Hinsley, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Westminster, organized a March of Atonement in which 150,000 Catholic men would walk this week from Southwark to Westminster Cathedral. Said he: "The religious leaders of this land cannot be held responsible if the opposition to the congress should take an active form leading to civil disorder."

Despite these scarehead advance notices, the Freethinkers' meeting resulted in no rows, attracted 900 people, deist or otherwise, who felt in safe enough company with such speakers and endorsers of the congress as H. G. Wells, Sigmund Freud, Havelock Ellis, George Bernard Shaw, C. E. M. Joad. G. D. H. Cole, J. B. S. Haldane, Bertrand Russell, Edouard Herriot, Somerset Maugham. Typical subjects for discussion at the meetings: Science and the Churches; Youth, the Schools and Free Thought; Present Religions Reaction and the Menace of the Vatican.

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