ABSTRACT
The small but incredibly vocal and well-organized minority of secularists in Victorian England were throughout the early Victorian period denied a number of significant civil rights—a fact which was a keenly-felt grievance. George William Foote's depiction of clergymen laughing at his literary products showed that the Freethinker was not afraid to put itself in the way of trouble, but also demonstrated that the paper and its opinions could crop up anywhere in contemporary Victorian Society. Foote noted the comic possibilities inherent in the text from Exodus which effectively appeared to be the Almighty exposing his rear and genital area to a surprised and apparently shocked Moses. While the Freethinker regularly contained lampoons, skits, and satirizations of biblical and imaginary religious episodes, it was the cartoons, which Foote inaugurated, which inspired the public's imagination and indignation in equal measure. The cartoon "Going to Glory" is a case in point, and shows secularist distaste for the logic of the doctrine of forgiveness.
