ABSTRACT
The British Secular Society, founded in 1866, cannot even afford a place to house its library. The organization has ceased to serve a useful function in a culture that has become more "secular" than the Victorian freethinkers thought possible and more "free" than even most of the freethinkers would have thought desirable. As a theological and religious movement, freethought died out gradually after 1870. True, G. W. Foote continued to harp on the evils of Christianity through the pages of the freethinker. That freethought did not go far enough in establishing a consistent, rational system that offered hope and true alternatives to the British working classes, meant that it could not compete with those emerging movements that did. "Religious" freethought was, of necessity, a short-lived phenomenon for the very reasons that the movement had taken on a theological orientation in the first place. In short, the freethinkers invited the Church back to honesty, to goodness, and to humanity.
