In 1796 Elihu Palmer, a blind itinerant lecturer who had left the Baptist ministry, founds the Deistical Society of New York, the first organized deist body in the United States, with its journal The Temple of Reason from 1800. Palmer's organizing gives American deism an institution, however briefly, beside its books.
Tagged: Deism
The Event
- Date
- 1796 (exact)
- Era
- The Revolutionary Age; Standard periodization of deist history
- Location
- New York; today New York, New York
- Traditions
- Deism
- Streams
- Deism
- Key figures
- Elihu Palmer
- Key texts
- Principles of Nature, The Temple of Reason
Primary Sources
- Palmer, Elihu. Principles of Nature. New York, 1801; The Temple of Reason, 1800-1801.
Secondary Sources
- Barnett, S. J. The Enlightenment and Religion: The Myths of Modernity. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003.
- Byrne, Peter. Natural Religion and the Nature of Religion: The Legacy of Deism. London: Routledge, 1989.
- Walters, Kerry S. The American Deists: Voices of Reason and Dissent in the Early Republic. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1992.
Provenance: HIST-1369; confidence 0.95; accessed 2026-10-30.
Related on This Site
History Event
Antony Flew announces a deist belief
2004
History Event
Collins's Discourse of Free-Thinking
1713
History Event
Herbert of Cherbury's De Veritate
1624
History Event
Jefferson completes his Life and Morals of Jesus
1820
History Event
Shaftesbury's Characteristicks
1711
History Event
Toland's Christianity Not Mysterious
1696
No image; the post explains why
History Event
Woolston tried for his Discourses on the Miracles
1729
World View
Deism
Deism holds that reason and nature reveal one Creator who made the world and its laws, then left it to run without miracles or special revelation.