Responses to Paine, Byrd

The edition of Common Sense that I reviewed ahead of this class session includes an appendix, a pamphlet Paine addressed to the Quakers. Even if I had been ignorant of the conversation between Paine and Adams (as reported in Dr. Byrd's book), even if I were ignorant of Paine's general sensibilities concerning religion, the pamphlet addressed to the Quakers would have alerted me, at least, to his cynicism. Having occupied himself with biblical quotations throughout the preceding pamphlets --- and in the pamphlet addressed to the Quakers, for that matter --- Paine nevertheless "disavow[s] and reprobate[s]" the Quakers for their gall in "mingling religion with politics." What, then, does Paine purport to have been doing himself? Paine was certainly intelligent and surely would not have revealed his cynical attitude toward religion in a widely-circulated pamphlet. It seems to me that there are at a couple of options for interpreting Paine's reasoning. First, as Dr. Byrd shows throughout the assigned chapters, the Bible was such a pervasive element in colonial discourse that the Bible could be authoritative without being transparently religious; as such, Paine could appeal to the Bible without being self-consciously religious. Second, Paine may have had in mind by "religion" sectarian debates, rather than some basic Christianity that could be taken for granted, even if he did not share it. Certainly, Dr. Byrd's chapters suggest that there was plenty of sectarian strife, even among those allied to the same cause.