Walter surveys the concept from Biblical and classical times to the present. His concentration is on Britain, but he does make some reference to the U.S., and other countries. In 96 pages, he covers a lot of ground, discussing many of the important cases, such as those of the 17th century, and those of Paine's publishers in the early 19th century. Some of the cases, such as those of Foote and Gott are well-known to historians, but others deserve their mention. For instance, "in 1940 A.R. Woodhall was sentenced to a month's imprisonment in Jersey [a British island, not the U.S. state] for making a passport photograph resemble Christ on the Cross, but after protest he was released by the Home Secretary after a fortnight." Even though the hideous tortures of former times have now been discarded in legal practice, controversies about blasphemous utterance or literature continue today. The Gay News case of 1976 is given a whole chapter. One feature of Walter's book that I like is that he gives representative selections of literary texts, so the reader can judge their content for himself. This is an accessible and serviceable book on its subject, with a short list for further reading.
Leonard W. Levy's Blasphemy: Verbal Offense Against the Sacred, from Moses to Salman Rushdie (New York: Knopf, 1993), is a massive 690pp. tome, essentially a comprehensive account. Since it is simply so much larger than Walter's book, Levy is able to discuss cases in more detail, giving many details on the doctrinal aspects, social history, etc. Levy is a distinguished scholar of Constitutional history, with many academic credits to his name. His concentration is on the "western," i.e. Judeo- Christian tradition. Interestingly, in rabbincal Jewish trials, even the official accusation of blasphemy would sometimes cause the judges to symbolically and actually rend their robes in shame and horror. Even to say "God's name" was prohibited. But, attacking Moses or other revered leaders was not blasphemy, per se.
Under the Christians, it was different; a whole range of actions and beliefs and utterances became blasphemous. The Jews came in for special attention: "Gregory IX ordered the Talmud to be burned throughout Christendom for its alleged blasphemies against Christ and Mary. Tens of thousands of copies of the Talmud and other rabbinic writings were burned, especially in France. In 1415, a papal bull forbade Jews to have, study, or read the Talmud."
When the Protesants arrived on the scene, they took up the "Cross" energetically. Calvin saw to it that the physician and rival theologian Servetus was burned at the stake in Geneva, in 1553. Oftentimes, charges were obviously fabricated, as when Wycliffe was accused of believing "that God ought to obey the devil." His "crime" was urging that the Bible be translated into English. "Wycliffe, although hounded, had the support of a powerful duke, and so died peacefully in 1384. Forty years later, his remains were dug up on the orders of the church, his memory reviled, and his bones given to the flames."
The mid-17th century was a brief but wild period of glory for blasphemers. The Civil War saw the execution of the king, the rise to power of the Presbyterians, and the simultaneous flourishing of many bizarre sects (see the review of Abiezer Coppe's writings in this issue of FH). Levy has a long account of the misfortunes of one James Nayler, who in 1656 entered Bristol riding on a horse, surrounded by followers who sang "Holy, holy, holy," etc. For this he was arrested, tried and sentenced to be flogged (he received 310 lashes, and witnesses said "there was no skin left between his shoulders and his hips"), then bored through the tongue with a hot iron, and expelled from London for more torture. Levy's prose in his treatment of the Nayler case is as majestic as Thucydides.
The New World became a lively scene, with the execution of Quakers in the Massachusetts colony, the exile of Roger Williams, and such lesser known proceedings as the trial and imprisonment of John Rogers in Connecticut because "he reviled tenets, clergymen, and sacraments of the prevailing religion." In 1695, he "was taken from prison, tied to a cannon, and flogged seventy-six times with a whip that had knots at its end as large as walnuts. He was then thrown in his cell without bed or bedding, not even straw, and chained to the wall." Altogether, Levy calculates, Rogers spent eighteen years locked up. "The Rogerenes, a tiny sect, lasted until World War One."
Occasionally, there are moments of strange humor here. "In a 1757 Massachusetts case, a farmer was found guilty of blasphemy for having said, 'God was a damned fool for ever making a woman.'" But not so funny, he "stood on the gallows with a rope about his neck for one hour, and then was whipped twenty-five strokes." At least he wasn't mangled into a bloody pulp, as befell James Nayler the century before.
If any reader doubts the importance of church-state separation, or you encounter anyone who does, consider sharing some of these appalling stories with your disputants. Many of these stories were familiar to Paine and Jefferson, and determined them to establish a form of government that would protect dissent on religious matters. "At the time of the American Revolution," says Levy, "perhaps only 4 percent of the population belonged to churches." A golden age, indeed!
During the 19th century, we had prosecutions of Abner Kneeland, and many others in this "land of the free." Levy shows how blasphemy has dwindled as a legal concept. It "appears to be in a persistent vegetative state in America, and in a state of suspended animation in Great Britain." Yet, very interestingly, he notes that even today, "never has the Supreme Court actually held unconstitutional a blasphemy law....A criminal law, however, even if only a vestigial relic, is never stone-cold dead until it is repealed or directly held unconstitutional." This is an important observation, because many right-wingers are combing old court cases trying to revive concepts generally discarded in today's legal practice.
Leonard Levy's literary skill enables him to tell many diverse stories well, combining their philosophical signficance with social contexts, and moving personal details. This is a work of enormous scholarship; the notes alone are as massive as the text. It concentrates, like Walter, on the English- American tradition, somewhat neglecting the French, Germans, etc., but what it does, is impressive indeed, and it belongs in the library of every Freethinker in America and England. [Note: This book may be ordered from H.H. WaldoÑsee adÑfor $35, plus $2.30 shipping.]