‘The Future of Our Movement’: Bridging the Gap between Rationalism and Christian Ethics in Naomi Mitchison’s 1930s Writing

Abstract

In this article, I examine Naomi Mitchison’s contact with The Rationalist Press Association, an organized secularist movement founded in the late-nineteenth century to challenge the dogma and authority of religion and to promote the popular understanding of science. I argue that the rightwards turn in the R.P.A. in the 1930s created a space on the left for a renegotiation of the relationship between Rationalism and religion, or what Mitchison herself called: ‘a possible bridge between rational and on the whole anti-religious moral concepts, such as those of mine, and Christian ethics’. This article looks at Mitchison’s efforts towards building this bridge primarily in her non-fiction but also in her historical novel about the persecution of the Christians in Nero’s Rome, The Blood of the Martyrs.

Keywords:

• Naomi Mitchison
• secularism
• The Rationalist Press Association
• Christianity
• socialism
• historical fiction

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Mitchison knew the Labour politician Stafford Cripps who was closely associated with the ‘Christian Socialist coterie’ from which grew a number of pacifist and internationalist organisations between the wars (Bryant 1997: 73–5).

2 The notes for an unfinished book, ‘The Intelligent Woman’s Guide through Feminism’, suggest that Mitchison planned to include a section on the links between Feminism and liberalism including reference to the ‘bourgeois value’ of A Room of One’s Own (Mitchison n.d: ‘The Intelligent Woman’s Guide through Feminism’).

3 As Joan Wallach Scott points out the association of women with religion and therefore the forces of superstition and reaction ‘was a hallmark of the secularism discourse’ (Wallach Scott 2018: 30).

Additional information

Funding

The work was funded by a Leverhulme Trust Research Fellowship.