Abner Kneeland Prints Blasphemous Letter
On this day in 1833, religious and social reformer Abner Kneeland printed a letter deemed so blasphemous by a Massachusetts court that it landed the former clergyman in jail. Kneeland capped 30 years of increasingly liberal religious preaching by declaring, "Universalists believe in a god . . . that . . . is nothing more than a chimera of their own imagination." He was tried, convicted of having libeled God, and sentenced to 60 days in jail. Freethinkers such as Emerson, Garrison, and Alcott rallied, unsuccessfully, to defend his freedom of speech. Massachusetts authorities were so embarrassed by the case that, even though the law against blasphemy remains on the books, no one in the state has ever again been convicted of that offense.
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