Lucretia Mott (1793-1880)

“Every one to do his own and her own thinking.”

~Lucretia Mott

Revolutionary Women’s Rights crusader, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, said that meeting her mentor (women-tor?) Lucretia Mott, “opened for me a new world of thought.”  Stanton proclaimed that for Mott, “both in religion and reform hers was a free gospel to the multitude.” (Eulogy for Mott, 1881)

Mott herself said our religious training has misguided us from “the good, the true and the divine” within (her Quaker “inner light”).  Those who join the reformation, working toward the freedom and equality of all people, will not be ashamed of this “new Gospel of truth.”  (Women’s Rights Convention, NYC, 1856)

Many of these early radical thinkers were people of faith, but a wonderfully heretical kind of faith that finds truth and justice in human reason and freethinking, rather than theologies, creeds and bibles.

The Afterword of my new book (still NEW after six months!), A Freethinker’s Gospel, is devoted to Lucretia Mott and her Mott-o:  “Truth for authority; not authority for truth.”

She was a true freethinker in the tradition of Thomas Paine, Francis Wright, Stanton, Ingersoll and many more.   I’m honored to honor Lucretia and others in my teaching and writing.

Please spread the “good news” and support my writing by ordering a copy of A Freethinker’s Gospel.