Henry M. Tichenor
Henry Milford Tichenor (October 23, 1858 - December 4, 1922)[1] was a writer and magazine editor prominent in the socialist and freethinking movements during the Progressive Era and the Golden Age of Freethought of American history.
In the realm of opposition to religion, he has been ranked beside Clarence Darrow and Madalyn Murray O'Hair as a leading American freethinker of the twentieth century.
Stephen Tichenor, the author's father, was a financially successful businessman and politician who was twice the mayor of Orange and served as a judge.
In early life, Tichenor was strongly influenced by reading The Age of Reason, the condemnation of organized religion authored by Thomas Paine, the pamphleteer whose Common Sense helped to inspire the American Revolution.
[3] Around 1911, he began contributing occasional poems to The National Rip-Saw, “America’s Greatest Socialist Monthly,” edited by Phil Wagner and based in St. Louis, Missouri.
In January 1913, while continuing to write for the Rip-Saw, Tichenor joined forces with Wagner's publishing company to launch his own socialist journal, The Melting Pot, a publication whose mission proclaimed in the inaugural issue was to subject to fiery scrutiny society's lies of class, privilege, war and most especially organized religion.
The cover of the magazine carried an illustration of a metal worker with the tools of his trade and the motto, “If it won’t stand the heat of the Melting Pot, its no good.” Tichenor served as its editor until it ceased publication with his retirement in 1920.
In January 1914 Wagner and Tichenor visited Socialist party leader and former U.S. presidential candidate Eugene V. Debs and persuaded him to write editorials and to speak for The National Rip-Saw.
[4] Later that same year, the Rip-Saw issued a collection of Tichenor's poems titled “Rhymes of the Revolution,” including an introduction by Debs in which the prominent socialist heaped breathless praise upon the author: “He hates with a hate that is holy the brazen shams and superstitions inculcated by a mamonized church in the name of religion and scourges without mercy the pious perverts who under the cloak of the Carpenter betray their followers into bondage.” Another publication to which Tichenor contributed for The National Rip-Saw in 1914 was a series of articles later republished as a 63-page pamphlet titled “Barnhill-Tichenor Debate on Socialism.” The publication included a handful of editorial-style cartoons.
[5] Under Tichenor's editorship, The Melting Pot established itself as a scathing forum especially for attacking organized religion.
The magazine soon set its sights on Billy Sunday, perhaps the most prominent evangelist in America at the time and one particularly notable for his lavish lifestyle.
[6] The front page of the August, 1914 issue of the Melting Pot featured a cartoon of Sunday, pockets bulging with money, again using a pulpit with a dollar sign, and preaching to a bloated character labeled “Big Biz.” In 2006, the Bank of Wisdom began selling a compact disc containing the first four years of The Melting Pot; issues published from 1913 to 1917.
From 1913 until his death in 1922, Tichenor produced at least six books and twenty-eight pamphlets of social and religious commentary.
The tone and pace was set early with the August 1913 publication of the 63-page pamphlet, “The Roman Religion: A Short History of How the Holy Humbug was Hatched.” In 1915, Tichenor published his first full book-length work, The Life and Exploits of Jehovah, in which he brutally satirized the God of the Old Testament.
This was followed the next year with The Creed of Constantine; or the World Needs a New Religion in which Tichenor turned his acid pen upon Christianity.
Eugene Debs again wrote in support of Tichenor by producing a review of this book in the January 1917 issue of The National Rip-Saw.
Tichenor refined his assault upon the proponents of religion, particularly Christianity, with the publication of the book, The Sorceries and Scandals of Satan, in 1917.
Tichenor's primary objective in this work was to reveal the hypocrisy of the Christian theologians who enthrall churchgoers with tales linking the ills of the world with Satan, the proclaimed opposite of the purportedly good Jehovah which the clergymen claimed to represent.
Tichenor's technique for accomplishing this goal was to show that the minor scandals so frequently blamed on Satan, in fact, pale in comparison to the child murder, mass suffering and other horrific crimes perpetrated by the God of the Bible and His followers.
This book was followed by Tales of Theology, Jehovah, Satan and the Christian Creed in 1918, and Mythologies, a Materialistic Interpretation: Analyzing the Class Character of Religion in 1919.
In 1919, the Appeal to Reason newspaper was purchased by its editor, E. Haldeman-Julius, who used its printing plant to begin publishing a series of inexpensive, pocket-sized educational pamphlets designed to help elevate the poor, unschooled working classes by providing them with a means for cheap self-education.
[7] In retirement, from 1920 until his death in 1922, Tichenor authored or edited at least 24 of these booklets, many on the subject of religion, beginning with a condensed version of Paine's The Age of Reason and including titles such as Church History, Primitive Beliefs, When the Puritans Were in Power, and The Olympian Gods.
A Wave of Horror: A Comparative Picture of the Los Angeles Tragedy, 31 p., National Rip-Saw Pub.
Mythologies, A Materialistic Interpretation: Analyzing the Class Character of Religion, 198 p., The Melting Pot Pub.
