studies

This page considers writing about blasphemy legislation, cases and issues.

It covers -

• introductions
• secularisation
• print and performance
• prosecutions
• culture wars and law reform
• profane speech
• tolerance
• elsewhere

     introductions

For broad historical overviews see Alain Cabantous' Blasphemy: Impious Speech in the West from the Seventeenth to the Nineteenth Century (New York: Columbia Uni Press 2002), the dated but still useful A History of the Crime of Blasphemy (London: Sweet & Maxwell 1928) by George Nokes, David Lawton's Blasphemy (Hemel Hempstead: Harvester 1993), Blasphemy: Verbal Offence against the Sacred, from Moses to Salman Rushdie (New York: Knopf 1993) by Leonard Levy and Governing Morals: A Social History of Moral Regulation (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni Press 1999) by Alan Hunt. Marci Hamilton's God vs the Gavel: Religion & the Rule of Law (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni Press 2004) offers a sprightly defence of separation of church and state; Daniel Dennett's Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon (London: Viking 2006) makes a plea for moderation. A coffee-table view of blasphemy in the visual arts is provided by Blasphemy: Art that Offends (London: Black Dog 2006) by S. Brent Plate.

The literature on religious heterodoxy is extensive. Salient works on the conceptualisation of blasphemy and responses by the secular and clerical arms of the pre-industrial state include Lucien Febvre's The Problem of Unbelief in the Sixteenth Century: The Religion of Rabelais (Cambridge: Harvard Uni Press 1985), Brendon Dooley's The Social History of Skepticism: Experience & Doubt in Early-Modern Culture (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Uni Press 1999), Commanding Right & Forbidding Wrong in Islamic Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni Press 2001) by Michael Cook, Abdullah & Hassan Saeed's Freedom of Religion, Apostasy & Islam (Aldershot: Ashgate 2004) and Wael Hallaq's Authority, Continuity and Change in Islamic Law (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni Press 2001).

     secularisation

The secularisation of industrial societies over the past two hundred years is explored in works such as Hugh McLeod's Secularisation in Western Europe 1848-1914 (Basingstoke: Macmillan 2000), Owen Chadwick's Secularisation of the European Mind in the 19th Century (London: Cambridge Uni Press 1975), Peter Berger's The Desecularization of the World (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans 1999), The Secularization Debate (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield 2000) by William Swatos & Daniel Olson, Walter Arnstein's The Bradlaugh Case, A Study in Late Victorian Opinion & Politics (Oxford: Oxford Uni Press 1963) and readings in Religion & Modernization: Sociologists and Historians Debate the Secularization Thesis (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1992) edited by Steve Bruce.

Susan Jacoby's Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism (New York: Metropolitan 2004) attempts to show that freethought is as american as apple pie. Mark McGarvie's One Nation Under Law: America's Early National Struggles to Separate Church and State (DeKalb: Uni of Northern Illinois Press 2004) offers insights about the early US. David Berman's A History of Atheism in Britain (London: Routledge 1990) offers a perspective on the UK.

For Australia see in particular Gary Bouma's Religion: Meaning, Transcendence & Community in Australia (Melbourne: Longman 1992), Hillary Carey's Believing in Australia: A Cultural History of Religions (St Leonard's: Allen & Unwin 1996), Edmund Campion's Australian Catholics (Ringwood: Viking 1987), HR Jackson's Churches and People in Australia and New Zealand, 1860-1930 (Wellington: Allen & Unwin 1987) and God and Government: The New Zealand Experience (Dunedin: Uni of Otago Press 2004) edited by John Stenhouse & Rex Ahdar.

     print and performance

Joss Marsh's Word Crimes: Blasphemy, Culture & Literature in 19th Century England (Chicago: Uni of Chicago Press 1998) and an academic study of UK blasphemy censorship, complemented by David Nash's incisive Blasphemy in Modern Britain: 1789 to the Present (Aldershot: Ashgate 1999), Kevin Gilmartin's Print Politics: The Press & Radical Opposition in Early Nineteenth-Century England (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni Press 1996) and Arthur Calder-Marshall's thinner Lewd, Blasphemous & Obscene (London: Hutchinson 1972).

For restrictions on performance in the UK - including contortions over sacred drama - see Alan Nielsen's The Great Victorian Sacrilege: Preachers, Politics and ''the Passion'' 1879-1884 (Jefferson: McFarland 1991). For debate about blasphemy in the cinema see resources highlighted in the Censorship & Free Speech guide elsewhere on this site and works such as Ina Bertrand's Film Censorship in Australia (St Lucia: Uni of Qld Press 1978), Frank Walsh's Sin & Censorship (New Haven: Yale Uni Press 1996), Gregory Black's The Catholic Crusade Against The Movies 1940-75 (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni Press 1997) and Anton Kozlovic's 2003 paper Religious Film Fears 1: Satanic Infusion, Graven Images and Iconographic Perversion.

The dour Beyond a Joke: The limits of humour (London: Palgrave 2005) edited by Sharon Lockyer & Michael Pickering considers the ethics of comedy.

     prosecutions

Individual prosecutions have attracted scholarly attention in varying detail.

The 1729 Woolston case is discussed in Hogarth's Harlot: Sacred Parody in Enlightenment England (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Uni Press 2003) by Ronald Paulson, for us more ingenious than wholly convincing. For Hone see The Laughter of Triumph: William Hone and the Fight for the Free Press (London: Faber 2005) by Ben Wilson

The Kneeland case is covered in the 1997 paper by Charles May & Richard Nelson on The 'Hoary-Headed Apostle of Satan' and Press Freedom in America: The Seditious Blasphemy Libel & Censorship Trials of Freethought Journalist Abner Kneeland and in Blasphemy in Massachusetts: Freedom of Conscience and the Abner Kneeland Case - a Documentary Record (New York: Da Capo 1973) compiled by Leonard Levy. For the Maoriland Worker see Geoffrey Troughton's 2006 'The Maoriland Worker and Blasphemy in New Zealand' in 91 Labour History.

For recent UK cases see Richard Webster's A Brief History Of Blasphemy: Liberalism, Censorship and 'The Satanic Verses' (Southwold: Orwell Press 1990) and Nicholas Walter's Blasphemy, Ancient and Modern (London: Rationalist Press Association 1990). The 'Gay News' case is discussed in Geoffrey Robertson's The Justice Game (London: Chatto & Windus 1998).

The Satanic Verses inspired a large number of works, including Lisa Appignanesi's The Rushdie File (Syracuse: Syracuse Uni Press 1990), Jeff Archer's Publish and be damned: the Literary politics of 'The Satanic Verses' (University Park: Pennsylvania State Uni Press 1990), Daniel Pipes' The Rushdie affair: the novel, the Ayatollah and the West (New York: Carol 1990), Malise Ruthven's A Satanic Affair: Salman Rushdie and the Rage of Islam (London: Hogarth Press 1991), Shabbir Akhtar's Be Careful With Muhammad! The Salman Rushdie Affair (London: Bellew 1989) and The Salman Rushdie controversy in interreligious perspective (Lewiston: Edward Mellen 1990) edited by Dan Cohen-Sherbok.

RS Ross is featured in Volume 11 of the Australian Dictionary of Biography (Carlton: Melbourne University Press 1988).

For the dynamics of prosecution see works such as William Bainbridge's The Sociology of Religious Movements (New York: Routledge 1997), Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi's The Psychology of Religious Behavior, Belief and Experience (New York: Routledge 1997), Jose Casanova's Public Religions in the Modern World (Chicago: Uni of Chicago Press 1994) and The Private Roots of Public Action (Cambridge: Harvard Uni Press 2001) by Nancy Burns, Kay Schlozman & Sidney Verba.

Accounts by figures such as Whitehouse, Nile, Pell and Comstock are - alas - problematical.

For the pre-industrial period perspectives are provided by James Johnson's crisp Deceit and Sincerity in Early-Modern Venice (PDF) on the Esecutori contro la Bestemmia, Henry Kamen's The Spanish Inquisition: A Historical Revision (New Haven: Yale Uni Press 1998), Before the Bawdy Court: Selections from Church Court and Other Records Relating to the Correction of Moral Offences In England, Scotland and New England, 1300-1800 (London: Elek 1972) edited by Paul Hair and the online Proceedings of the Old Bailey.

     culture wars and law reform

A US perspective is provided in Levy, in Sex, Sin & Blasphemy: A Guide to America's Censorship Wars (New York: New Press 1993) by Marjorie Heins and in Masters of Illusion: The Supreme Court and the Religion Clauses (New York: New York Uni Press 2007) by Frank Ravitch. German law and practice is discussed here.

For Eire see Neville Cox's Blasphemy & the Law in Ireland (Lewiston: Edward Mellen 2000).

The 1994 New South Wales Law Reform Commission Blasphemy report and 1998 federal Article 18: report of the inquiry into freedom of religion and belief report (PDF) in Australia cover local developments. It might be supplemented by David Marr's The High Price Of Heaven (St Leonards: Allen & Unwin 1999), Peter Coleman's Obscenity, Blasphemy & Sedition: The Rise & Fall of Literary Censorship in Australia (Potts Point: Duffy & Snellgrove 2000) and other works highlighted here. For a view from the postmodern academy see the 1999 article Finis Africae - of blasphemers, infidels, false prophets and artistic diuresis.

     profane speech

For blasphemy as 'bad language' see Language Most Foul (North Sydney: Allen & Unwin 2004) by Ruth Wajnryb, Swearing: A Social History of Foul Language, Oaths & Profanity in English (Harmondsworth: Penguin 1998) by Geoffrey Hughes, Learning to Curse: Essays in Early Modern Culture (New York: Routledge 1992) by Stephen Greenblatt, Maureen Flynn's 1995 paper and The Social History of Language (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni Press 1987) edited by Peter Burke & Roy Porter.

A Season with Verona (London: Secker & Warburg 2002) by Tim Parks offers a perspective on contemporary bad language and transgression.

     tolerance

Broader questions of tolerance and dissent are explored in From Persecution to Tolerance: The Glorious Revolution and Religion in England (Oxford: Oxford Uni Press 1991) edited by Ole Grell & Nicholas Tycke, Tolerance & Intolerance in the European Reformation (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni Press 1996) edited by Grell & Bob Scribner and Toleration in Enlightenment Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni Press 2000) edited by Grell & Roy Porter and How the Idea of Religious Toleration Came to the West (Princeton: Princeton Uni Press 2003) by Perez Zagorin.

Richard Ely's Unto God and Caesar: Religious Issues in the Emerging Commonwealth, 1891-1906 (Carlton: Melbourne Uni Press 1976) provides an Australian perspective. For the Van Gogh incident see Albert Benschop's 2005 Chronicle of a Political Murder Foretold: Jihad in the Netherlands paper, Ian Buruma's Murder in Amsterdam: The Death of Theo Van Gogh and the Limits of Tolerance (London: Penguin 2006) and The Assassination of Theo van Gogh: From Social Drama to Cultural Trauma (Durham: Duke Uni Press 2008) by Ron Eyerman.

In addition to works on Islamic law and practice noted above see Joseph Schacht's An Introduction to Islamic Law (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1964), Islamic Law & Jurisprudence (Seattle: Uni of Washington Press 1990) edited by Nicholas Heer and the provocative The End of Faith: Religion, Terror and the Future of Reason (New York: Free Press 2004) by Sam Harris.

     elsewhere

More detailed pointers to literature on hate speech and free speech are provided in the guide on Censorship & Free Speech; exploration of religious/ethnic discrimination and the discussion of hate speech in the digital environment elsewhere on this site.

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