Benjamin Franklin’s Comical Religious Skepticism

• In Event: The Politics of Wit II

Abstract

In his short essays and articles, beginning in James Franklin’s New England Courant and continuing on through Poor Richard’s Almanac and elsewhere up until the very last years of his life, Benjamin Franklin wrote polemically and comically about politics and religion. This paper will examine how three of Franklin’s most influential characters, Father Abraham, Sidi Mehemet Ibrahim and Polly Baker, acted to both highlight the moral and religious hypocrisy of his time and more subtly to critique the role of religion in the politics of the early American Republic. Franklin’s characters not only sought to critique particular examples of religious hypocrisy but more generally to subvert the very notion of an authoritative religious voice.

Author

• Geoffrey Kellow, Carleton University