As with every other social reform, it was only after the Freethinkers had built the train and started it on the track that the churches felt it safe to climb aboard.

A husband could beat his wife, or sell her, take all her property and her children. Down to the 19th century, women were denied the vote because the law specified only men.

"The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand of their actual happiness."

But for a brutal history of suppressing labor rights, anti-Communist hysteria, the efforts of workers and freethinkers, and the indifference of the churches, the US would be celebrating Labor Day on this day instead.

Wollstonecraft argued that to obtain social equality society must rid itself of the monarchy as well as the church and military hierarchies.

The betterment of humankind was not a high priority of Christian Europe, or of the Muslim East. It was never considered that humanity could be improved.

Christians were more concerned with saving souls than freeing bodies, and in took the rise of Rationalism and Freethought, and the realization that without a social policy they would become irrelevant, before the churches found their voice.

QUOTE: Since it was Christian doctrine that animals have no souls, there was no Church prohibition against ill-treatment throughout the Middle Ages.

Socialists had a sort of religion to begin with. “Have we not that which forms the strength of religion,” Liebknecht pointed out, “faith in the highest ideals?”

It was the atheist Benito Juárez who said, “Among individuals, as among nations, peace is the respect of others' rights."