Chapman Cohen

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Chapman Cohen (1 September 1868, Leicester – 4 February 1954, Brentwood) was an English atheist and secularist writer and lecturer.

He was the elder son of Enoch Cohen, a Jewish confectioner, and his wife, Deborah (née Barnett). He attended a local elementary school but was otherwise self-educated. He had read Spinoza, Locke, Hume, Berkeley, and Plato by the time he was eighteen.

He moved to London in 1889. He soon joined the National Secular Society and was in demand as a lecturer, delivering over 200 lectures a year. He was elected a vice-president in 1895. In 1898 became assistant editor of G. W. Foote's Freethinker, and after Foote's death in 1915 he was appointed both editor of the Freethinker and president of the National Secular Society.

A fine organiser, Cohen built up the society in the inter-war years, but many members felt he had stayed on too long, and in 1949 he was persuaded to resign as president. He was editor of the Freethinker until 1951.

[edit] References

Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

[edit] Bibliography

Essays in freethinking: first series. London: Pioneer Press, 1923.
Essays in freethinking: second series. London: Pioneer Press, 1927.
Essays in freethinking: third series. London: Pioneer Press, 1928.
Essays in freethinking: fourth series. London: Pioneer Press, 1938.
Essays in freethinking: fifth series. London: Pioneer Press, 1939.
Essays in freethinking: volume one. Reprint of Essays in freethinking, first and second series. Revised edition. Austin, Texas: American Atheist Press, 1987.
Essays in freethinking: volume two. Reprint of Essays in freethinking, third and fourth series. Revised edition. Austin, Texas: American Atheist Press, 1987.
Almost an autobiography: confessions of a freethinker. London: Pioneer Press, 1940.
Materialism restated. London: Pioneer Press, 1927 (3rd edition 1943).
Theism or atheism: the great alternative. London: Pioneer Press, 1921.
God and the universe: Eddington, Jeans, Huxley and Einstein. London: Pioneer Press, 1931.
A grammar of freethought. London: Pioneer Press, 1921.
Opinions, random reflections and wayside sayings. London: Pioneer Press, 1931.
Religion and sex: studies in the pathology of religious development. London/Edinburgh: TN Foulis, 1919. Reprint, New York: AMS Press, 1975.
War, civilization and the churches. London: Pioneer Press, 1930.