Liberal, MO: Atheist Utopia

I live in St. Louis, MO, and have for my entire life (and so have my parents, grandparents, great grandparents and great-great grandparents. It’s hard to be more native St. Lou than I am). The people here are crazy and so St. Louisans can often be heard saying, “I am not from Missouri, I am from St. Louis”, but we do have the best state slogan. Missouri’s official slogan is one with which every atheist/skeptic can relate; we’re “The Show-Me State”. 

Amusingly enough, Missouri is home to the only town in the country founded specifically for the purpose of creating a freethinking atheist utopia.

That town is Liberal, Missouri. 

Believe it or not, Liberal, Missouri (which is in the southwest corner of the state and is .8 miles square with a census of about 800 people) was started as an atheist, “freethinker” utopia in 1880 by George Walser, an anti-religionist, agnostic lawyer. The goal was for atheists to come and live in a churchless and saloonless town where people could raise their children without religion. Walser wanted a place where freethinkers could live to their standards of decency and morality in a quiet, unmolested way, away from missionaries the barrage of religion. Christians were not allowed, and Liberal was advertised as ” the only town of its size in the United States without a priest, preacher, church, saloon, God, Jesus, hell or devil.”

Shortly after the city was funded, a Christian by the name of H. H. Waggonerbought a parcel of land to be an “addition” to Liberal for the express purpose of “live[ing] unmolested and watch with contempt the doings of their infidel neighbors” and “inducing immigration of Christians who would be strong enough to out number the Liberals and defeat the enterprise.” What’s an infidel city to do when Christians try to defeat a freethinking city? Why, build a big barbed-wire fence around it, obviously. Apparently the whole town, including the “infidel women” got involved to build the fence. 

From the December 1, 1938 edition of the Sikeston (Missouri) Herald:

“The founder of this unique community experiment, George H. Walser, was born in Indiana in 1834. He went to Barton county immediately after the war, where he was soon recognized as one of the best lawyers in southwest Missouri. He was elected prosecuting attorney there, and became a member of the 25th assembly. With an eye for future developments he purchased 2,000 acres (8 km²) of land and selected the site of Liberal as the home of an experiment in intellectual community living. He was an agnostic and placed himself in open opposition to organized religion. “With one foot upon the neck of priestcraft and the other upon the rock of truth,” he declared, “we have thrown our banner to the breeze and challenge the world to produce a better cause for the devotion of man than that of a grand, noble and perfect humanity.” In harmony with the purpose for organizing the town a number of unusual institutions designed to promote the ideal community were tried during the 1880’s and 1890’s. The first of these was a Sunday Morning Instruction School, where children were taught from “Youth Liberal Guide” and from various works on physics, chemistry, and other sciences. In another class organized for older young people elementary experiments in the physical sciences were performed under the supervision of teachers whose avowed function was to encourage and direct free intelligent discussion. In the Mental Liberty Hall lectures were given each Sunday evening, and scientists, philosophers, socialists, atheists, Protestant ministers and Catholic priests were invited to speak—respectable decorum being the only limitation placed upon any speaker. Large enthusiastic crowds gathered each week in the interest of mental liberty. The Liberal Normal School and Business Institute was another institution organized by Walser to promote liberal education free from the bias of Christian theology. This school was well advertised and soon had a large enrollment. According to a tract published in 1885, the Liberal Normal School and Business Institute was “located in the liberal town, taught by liberal teachers and courted only the patronage of liberal patrons.” Out of this organization developed Free Thought University, which opened in 1886 with a staff of seven teachers.

There were actually people at the train stations warning Christians that they were not welcome – so Christians barraged the town on mission to convert the heathens:

As news spread about Liberal, Christians came to convert the town. Walser tried to keep them out by posting his followers at the Liberal train station to tell passengers that if they were Christians they were not welcome, according to an 1896 article in The Kansas City Star. They came anyway. Some Christians quietly bought homes and began holding religious services. Walser would interrupt them and even put a stop to it after he proved to a court that the services were being held on properties he still partly owned. The Christians then bought land next to Liberal and moved more than a dozen houses there from Liberal. The last building had a sign attached that said: “And the Lord said: Get thee out of Sodom.” Walser then built a barbed wire fence to keep them out of Liberal. (Kansas City Star on Saturday, December 22, 2001)

According to a transcription of a book on the history of Liberal, a pastor described as a “great controversialist” wrote a pamphlet and an op-ed to the St. Louis Post Dispatch (1885):

The boast about the sobriety of the town is false. But few of the infidels are total abstainers. Liquor can be obtained at three different places in this town of 300 inhabitants. More drunken infidels can be seen in a year in Liberal than drunken Christians among one hundred times as many church members during the same time. Swearing is the common form of speech in Liberal, and nearly every inhabitant, old and young, swears habitually. Girls and boys swear on the streets, playground, and at home. Fully half of the females will swear, and a large number swear habitually…. Lack of reverence for parents and of obedience to them is the rule. There are more grass widows, grass widowers and people living together, who have former companions living, than in any other town of ten times the population…. A good portion of the few books that are read are of the class that decency keeps under lock and key…. These infidels…can spend for dances and shows ten times as much as they spend on their liberalism. These dances are corrupting the youth of the surrounding country with infidelity and immorality. There is no lack of loose women at these dances. Since Liberal was started there has not been an average of one birth per year of infidel parents. Feticide is universal. The physicians of the place say that a large portion of their practice has been trying to save females from consequences of feticide. In no town is slander more prevalent, or the charges more vile. If one were to accept what the inhabitants say of each other, he would conclude that there is a hell, including all Liberal, and that its inhabitants are the devils.

Apparently shortly after writing his pamphlet, the pastor was arrested for embezzlement, though he claims he was arrested for libel against Liberal. Also apparently, the saloons did not move in until the churches moved in. Liberal soon dissolved into a regular old town.

This writer from Apologetics Press wrote a piece on Liberal, MO, claiming that the town fell as an atheist utopia because atheists cannot be trusted and that towns can’t survive without God:

“It took only a few short years for Liberal’s unattractiveness and inconsistency to be exposed. People cannot exclude God from the equation, and expect to remain a “sober, trustworthy” town. Godlessness equals unruliness, which in turn makes a repugnant, immoral people. The town of Liberal was a failure.

How about the fact that Christians were constantly barraging them from all sides? That makes a town pretty damn unattractive. Essentially, Liberal was doomed to failure due to the constant barrage of Christians trying to destroy the town or at least look on as if Liberal was some kind of godless freak show. The authoritarianism probably didn’t help either, and one can expect that if you attempt to erect a town based on an unpopular philosophical worldview in a country whose inhabitants believe you are one of the root causes of all social ills, your town is pretty much doomed before you break ground.
 

Of course, the founder eventually converted to spiritualism and then Christianity before he died. Figures.

Liberal, MO – your absolutely astounding history will be well-remembered in the heart of this Show-Me State native. xoxoxoxo