An Oration on the Life and Services of Thomas Paine

Robert Green Ingersoll (August 11, 1833 - July 21, 1899) was an American lawyer, writer, and orator who campaigned in support of agnosticism during the Golden Age of Free Thought. Colonel Ingersoll was born and raised in a devoutly Christian family, despite being the most well-known of American unbelievers for many years. His father, John Ingersoll, was a Congregationalist preacher and a man of note in his day, a keen thinker, a logical and eloquent speaker, broad-minded and generously accepting of other people's points of view. The prevalent perception that attributes Ingersoll's infidelity mostly to his father's strict orthodoxy and the austere and dreary conditions in which he grew up is completely incorrect. The elder Ingersoll's liberal ideas, on the other hand, were a continuous cause of contention between him and his parishioners. They forced him to repeatedly amend his charges and made him the defendant in church courts on multiple occasions. His ministerial career was effectively ended by a church trial that occurred while he was pastor of the Congregational Church in Madison, Ohio, and during which his third wife served as the prosecutor.