Tom Flynn: Champion for Freethought (original) (raw)

Thomas W. Flynn died suddenly August 23, 2021. Those who knew him personally and professionally were shocked and saddened. We had looked forward to many more years of his contributions, even though at the time of his death at age sixty-six he had accomplished much more than most people.

Flynn was a scholar and a showman, a historian and an activist, a writer on issues important to secular humanism and the human race, and an author of science-fiction novels. He was an editor of books, magazines, and newsletters; a creator of documentaries and promotional videos as well as letters appealing for donations and subscriptions; an effective manager of organizations and projects. He was witty and knowledgeable in interactions from casual conversations to formal lectures—and he was the king of puns.

Getting the recipe for the making of any remarkable person would be quite an achievement. As it is, we can only tell his or her story in a look back. As with many other noteworthy individuals, Flynn’s life could have turned out much differently.

Tom Flynn was born in 1955 in Erie, Pennsylvania, into a strict Catholic household. He was the only child of Richard and Sally Ann Flynn, who were only children themselves. One of Flynn’s grandfathers was a banker, and Flynn’s father held a master’s degree from St. Louis University and taught high-school social studies and economics for thirty-five years.

Perhaps, then, it is not surprising that Flynn was a precocious child. In his 1993 book The Trouble with Christmas (more about that later), he relates that at the age of three he could read at the fourth-grade level. When it came time to start kindergarten, his parents tried to enroll him in their parish school. But the administrators balked when he achieved high scores on the entrance exam and recommended a public school education instead. He describes being one of only two students who entered kindergarten that year knowing how to read, and one of about only two dozen Catholics in a large urban K-6 school.

Flynn’s time in the public schools of Erie provided important formative experiences in his becoming an atheist. The first was his exposure to the Protestant-favored King James Bible and its version of the Lord’s Prayer. Both were read and recited in classrooms at the time and differed from the Catholic texts he was exposed to in church services and Sunday school. Some religious musical pieces were similar but also had discrepancies. Flynn writes that his maternal grandmother had been taught by nuns that “Protestants who collapsed on the sidewalk could properly be stepped over and ignored since they were going to hell anyway.” He likewise feared the fate of hell for himself for participating in the religious aspects of his public school curriculum and was relieved when in the early 1960s the U.S. Supreme Court did away with them.

So, at an early age, Flynn developed an appreciation for the U.S. Constitution’s separation of church and state. He also could put himself in the shoes of religious believers who had been made miserable because their faith’s tenets differed from those of the majority.

Flynn coped with the challenges to Catholicism presented by outsiders and held fast to his faith into high school. Then the seeds of doubt were cast by insiders—the Second Vatican Council. How could men change Church practices that Jesus Christ himself had dictated through St. Peter, as the nuns had taught? God’s guidance was sup- posed to establish Catholicism’s superiority over the Protestant people-driven organization. Could any religion claim moral dominance?

Tom Flynn working sound on set.

If Flynn’s contemplation of such serious questions were unusual for a teenager, so were his nonacademic activities. At seventeen, he was vice president of the filmmaking company Tri-State Productions, which he helped found in 1966 at age eleven! Lifelong friend and early collaborator Adam Nehr recalled their work on one movie, The Chief, about the Erie Fire Department in the 1930s. The concept was born when Nehr told Flynn about a 1931 American LaFrance fire truck that was being restored, and “the script poured forth from his brilliant mind.” The story involved a World War I veteran with post-traumatic stress disorder who had become an anarchist and arsonist targeting military equipment manufacturers in Erie. In the climactic scene, the fire chief saves several people in a factory when he locates and removes a bomb.

Nehr was in charge of special effects, which included creating the biggest explosions possible. “Not big enough!” was Flynn’s reaction to a battlefield recreation that involved a five-pound keg of gunpowder. Nehr eventually satisfied Flynn on that shot, but unbeknownst to Nehr, Flynn decided to tinker with the later bomb scene. Nehr had created a mixture of gasoline and gunpowder to simulate the bomb going off after the fire chief tosses it down a stairwell. Flynn added considerably to the carefully measured one ounce of gunpowder. Amazingly, there was little damage to their school’s auditorium stage light-bridge and stairs that were being used for the filming. When Flynn noticed one melted, smoking camera, he only asked, “Do you think it got the shot?”

In addition to an interest in filmmaking, Flynn and Nehr shared doubts about religion. The nuns who taught Nehr in parochial school had Tom as a student in Sunday school, and they complained to each boy about the other’s questioning in class. Nehr recalls that when they finally met, they “reinforced each other.” “Tom and I came to atheism the same way. We would have been slower to reject religion had we not met each other. We had the exact same struggle going on in our heads.”

Meanwhile, Flynn’s parents were not unaware of their son’s questioning and thought that college would provide an opportunity to get him back on the right track. And so, another school selection proved pivotal on Flynn’s path to atheism. The Jesuit institution of Xavier University was chosen, but the plan backfired. Xavier introduced Flynn to philosophy. “For me to discover as a college freshman that towering intellects had wrestled profoundly with the issues of knowledge, truth, cosmology, and verification I was trifling with was a comfort and a revelation,” he wrote. College molded him into a serious and informed critic, and he soon began reading philosophy and theology texts beyond what was assigned in his courses. Logic led him to reject the concept of God. “I will always be grateful to the Jesuits at Xavier University. Without them, I might not be the atheist I am today.”

Tom Flynn in costume Halloween, 1985.

An Xavier fraternity also provided Flynn with his first opportunity to stage a Halloween haunting, and again he called upon Nehr to assist with special effects. Flynn also continued to make films in college. After graduation, he embarked upon a career in advertising, employing his skills in directing and producing industrial films and designing Halloween and Christmas attractions for nonprofits. His efforts for the latter involved building sets that could be quickly transformed to transition from one holiday to the next—Satan’s throne became Santa’s seat; a guillotine became a wrapping paper cutter.

In 1980, while living in Milwaukee and researching atheism in the public library, Flynn came upon The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll. Ingersoll’s speeches bolstered his commit- ment to atheism and inspired him to activism. Soon after, he moved to Buffalo, New York. Many hold fond memories of his “haunted” attraction in a manmade cave in Lockport that benefited a museum dedicated to the Erie Canal. (He used to say that he was someone who could actually answer a question that originated in a Three Stooges bit: “How much do you charge to haunt a house?”) Flynn was also known for his elaborate costumes, which he enjoyed wearing while bar-hopping on Halloween.

During this time, Flynn began attending meetings of the Western New York Humanist Society, a group that was affiliated with the American Humanist Association (AHA) and used the facilities of a Buffalo Unitarian church. There he met Thomas Franczyk, and the two teamed up to produce the group’s newsletter, Humanistically Speaking. They also began appearing on local radio talk-shows. One program focused on the charge that some popular rock songs when played backward broadcast satanic messages, known as backmasking. The technique was actually used by some rock groups, including the Beatles, but not to nefarious ends. The program caught the attention of philosophy student Timothy J. Madigan (later an editor of Free Inquiry), who was so impressed by the logical treatment of the topic that he contacted the program guests. They soon became a sought-after trio (known variously as “two Toms and a Tim” and “the Three Wise Guys”) for comment on issues of humanism and religion.

Paul Kurtz, founding editor of Free Inquiry, also became aware of the threesome, and he invited Flynn and Franczyk to move their newsletter from AHA and publish it under the auspices of the Council for Democratic and Secular Humanism (CODESH), the precursor to the Council for Secular Humanism (CSH). Although both the AHA and CODESH were nonprofits dedicated to the cause of secular humanism, the AHA had a religious tax exemption, which was troubling because secular humanism by definition rejected a supernatural (religious) basis for a life stance. CODESH held an educational tax exemption. So, in 1985, Flynn and his associates began contributing their energies to CODESH, and the Secular Humanist Bulletin (SHB) was born.

Free Inquiry at this time was published four times a year. SHB was planned to come out in the intervening months and was designed to appeal to and provide ammunition for secular humanists in the trenches. Usually sixteen-pages long, it carried over some of the same columns that Flynn and his coeditor Franczyk had created for the WNY Humanist Society newsletter. Franczyk’s Biblical Scorecard exposed the Bible’s texts and teachings to critical examination. The Secular Humorist offered some levity amid the serious discussions (Paul MacCready’s definition of a humanist: “Someone who doesn’t believe in God and doesn’t steal.”). Flynn authored Advocatus Diaboli, Contentious Critiques & Controversial Comments. The editors, later joined by Madigan, met in each other’s houses and Buffalo bars to work on SHB, with final production taking place at CODESH’s office. In the spring of 1987, the group had an unpleasant foray into the national spotlight when they founded Catholics Anonymous (CA), described in its Declaration of Principles as “a support group and information clearinghouse for former, lapsed, and nominal members of the Roman Catholic Church who dispute part or all of the Church’s moral, philosophical, and intellectual teachings, or who are dealing with the aftermath of a complete personal break with that Church.” CA’s model was Fundamentalists Anonymous, which was founded in 1985 and encouraged the formation of local chapters. But CA drew the ire of local and high- level Catholic leaders, whose accusations of CA instigating anti-Catholic sentiment and discrimination were covered in the national press.

Tom Flynn, 1978. Photo by Adam Nehr.

Franczyk remembers Flynn as a knowledgeable activist who also knew what establishments to visit for the best scotch, steak sandwich, or chicken wings, and he had a passion for hot peppers. Madigan recalls him as also being able to tell one exactly how those things were made. He was “focused and driven” and “a voracious reader who absorbed all he read.” “Tom was a prolific writer but also knew about lighting and sound production,” says Madigan. “A jack of all trades, as well as their master.”

Kurtz also recognized Flynn’s talents, recalls Franczyk, and Flynn joined CODESH in 1989. He wore many hats over the years, but perhaps the most fun was his black “HUMBUG” Santa Claus hat. Flynn’s growing estrangement from the Christmas holiday had begun when he gave up his belief in God, but he did not take a stand until 1984, when he informed his family he would no longer be observing the holiday or joining them in their celebration. He reported that they took the news harder than his atheism.

Franczyk recalls Flynn’s “Anti-Claus” character debuting in their media appearances in the 1980s. The Three Wise Guys comprised a Bible critic (Franczyk), a philosopher (Madigan), and the Anti-Claus (Flynn). But it was an SHB Advocatus Diaboli column, “Confessions of an Anti-Claus” (Winter 1992), that first fleshed out his argument. The book The Trouble with Christmas (Prometheus Books) followed in 1993. Flynn contended that the holiday was actually harmful because it encouraged children to believe in a myth and therefore damaged their development. Its widespread observance in public life was oppressive to non-Christians. Flynn called for secular humanists to reject even replacement observances, such as of the winter solstice. Every year in the weeks before December 25, the Anti-Claus traveled around the country to entertain local groups and appear on numerous radio and television programs. If Christmas fell on a workday, Flynn did not fail to report to the office. In recent years, his labors were livestreamed, and supporters could view him and email or call to chat—and donate to the Center for Inquiry (CFI)! He also recently had begun to give Easter the same critical treatment.

A detailed guide to CFI that chronologically presents its permutations and projects, perhaps in a family tree form, would be useful in recounting all of Flynn’s accomplishments. CSH and the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (now called the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry) were placed under the umbrella of a new organization—CFI—in 1991. Flynn was instrumental in determining CFI’s needs for physical space and equipment and in designing its new facilities. He was vice president for media. He helped plan and put on conferences and supported like-minded individuals and formal groups around the country. He became CSH executive director in 2009. His devotion to preserving the legacy of Robert Green Ingersoll made him the natural choice in 1992 to develop Ingersoll’s birthplace in Dresden, New York, as a museum. Flynn served as the executive producer of American Freethought, Roderick Bradford’s television documentary on the history of secularism and censorship in the United States. He dedicated himself to the research and dissemination of information about America’s freethought history and developed the Freethought Trail, 185 sites in west-central New York State important in the history of social reform.

But perhaps the job Flynn loved best was being editor of Free Inquiry. He took over the helm in 2000 and was days away from sending the October/November 2021 issue to the printer when he died. Flynn not only edited the mag- azine but wrote extensively for it—introductions, editorials, book reviews, and more. His production was so prolific that he became concerned about the frequent appearance of his byline, and he created a pseudonym for some pieces—George Beazy. His subjects and issue themes reflected his interests and concerns. Regarding activism, he advocated that secular humanists should model the strategy employed by LGBTQ activists and “out” themselves to claim their rightful place in society (witness today’s recognition of the “Nones,” people living without religion). On language, he cautioned humanists to be wary of using the word spirit because it has a religious connotation—and he suggested numerous alternatives. He was a Libertarian. He viewed human numbers as the biggest threat to the environment and even opposed immigration on those grounds. He favored civil unions over the traditional matrimony system. He supported euthanasia.

The events of September 11, 2001, determined themes in Free Inquiry for years to come. Islam’s basic tenets call for death to unbelievers, and, despite the claims of followers who have chosen the peaceful practice of the religion, it has never officially turned away from that teaching. Numerous writers for the magazine took on the challenge of exposing the dangers of Islam presented to the modern world. Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens attacked with insightful and biting commentary. Author Ibn Warraq, a pseudonym adopted due to death threats, took an exhaustive scholarly approach. Flynn’s leadership in this period was most evident in 2006, when he chose to reprint in Free Inquiry the “Muhammad cartoons,” which had originally appeared in a Danish newspaper and resulted in protests with injuries and deaths abroad. Not only were the cartoons critical of Islam, but, according to devotees, they violated a rule that Muhammad could not be depicted (a teaching that some Islamic scholars dispute). Flynn’s decision to exercise free speech rights led to the major bookstore chain Borders (no longer in business) refusing to carry the issue and insisting on previewing future issues for a time.

Tom Flynn at CFI headquarters in Amherst.

Flynn’s approach to presenting the secular humanism stance sometimes conflicted with Kurtz’s. Kurtz championed inquiry unfettered by religious or political restrictions, but he also sought dialogue and common ground with believers. This led him to sometimes soft-pedal secular humanism’s answer to the most fundamental inquiry of all—Is there a god? Agnosticism gave the answer that so far the evidence showed probably not. Kurtz disliked and discouraged use of the term atheism. Flynn, however, increasingly believed that atheism was the only honest answer to the question.

Amazingly, in addition to all his other duties, Flynn found the time to edit 2007’s The New Encyclopedia of Unbelief, a 897-page reference book on the people and develop- ments in the history of unbelief. He blogged for the Washington Post (On Faith) and CFI (Free Thinking) and wrote a new introduction to A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom by Andrew Dickson White (Routledge, 2017). In his spare time, Flynn wrote three science-fiction novels: Galactic Rapture (2000), later renamed Messiah Games (2008); Nothing Sacred (2004 and 2008); and Behold, He Said (2018). The three books are together known as the Messiah Trilogy, an interplanetary saga involving a false messiah and those whose seek to profit from his popularity.

In his book The Trouble with Christmas, Flynn declared himself fortunate to have grown up at a time when questioning was encouraged. He not only reconsidered his religion but also his assumptions regarding choices of community, politics, and domestic life:

Imagine mentally projecting yourself outside your culture, past the debris of your experiences and past the drag of your heritage. That was the ideal toward which I strove. If I could not make of myself precisely the person I yearned to be, at least I could identify, and try to change, the effects of the early influences that had made of me someone of whom I disapproved.

Flynn achieved his goal—and exceeded it—magnificently.

Andrea Szalanski

Andrea Szalanski began work for what is now the Center for Inquiry in 1983. She was the managing editor for Free Inquiry and editor of the Secular Humanist Bulletin until 2017. Over the years, she also performed public relations, editorial, and production duties for many CFI endeavors.

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