Thomas Paine Memorial Leadership Award

Future Leaders of Freethought

The Boston Atheists are pleased to sponsor an annual award to active undergraduate members of local campus freethought groups. This award takes the form of an annual paid membership in the national American Atheists organization, for one student each at the following campuses: Wellesley, Northeastern, Harvard, MIT, Boston University, Boston College, Bridgewater State College, and Tufts. Student leaders who would like their group to receive an award as well may contact us by email in order to participate. This award program is only able to fund the membership of one student from any single campus, even where multiple campus groups are active.

The first set of gift memberships will be distributed in September 2010.

Awardees are nominated by the student leaders and advisers of the campus organizations, and are selected for the following academic year in the summer by the BA leadership according to candidates' likelihood to make good use of such a gift membership.

Only students who have won the AA gift membership are eligible for one of the two AA convention grants awarded in the spring. These $300 grants are awarded exclusively to offset registration and travel costs associated with the annual American Atheists convention. The BA leadership will contact each of the AA gift membership winners in December, to determine their interest in attending the convention. Those who are indeed planning to attend will then be invited to write a short statement that expresses their freethinking views, and motivation for advocating freethought, rationalism, and skepticism. These statements will be shared with the general BA membership, who will then vote for a winner.

Paine's Legacy

Thomas Paine is well-known as one of the founding fathers of the United States. In Common Sense, his fiery rhetoric unabashedly incited rebellion in a time when public discourse on the subject of independence tended to be more veiled and implied. Also a famous freethinker, Paine's work The Age of Reason was a scathing indictment of superstition and of clerical excesses. Although he stopped short of professing atheism, Paine's religious positions were as radical as his political ones in his time; anyone who attempted to publish The Age of Reason in Britain was jailed until decades after Paine's death.

In Paine's memory, the members of the Boston Atheists hope that this award will help nurture future leaders of the freethought movement.