Twain’s irreverent, posthumously published Letters From the Earth is pretty well-known, and he gets in some passing shots at religion here and there in his canon, like early on in Huck, but his most uncompromising attack on religion doesn’t get much attention and is amazingly out of print.

I wrote about this in my anthology Everything You Know About God Is Wrong, specifically in the further-reading guide, “Good Books.” Here ’tis:

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Homespun Blasphemy

“Reflections on Religion” by Mark Twain, from The Outrageous Mark Twain, edited by Charles Neider (New York: Doubleday, 1987).

America’s literary titan - Mark Twain (né, Samuel Clemens) - was largely unafraid to reveal and ridicule hypocrisy and stupidity with his legendary razor wit. Religion often felt the blade, but sometimes the results were so bloody that Clemens and his executors wouldn’t let the results be seen. Letters From the Earth - in which Satan’s commentary on humanity’s religious customs is the vehicle for irreverent but basically good-natured criticism - wasn’t published until 1962, fifty-two years after Clemens’ death. It’s been in print ever since.

The five short chapters on religion from his autobiography haven’t fared as well. Like Letters, the publication of these twenty-one pages - dictated in June 1906 - was blocked for decades. On the manuscript, Clemens wrote that they weren’t to be published until 2406, five centuries hence. In a letter to a friend, Clemens mentioned that he didn’t want them published until he’d been in the grave for 100 years. His executors complied for a long time, but his daughter Clara relented in 1960, and the five chapters were finally revealed to the world in the Hudson Review in 1963. Twenty-four more years would pass before they were published again, this time in The Outrageous Mark Twain, a collection containing other writings on religion, masturbation, and the legendary “1601,” a mock-Elizabethan story about a farting contest. Sadly, the anthology didn’t stay available for long, so the chapters are no longer in print. (Portions are included as an appendix in the slightly more recent The Bible According to Mark Twain (University of Georgia Press, 1995). Unlike most of Clemens’ work, the chapters are still under copyright. I approached the law firm handling his estate about reprinting them, but the cost was way beyond our means.)

Unlike Letters From the Earth, these chapters - collectively titled “Reflections on Religion” - are harsh. No gentle mocking here; Clemens took off the gloves and opened a can of whup-ass. Since these are the raw transcriptions of what he dictated to his secretary, they’re not as polished or organized as they would’ve been had Clemens prepared them for publication. Still, it’s a joy to see one of America’s most beloved writers take Christianity behind the woodshed.

He jumps right into the thick of things by attacking none other than God, accurately describing the despicable nature of the Old Testament’s supreme being, who is constantly murdering, mutilating, and otherwise viciously abusing humans. “It is perhaps the most damnatory biography that exists in print anywhere. It makes Nero an angel of light and leading by contrast.” He rails against the endless suffering that God continues to cause, saying that “we would detest and denounce any earthly father who should inflict upon his child a thousandth part of the pains and miseries and cruelties which God deals out to his children every day…” But as horrible as the Old Testament God is, Clemens writes, at least he’s consistent and forthright, whereas Jesus spoke of mercy and love yet also threatened people with eternal punishment and damnation. He healed a few people, fed a few people, yet refused to use his God-powers to heal and feed everybody.

The next chapter mainly concerns the fact that the Bible, as well as other sacred literature, plagiarizes earlier holy books and mythologies without admitting it. “Each in turn confiscates decayed old stage-properties from the others and with naïve confidence puts them forth as fresh new inspirations from on high.” Clemens mentions the ubiquitous flood stories but concentrates on gods born of virgins.

In chapter three, the old man rails against the bloody tactics of Russia, Britain, and Belgium, all having Christian governments at the time. After tangentially stating that “the Bible defiles all Protestant children,” Clemens looks into his crystal ball. He sees Christianity eventually going the way of all religions - fading away and being replaced by “another God and a stupider religion.”

Setting his sights once again on God in the following chapter, Clemens wonders how a supreme being can inflict such endless misery on all of his creatures. He scoffs at the notion of prayer, which he likens to begging. The originality of Clemens’ inquiries goes up a notch when he dismantles the excuses that preachers make for the suffering God puts us through - namely, that it helps us, elevates us, purifies us, and makes us worthy of heaven. If that’s so, he wonders, what about the suffering of animals, who experience violence, disease, hunger, and agonizing deaths in ways similar to, and often worse than, humans? No Bible-banger ever claims that “alligators [and] tigers” are being tested and strengthened so that they can earn a heavenly reward. And if God brutalizing his children is so wonderful, why don’t preachers recommend that parents do the same horrible things to their own children? Sure, they often say you shouldn’t spare the rod, but why not torture and starve your kids, purposely give them diseases, kill everyone they love, since these things build so much spiritual character?

Clemens uses his final chapter to ridicule the idea of heaven. “If King Leopold II, the Butcher, should proclaim that out of each hundred innocent and unoffending Congo Negroes he is going to save one from humiliation, starvation and assassination, and fetch that one home to Belgium to live with him in his palace and feed at his table, how many people would believe it?” Finally, turning his baleful gaze to the human race, Clemens unexpectedly softens:

I could say harsh things about it but I cannot bring myself to do it - it is like hitting a child. Man is not to blame for what he is…. He is flung head over heels into this world without ever a chance to decline, and straightaway he conceives and accepts the notion that he is in some mysterious way under obligations to the unknown Power that inflicted this outrage upon him…