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The church for people who don't go to church.
Established in the Tradition of the Enlightenment
"The world is my country, all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion." — Thomas Paine
Why We're Here
The Age of Reason does something different. We're throwing out the baby. But we're keeping the bathwater.
Let us explain.
The baby, in every sense of the word, is the mythology. The virgin birth. The miracles. The certainties that demand obedience rather than inquiry.
For centuries, religious institutions wrapped genuine human goods (community, fellowship, healing, moral purpose) in a package of supernatural claims. The God who punishes doubt and rewards blind faith. That's the 'baby' we're discarding. Not out of anger, but out of honesty.
We have no problem with Jesus the man: a teacher, a moral voice, a figure of genuine historical importance. We reject the mythology built around him. We reject the claim that reason must be surrendered to preserve faith. We reject the idea that community requires us to stop thinking.
The bathwater. That's everything else. The gathering of people. The shared meal. The sanctuary of a place where you belong. The ritual that marks life's passages. The accountability to something larger than yourself. The healing that comes from being known and accepted without condition. The courage to ask hard questions alongside others who are asking them too.
Many people who leave religion find themselves alone, isolated, cynical, spiritually homeless. They threw out both the baby and the bathwater. Once they saw through the veil of manipulation they walked away for good. We did that too; but eventually came to realize this is unfair to those of us who just wanted truth and reason. After many cynical and angry years towards the institution that betrayed us we slowly began to recognize that the community, the fellowship, the structure of gathering together can be fulfilling and those are real goods. They're worth preserving.
So we built a church for people who don't go to church. A place for those of us who love the bathwater but can't keep pretending the baby is real. A sanctuary for the honest, the doubting, the questioning, and the people brave enough to say: I want community and fellowship and meaning, but I won't lie to myself to get it.
Thomas Paine understood this. So did Jefferson, Franklin, Lincoln. They held onto reason while refusing to abandon the human need for connection and shared purpose. That's the tradition we're continuing.
You don't have to choose between your mind and your community. You don't have to surrender one to keep the other.
You Belong Here
Walk into almost any church and you'll find a fairly similar group of people. Same beliefs, same answers, same book. That's not an accident, it's the whole design. Shared doctrine is the glue that holds traditional congregations together.
And then some people start asking questions, they start to deconstruct. The threads of faith may unravel slowly or all at once. The guilt and shame are overwhelming to the previously indoctrinated mind; to question the things you were told to never question, risking eternal conscious torment (hell) in many fundamental dogmas. The directions you can wander are infinite. Everyone who leaves the pew ends up somewhere different, carrying a unique set of questions, taking a new path. There is no common destination. There was never going to be.
This is the great hurdle in building a church for free-thinkers. By their very nature, they resist being herded. Independent thought is the whole point, and independent thinkers scatter.
That's exactly what we're doing here anyway.
The Age of Reason exists to be a place where the skeptic, the doubter, the deconstructed, and the unaffiliated can feel genuinely at home. A church they can be proud to support and proud to call their own. The fastest-growing spiritual demographic in America right now is the "nones": people who check no religious box, belong to no congregation, and have nowhere to go on Sunday that doesn't ask them to pretend. We are building that place for them.
We're herding spiritual cats over here and we wouldn't have it any other way.
Who We Are
For over 250 years, the great ideas of the Enlightenment have been frozen in place by institutions too threatened to let them thaw. Thomas Paine was their loudest and most fearless voice. The Age of Reason exists to finish what he started. The thaw is long overdue.
Invigorate the universal human spirit buried beneath centuries of superstition and dogma.
Use the knowledge gained from humanity's discoveries to establish an authentic connection to the laws of nature and the universe.
Offer victims of church abuse and indoctrination a safe, honest place to regain their spiritual footing.
Explore
Our Founding Influence
Thomas Paine was a political philosopher, revolutionary, and freethinker whose 1794 work The Age of Reason challenged organized religion and championed the deist belief that God is best understood through reason and the natural world, not through scripture or clergy.
"My own mind is my own church."
Paine argued that religion, as constructed by human institutions, was designed to enslave the mind rather than liberate it. He valued free thought, the separation of church and state, and the sovereignty of the individual conscience. Unlike his contemporaries, Paine also stood firmly against slavery from the very beginning. When he said all men are created equal, he actually meant it.
"It is error only, and not truth, that shrinks from inquiry."
Our Philosophy
Pascal's Wager argues that one should believe in God out of self-interest, on the theory that the potential reward of heaven outweighs the cost. Richard's Reversal™ turns this argument on its head.
At The Age of Reason, we hold that belief in the divine should stem from authentic conviction, not from fear of punishment or hope for reward. A faith adopted for strategic, self-interested reasons is not genuine faith. It is spiritual theater.
Richard's Reversal™ challenges us to embrace doubt as a virtue, and to seek truth through reason. Genuine connection to the divine must be free from ulterior motives. The moment belief is calculated, it ceases to be belief at all.
We encourage all members to explore their convictions with courage and honesty, fostering a community where reason leads to enlightenment, not where fear leads to conformity.
Our View of Consciousness
Among the most profound ideas emerging from modern philosophy and science is one that Thomas Paine himself might have embraced: panpsychism: the view that consciousness, or something like it, is not a product of biology alone, but a fundamental and irreducible feature of the universe itself.
If the Creator is in nature, as deism holds, then perhaps the Creator is not separate from consciousness. Perhaps consciousness is how the universe experiences itself.
Panpsychism requires no miracles, no revelation, no scripture. It follows from a simple and ancient observation: the universe is not dead matter randomly organized. It is ordered, intricate, and, at least in beings like us, aware of itself. The question is not whether consciousness exists, but where it begins.
Orthodox science tells us consciousness emerges from complex arrangements of matter, yet it has never explained how. This is what philosophers call the "hard problem of consciousness," and it remains unsolved. Panpsychism offers an alternative: consciousness was never absent from matter. It was always there, in simpler forms, building toward the self-awareness we experience as human minds.
At The Age of Reason, we hold that exploring this possibility, that awareness is woven into the fabric of existence, is not mysticism. It is the natural extension of honest inquiry into what the universe actually is.
This is not a doctrine we require you to accept. It is a question we invite you to sit with. What if the light of consciousness you experience right now is the same light that animates all of nature? What if reason, the very faculty by which you are reading these words, is the universe coming to know itself?
Paine saw the Creator in the majesty of the natural world. We believe he was looking in exactly the right direction.
From Our Founder
Hear directly from Richard C. Mayhue, founder of The Age of Reason, on what inspired this community and why its message matters now more than ever.
VIDEO COMING SOON
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Verified & Recognized
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We are a registered 501(c)(3). Every dollar donated is fully tax deductible. And every organization listed below has independently confirmed that this mission is legitimate, accountable, and worthy of your trust.
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The Age of Reason exists to finish what Thomas Paine started: to build a community grounded in reason, fellowship, and honest inquiry. Your support makes that possible.
Every dollar goes toward building something Paine would have recognized — a place where people can think freely, heal honestly, and belong without pretending.
Donate via PayPal Giving FundJoin Us
Membership is open to all individuals who embrace the principles of deism, humanism, rational inquiry, and ethical conduct. We welcome questioners, doubters, seekers, and anyone who has felt their spiritual journey deserved better than what they were handed.
A Reasonist is someone who follows reason as their guide. Not a political party. Not a preacher. Not a book written two thousand years ago. Just their own honest mind, pointed at the truth.
I coined this term because no existing label fit what we are. Atheist tells you what someone rejects. Agnostic tells you what someone isn't sure about. Humanist gets close but still feels borrowed. I needed a word that said what we actually are, not what we aren't. Reasonist. Someone who follows reason.
A Reasonist is not defined by what they reject. A Reasonist is defined by what they pursue: truth, wherever it leads. No destination guaranteed. No dogma required. Just the courage to keep asking.
Thomas Paine was a Reasonist. So was Einstein. So was Lincoln. None of them agreed on everything. All of them refused to stop thinking.
You don't have to believe what we believe to be a Reasonist. You just have to believe in the process. Ask the question. Follow the evidence. Change your mind when you're wrong. Start over.
That's it. That's the whole thing.
Welcome to the community. You're one of us.
Monthly meetings for study, dialogue, and genuine human connection grounded in reason.
A safe and honest space for those recovering from church abuse, trauma, or religious indoctrination.
Educational programs, philosophical discussion, and the freedom to ask questions you were told not to ask.
A member-informed Board of Directors ensures the church remains transparent, ethical, and mission-driven.
We don't ask you to believe anything. We only ask that you think honestly, courageously, and freely.