Myles McSweeney (1814–1881) was an Irish Chartist, mythologist and secularist writer.
McSweeney was born in Northern Ireland but moved to London. He was influenced by the views of Robert Taylor and wrote for the National Reformer and Secular Chronicle.Wheeler, Joseph Mazzini. (1889). A Biographical Dictionary of Freethinkers of All Ages and Nations. London: Progressive Publishing Company. p. 215
He was a former Catholic who became anti-Christian.Shipley, Stan. (1983). Club Life and Socialism in Mid-Victorian London. Journeyman. p. 25 Historian Steven Fielding has described McSweeney as a "leading secularist lecturer in London's proletarian clubland."Feilding, Steven. (1993). Class and Ethnicity: Irish Catholics in England, 1880-1939. Open University Press. p. 109
McSweeney was an advocate of the Christ myth theory and lectured on the subject.Davies, Charles Maurice. (1874). Heterodox London: Or, Phases of Free Thought in the Metropolis. London: Tinsley Brothers. pp. 111-120 He was known for having reduced "Christ to a Solar Myth".Shipley, Stan. (1983). Club Life and Socialism in Mid-Victorian London. Journeyman. p. 37. "Myles McSweeney was an old Chartist who could reduce 'Christ to a Solar Myth' in a 'quaint style' which club members knew and loved. When he died in 1881 subscriptions for his funeral were sent in from all over London." In the 1870s he associated with Charles Bradlaugh.O'Donoghue, David James. (1912). The Poets of Ireland: A Biographical and Bibliographical Dictionary of Irish Writers of English Verse. Dublin: Figgis & Co. p. 292
Selected publications
Two Visions: The Pope and Old Nick, The Pan-Anglican Synod and Bishop Colenso (1867) Moses and Bacchus: A Mythological Parallel (1874) Buddhism and Christianity: A Parallel (1876)
References