George Bethune English

George Bethune English (March 7, 1787 –  Washington, DC, September 20, 1828) was a critic of traditional Christianity and an adventurer.He was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the son of Penelope Bethune (d. Dec 1819) and Thomas English (1759 - Sep 6, 1839), the oldest of four children and was baptized on April 1, 1787 in Trinity Church. He completed Boston Latin School in 1797. He subsequently graduated from Harvard College in 1807, and received the highest academic award, the Bowdoin Prize for his dissertation, and then was subsequently awarded a Masters in theology in 1811. In 1805, English was made a member of the Hasty Pudding Club, for his skills as a poet. During his theology studies at Harvard, he began to doubt the truth of the Christian religion, which he critiqued in a book entitled  The Grounds of Christianity Examined (Boston, 1813) that drew a great deal of attention at that time. On November 4, 1814, the Church of Christ in Cambridge excommunicated him for this work. He wrote a second book "A Letter to the Reverend Mr. Cary," as a result of criticism of his first work and the controversy that it provoked. At this time he also published replies to the Unitarian leader William Ellery Channing's (1780-1842) "Two Sermons on Infidelity." Subsequently he edited a country newspaper, during which time he may have learned the Cherokee language.
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