Religion In The New Atlantis

Reading Francis Bacon’s The New Atlantis first brings to mind a simple religious narrative. A group of sailors who encounter dangerous seas that threaten to capsize their boat land upon previously uncharted soil (¶2). There, they meet initially aloof but ultimately friendly inhabitants who offer them food, rest, and care for their sick. The city of Bensalem is portrayed in The New Atlantis as a Christian utopian society, namely when the inhabitants of the island greet the sailors not with words, but a scroll stamped with the image of cherubim wings and a cross (¶5). When the sailors are granted admission onto the island upon the assurance they are Christians themselves, the unnamed narrator of the story learns the inner workings of this new and strange cultural group centered on high technology and governed by scientists. After a closer look at the story within the context of a society governed by science, The New Atlantis reads

It was fitting that the one who should receive the Scriptures from the divine column of light was a wise man of Salomon’s House; this is the first indication that religion on the island is in some way dependent upon—or connected to—science.
The Father of Salomon’s House himself then permitted the narrator a private audience with him, explaining the purpose of Salomon’s House futher; “The end of our foundation is the knowledge of causes, and secret motions of things; and the enlarging of the bounds of human empire, to the effecting of all things possible (¶63).” This is to say that the purpose of Salomon’s House is to gain as much knowledge as humanly possible about what one can assume to be God’s realm; God provided the potential for humans to rule over nature and themselves, and the method used to reach this goal is the study of the