The 2025 Fall Trouble Begins Lecture Series presented by the Center for Mark Twain Studies (CMTS) concludes at 7:00 p.m., Wednesday, October 29 in the Quarry Farm Performance Barn, Located at 131 Crane Road, Elmira, the lectures are free and open to the public and recordings of the lectures will be posted to the CMTS website.
The Trouble Begins and The Park Church Summer Lecture Series are made possible by the support of the Mark Twain Foundation and generous gifts from individual donors.
The final lecture, “‘I Have Always Preached’: Mark Twain and Liberal Religion,” will be presented by Dwayne Eutsey, independent scholar.
“The reports of Mark Twain’s atheism have been greatly exaggerated.” So begins “There is No Humor in Heaven”: Mark Twain and Religious Liberalism, Dwayne Eutsey’s intriguing new book that significantly challenges prevailing assumptions about Twain’s hostility toward religion. Eutsey will present an overview of the book, focusing on religious liberalism’s lifelong influence on Mark Twain’s life and writing. Published by the University of Missouri Press, Eutsey’s book traces the influences of various liberal religious movements of Twain’s era on his writing and religious beliefs, ranging from Freemasonry, Universalism, and Unitarianism to the more genteel liberal Christianity of Elmira and Hartford, and ultimately Free Religion and aspects of esoteric Hinduism.
As a frustrated Gospel preacher himself, Twain’s many friendships with several liberal clergy throughout his life were instrumental in bringing these influences into his life and writing: the “radical evangelical” Franklin Rising in Nevada; Thomas Starr King and other prominent Unitarian ministers in California; Horace Bushnell, Thomas K. Beecher, and Joe Twichell in Elmira and Hartford; and the radical Emerson protege Moncure Conway, whose interest in Hinduism may have influenced Twain’s controversial final novella, No. 44, The Mysterious Stranger.
After earning a B.A. in English from the University of Maryland and a certificate in Theological Studies from Georgetown University, Dwayne Eutsey completed his master’s thesis on Mark Twain’s unconventional religious views at Georgetown University. He has since established himself as an independent scholar in Mark Twain Studies. The author of several scholarly articles on Twain and numerous freelance pieces on humor, religion, politics, and popular culture, Eutsey also is the co-author of The Abide Guide: Living Like Lebowski.