Robert Ingersoll

In The New Oxonian:
 http://rjosephhoffmann.wordpress.com/2011/11/13/robert-ingersoll-god-and-man-in-peoria/

In the country you preserve your identity — your personality. There you are an aggregation of atoms, but in the city you are only an atom of an aggregation...

and

It probably will not be long until the churches will divide as sharply upon political as upon theological questions; and when that day comes, if there are not liberals enough to hold the balance of power, this government will be destroyed.

Mr. Ingersoll passed in 1899.