Katharine Munzer Rogers, Professor Emerita of English, Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York

L. Frank Baum edited a newspaper as a young man, and in his very first issue he celebrated a new "age of Unfaith," in which people's reason revolted against the Church's teachings of blind faith in the Bible, salvation and damnation.

In Oz, Baum created a utopia in which God is pointedly not mentioned: people are happy because they are prosperous and valued; they are good because they are happy; laws and law enforcement hardly exist because good people are not motivated to do wrong.