Philosophical Foundations of the French Revolution and National Dechristianization

The 18^th century was incredibly unstable in terms of religious and political revolution. Echoes of the Protestant Reformation that swept across Europe merely 200 years earlier were drowned out by voices of reason rallying against the Church. Feudal and monarchical politics established during the Middle Ages were soon to be replaced by governments that emphasized the voice of the common good. Europe, specifically France, sat on the cusp of transformation and found in the Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, the nudge needed to send it toppling into political disorder and religious decay.  Enlightenment philosophies were extensive, and helped pave the way for the tumultuous times of the French Revolution and the attempted dechristianization of France.

The Enlightenment: Philosophy In Theory

Any discussion of the Enlightenment period would be grossly incomplete without paying respects to the influence of Pierre Bayle (1647-1706) as one of the initial philosophes (French philosophers).  With the rise of modern science in the 16^th-17^th centuries, the compatibility of faith and knowledge, and thus reason, came into questioning. As one of the first philosophes, Bayle asserted that the “realms of faith and reason are mutually exclusive” (Geisler 72). With this separation in mind, Paul Johnson asserts, “Bayle subjected countless philosophical and religious doctrines to critical scrutiny, and demonstrated…that none of them had any legitimate claim to the status of final truth” (Johnson 80). Bayle’s critique of religious and philosophical exclusivity began undermining the powerful alliance between the Church and French government. No institution could claim a monopoly on absolute truth and the state began to make decisions separate from the Church, and vice versa. Later philosophes would see Bayle’s work as the foundation for anti-clericalism (Furet and Ozouf 24).

One of these later philosophes was Voltaire (1694-1778), who connected the ideals of Deism with the Enlightenment. During a trip to England in 1728, Voltaire “saw the benefits of religious pluralism and toleration” which inspired his famous work, Lettres Philosophiques. Despite being widely condemned for its radicalism, the book sold well and made its way throughout Europe to France (Doyle 50). The religious diversity Voltaire experienced in England was mentally freeing, and differed greatly from what Louis Dupré refers to as the “intellectually restrictive conditions of life in France.” Voltaire introduced the growing popularity of British Deism to the nascent religious revolution in France, and after returning to France, continued to voice strong opinions against the religion (Dupré 251). Voltaire weakened the authority of the Church by adopting the biblical criticism of Baruch Spinoza, a 17^th-century Dutch philosopher, through questioning the historicity and inerrancy of Scriptural accounts. With Church authority in question and the authenticity and importance of Scripture in doubt, philosophers began searching for truth and knowledge in another medium—reason (252).

Reason as a philosophy found traction during the first half of the 17^th century with René Descartes (1596-1650), often referred to as the “father of modern philosophy”. Dealing heavily with metaphysics, Descartes penned the famous line, “I think, therefore I am,” placing emphasis on the mind and reason as the infrastructure of knowledge and truth. The trustable senses are the primary source through which knowledge and truth is gained. (Kaufmann and Baird 395). Like Bayle, Descartes distinguished between faith and reason, making them both exclusive, but never went as far as to separate Church and state. Reason and science claimed control of the mind while the church claimed control of the spirit. This distinction that would lead Bayle to claim the incompatibility of faith and reason, of Church and state (Mitchell 198).

Perhaps one of the most influential Enlightenment philosophes was Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), who’s emphasis on political philosophy made one of the clearest connections between the Enlightenment and the French Revolution. Rousseau strongly upheld the Enlightenment tenet that asserted the inherent goodness of humanity. This belief directly contradicted the views that were held by the Church (Neely 24). But Rousseau’s objections against the Church didn’t end there. Building off of the philosophies of Bayle and Voltaire, Rousseau likened the effects of Christianity on politics as “favorable to tyranny” (Rousseau 304). Rousseau’s belief in inherent goodness asserted the equality of all men, but he saw the stranglehold of the church on the French government and religious monopoly on the whole nation as oppositional. Religious toleration through a “civil religion” was the only way to bring about unity and equality in France (Dupré 255).

Revolution: Philosophy In Law

The Enlightenment wed a rebellion against religion with an emphasis on reason and freethinking and birthed the progressive political schema leading to the French Revolution. For the philosophes, “an invocation to proceed on the basis of reason was a call to think for oneself, to decide what to believe independently of religious and political authority, and to adopt an empirical and scientific approach to the basis of politics and morals” (Kors 407). The French Revolution, then, closed out the Age of Reason with the establishment of the very ideals it proposed—“popular sovereignty, equality before the law, and liberalism” (Inwood 237).

Prior to the start of the Revolution France suffered from many years of political and economic instability. Militarily, France stretched itself thin by getting involved in both the Seven Years’ War and the French and Indian War. Both were sound defeats for France and they lost large portions of their empire, namely Canada and India, to Britain (Neely 30). War costs set the nation hurtling towards a pit of bankruptcy. Economically, the spectrum varied from wealthy nobility to struggling farmers and peasants. The Church itself was extremely rich and powerful, not only controlling most of the land and thriving from tax exemption but also having considerable governmental influence and complete academic control. The clergy themselves were poor even with the Church’s wealth, but they still did not reach the impoverished depths of the farmers. (Hibbert 30). Despite a lot of resentment felt towards the wealth and power of the Church, the corrupt nobility received the brunt of the hate. Tax exemptions and variations were exploited by the nobility so that the burden fell to the peasants. Certain privileges, such as military involvement and foreign relations, were only available to those of aristocratic blood. Without a doubt, the common people—farmers, peasants, and a smattering of clergy—felt the groans of unfair social status and cried out for the equality, liberty, and fraternity of the Enlightenment (31).

It wasn’t until 1788 that The French Revolution officially began with the announcement for the meeting of the Estates-General, a governmental meeting of France’s tripartite class system that had not met since 1614. Up for discussion was a complete revision of taxation, implementing land taxes that sought to spread the burden of taxation evenly amongst the peasants, clergy, and nobles (38). But it didn’t take long for the Third Estate (commoners) to realize that the first two Estates (Church and nobility) could easily team up and veto the proposed tax. Thus, before the Estates-General had time to adequately discuss taxation, the Third Estate called for recess, based on the rational Enlightenment tenets of “natural rights and egalitarian demands”, until they could gain equal representation (Furet and Ozouf 46). Calling a recess until representatives could be found effectively took the law and placed it in the hands of the people. Furet out Ozouf establish that “representatives chosen for their enlightenment could not make enlightened decisions unless they were free to deliberate in a manner unconstrained by the prior wills to the discourse of reason” (320). Egalitarian freedom of expression became the centerfold of the Estates-General.

The Estates-General assembled again in May 1789. However, this time the Third Estate had the same amount of representatives as the First and Second Estates combined. But the outcome of the Estates-General was unexpected. The nobility agreed to equal taxation, but didn’t want to see it done at the hands of the Third Estate. On May 28^th, they passed a bill that stated that any taxation had to pass by vote by order of Estates, successfully circumnavigating the equal representation of the Third Estate and causing a stalemate (Neely 65). During this stalemate, though, the Enlightenment philosophy of fraternity once again trumped all discussion. The three Estates unified in one common purpose of establishing a better governmental body and drafting a new Constitution. Instead of remaining in three separate Estates, the Estates-General combined in June to form the National Assembly, one group of citizens with the sole purpose of reestablishing a better central government (66). At the core of the National Assembly’s vision was equality in law and freedom for all men.

The National Assembly is often seen as the start of rebellion against the rule of the Church and attempts of dechristianization in the early 1790’s. The Three Estates in the Estates-General were seen in a hierarchy of importance—First Estate (clergy), Second Estate (nobility), Third Estate (commoner)—because the Church possessed the majority of power and wealth in the nation. Destroying this hierarchy, the National Assembly inverted the spread of power. Man was placed at a priority of higher importance than the Church (Doyle 103).

A few days after the forming of the National Assembly, the first steps towards the ratification of a new Constitution were made. On June 20^th, the National Assembly met on an indoor tennis-court because their normal meeting place was locked and guarded. It was here that the famous Tennis-Court Oath was taken, which declared that the National Assembly would never disband “until the constitution of the kingdom is established and consolidated upon firm foundations” (Neely 68). Even though steps were made in the direction of instituting a new law, burdensome taxes had still not been revoked and people began to get restless. In response, King Louis XVI fired Jacques Necker, the Director of the Royal Treasury, for his incompetence, but Necker turned out to be quite popular with the people, unbeknownst to Louis. Necker’s dismissal coupled with impatience with the National Assembly’s delay gave way to minor riots that culminated in the well-known Storming of the Bastille where close to 100 French citizens were killed. Nevertheless, the French commoners managed to take control of the Bastille, and Louis was forced to withdraw his unreliable militia. This event symbolized the beginning of a new era, one which Doyle claims “marked the end of royal [Louis XVI’s] authority” and paved the rest of the way for a new Constitution (Doyle 110).

The Declaration of the Rights and Man and of Citizen met the Constitutional demands. After the National Assembly had been formed, the clergy found themselves wholly outnumbered, numbering roughly a quarter of the entire legislative body. Until the forming of the Declaration these odds hadn’t been of any consequence, but as the Declaration took shape the church realized they would need to “concede total freedom of thought and worship” (118). With the Declaration, the people were given legislative and executive power. These same people were exhausted with the incestuous ties between Church and state and the growing wealth and corruption of religion. The National Assembly rejected Catholicism as the official religion of France and instead replaced it with an emphasis on free expression and toleration (137).   The people found their philosophy through Rousseau, who explicitly inspired the “principle of the sixth article of the Declaration: ‘The Law is the expression of the general will’” (Furet and Ozouf 484). And the will was not in the Church’s favor.

Over the next few years, the Church faced tempestuous opposition at the hands of the National Assembly. Only months after the Declaration became law, the National Assembly repossessed all church property in an attempt to reallocate wealth. (Doyle 132). Again, several months later towards the beginning of 1790, “monasteries and convents, except those dedicated to educational and charitable work, were dissolved” (137). In June 1790, the Civil Constitution of the Clergy placed the Church back under the control of the government and loosened papal authority by the imposition of a loyalty oath (Furet and Ozouf 452). Eventually, the Church split in two as some clergy took the oath and others refused. (454).

Dechristianization: Philosophy In Action

Neither the revolutionaries nor later historians studying the Revolution were surprised with this clerical and religious opposition. These ideals can consistently be traced back to the Enlightenment philosophes, most of which “combined atheism and anti-clericalism…and urged liberal politics” and “shared, too, a concern for non-religious education” (Priest 297). By 1793, the Declaration had gone through several revisions, each a harbinger of more trouble for the Church. The Revolution became more volatile and anarchic revolutionaries decapitated Louis XVI sparking a horrific explosion of violence and death in the Reign of Terror. Things looked grim as France imploded on itself, the culmination of which was several purposeful attempts at complete dechristianization.

The goal of revolutionary dechristianization sought, according to Ozouf, “To rid France of the influence of the Catholic Church” (Furet and Ozouf 20). Dechristianization surpassed the Declaration in practical effort to eliminate Christianity, focusing on demonstrations and tangibility rather than laws and prohibitions to “make way for the reign of reason” (Kennedy 339). 20,000 clerics abdicated between October 1793 and March 1794. The Reign of Terror claimed the lives of close to 1,000 priests. Dechristianizers, according to Kennedy, “did not hesitate to resort to force to insure that the same ‘truth’ was accepted by all’” (339).

Reason, the battle hymn of the Enlightenment, tried to extricate Christianity from France. One such example of this was Notre Dame’s Festival of Reason in late 1793. Following the abdication of some 400 priests, Chaumette and Hébert, a politician and a journalist respectively, both proclaimed atheists, started the Festival of Reason, a ceremonial procession “of musicians, soldiers, and young girls girded with tricolored ribbons and garlands of flowers who followed a goddess of Reason” (343). Another clear example of dechristianization was a failed attempt at instituting a new calendar devoid of Christian influence, which included the removal of Christian holidays and restructuring the months and days (351).

Thankfully, the effects of concentrated attempts at dechristianization were not long-lasting. Efforts died out shortly. Most of this was due to Robespierre, a French lawyer and politician. According to Kennedy, Robespierre even went as far to say that without belief in God and the immortality of the soul, “The Republic could not endure” (345).Using his political power and voice, Robespierre publicly denounced anti-religious ideologies while simultaneously convincing political committees to warn against dechristianization and persecution. Dechristianizational efforts ended less than a year after they had begun, but the damage had been done. Hundreds of clerics lost their lives, churches were closed for extended periods of time and robbed of their possessions; it marred the image of the church. This was a vital turning point in the French Revolution as the Committee of Public Safety realized the chaotic turn the government had taken and sought to regain control. A long, dark road still lay ahead for the rest of the Revolution, but hope could finally be felt in the midst of struggle (Doyle 262).

Concluding Remarks

Philosophies of reason and the nature of man that were prominent during the Enlightenment garnered a wide sphere of influence and gave way to the French Revolution and dechristianization. The Enlightenment elevated reason and the inherent nature of man to create an idealistic mindset where all men were treated equally. Since this wasn’t already the case in France, the Revolution started when men borrowed from the ideologies of Enlightenment philosophes and destroyed the religious foundations of their government, setting up a godless society that promoted liberty, equality, and fraternity for all. As France continually erased God, society destroyed itself, leading to widespread bloodletting in the Reign of Terror, social, economic, and political collapse. It would take another 7 years before France stabilized in the aftermath of the Revolution, and only after some semblance of God was injected back into the nation through Robespierre could France begin the long road to restoration.

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