636 Chapter XXVI
of Christianity had long been established, with exceptions for most states in the
United States.
The collision of republicanism with organized Christianity can be explained in
large part, yet only in part, by the reasons that were apparent to Tocqueville, namely
that the churches had become identified with institutions of government and so-
cial class. That the churches were dominated by worldly elites was enough to ex-
plain why revolutionaries attacked them. But it was not the whole explanation, for
the conflict went beyond the merely sociological. The Revolution represented the
Enlightenment in militant form, and the Enlightenment, popularizing and dis-
seminating the effects of the scientific revolution, offered no less than a new view
of man and the cosmos. It was, in the plain sense of the word, profane; it meant to
“desacralize” man, as Marcel Reinhard has said.^47 It offered a new theory of the
source of reliable knowledge, new methods of verification and certitude, a new
logos for a meaningful universe, a new picture of what had happened in the past
and would happen in the future, a new ethics in which ideas of liberty and equality
received a new application, a new idea of a new man in a new era, a new set of the
truths that should make men free. In the churches, on the other hand, as human
institutions, a good deal of traditional human lore and learning had accumulated
alongside a more purely spiritual message. The churches had not yet come to terms
with the most indubitable findings of science. They expected belief in matters
which persons touched by the Enlightenment simply could not accept. And they
had not, in their treatment of questions of right and wrong, made a clear distinc-
tion between what they regarded as religious truth and what were only cultural,
social, or utilitarian values. Conflict was therefore fundamental. Between “enlight-
enment” and “superstition” or between “divine truth” and “bad books,” it was hard
to see any possible basis of agreement.
The whole question is difficult to deal with beyond a merely descriptive level,
since it involves a judgment on what constitutes a “real” re ligion, and an assessment
of the genuineness of inner motives and at titudes. Whether the conflict was be-
tween religion and irreligion, or between competing religions, or between doc-
trines in which the religious appearance was equally specious, is to some extent a
matter of terms.
To follow Reinhard again, the distinctive thing in religion is to regard some-
thing as sacred; the “sacred” is that which is considered untouchable, above any
criticism, questioning, or levity, the object to which feelings of awe and reverence
are addressed. In this sense the Revolution became in fact for many people a reli-
gion, for its most intense partisans did regard something as sacred: the Revolution
itself, or the Republic, for some in France in 1793, or “humanity” or the “rights of
man,” les droits sacrés de l ’homme, as they were called in French and other languages
throughout the decade. As in any religion, the sacred object had the power to
evoke self- sacrifice. It could also induce fanaticism and ruthlessness. It could
preach a morality in which anything was justified by the sacred cause. In all this
47 M. Reinhard, Religion, Révolution et Contre- Révolution, Centre de documentation universita-
ire (Paris, 1960), 141. This is by far the best discussion of the whole subject. On the connection be-
tween the Revolution and religion see also the present volume, above, pp. 383–84 and 458, and below,
p. 641.