THE THEOLOGICO-POLITICAL?and political institutions from religious institutions, he is relying upon an outrageous
simplification of Christianity. This does not invalidate his thesis that both types of institu-
tion are inscribed within single schema, but it is by no means proven that the latter are
modeled on the former. As we have indicated, any such proposition presupposes that one
can conceive of an essence of Christianity without taking into account the political fact.
Michelet, in fact, half glimpses the arbitrary element in this hypothesis when he states
that the Gospel contains no specific teachings: ‘‘Its vague morality,’’ he concedes to his
adversaries, ‘‘contains almost none of the doctrines that made Christianity such a positive,
absorbing, and compelling religion and that gave it such a hold on men’’ (Introduction).
He therefore makes it clear that he is taking as his object religion as it is fully instituted
by Catholicism. As, however, he discovers that the theme of grace is the principle behind
its doctrine, one might have expected him to take the phenomenon of Protestantism into
consideration and to look at the mode of its insertion into modern political societies,
rather than simply remarking in passing that it merely ‘‘formulates in harsher terms’’ the
doctrine of the Catholic world. He remains silent about this point. When he outlines his
major opposition between Christianity and revolution, he deliberately ignores events in
America. It escapes his notice that it was the Puritans who founded free institutions in
New England, and that they constantly referred to the Bible in their political proclama-
tions, whereas his contemporary Quinet finds in the combination of Protestantism and
freedom a lesson that has considerable implications for any understanding of modern
democracy. Yet this lacuna in Michelet’s argument, or rather, this occultation of a Puritan
revolution, is relevant to our argument, not so much because it is a sign of his failure to
understand or recognize the true nature of Christianity as because we can see in it an
index of his determination to circumscribe the efficacy of the religious. Michelet’s purpose
is, of course, to show how Christianity shaped the European monarchies and, more spe-
cifically, the French monarchy. It should, however, also be noted that, while Quinet is
careful to distinguish between Christianity and Catholicism, and even to stress the liberat-
ing virtues of Protestantism, he has no more insight than Michelet into the specific effi-
cacy of the religious. Also, for his part, he is looking for a formula for a new faith that
can be invested in the People, in the Nation, in Humanity and, at the same time, in Right,
or Justice, and Reason. It is also pertinent to ask whether the ideal of political freedom
that is affirmed by the break with the values of the monarchical regimes might not, thanks
to Puritan discourse, be able to coexist alongside a definite increase in conformism at the
level of opinions and morals, and whether, in that sense, it might not coexist with a new
disavowal of the effects of the social division that sets democracy free. It is, in fact, as
though, although they are working on different premises, the thinkers who are most alert
to the advent of modernity and to the irreversibility of the course of history (and, in the
case of France, I am not thinking only of Michelet and Quinet, but also of liberals like
Guizot and Tocqueville and of socialists like Leroux) all looked to the religious for the
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