The French Revolution and Religion in Global Perspective: Freedom and Faith

2017 | History & Politics

This edited collection examines the French Revolution's relationship with and impact on religious communities and religion in a transnational perspective. The nineteenth-century politician and political scientist Alexis de Tocqueville recognized the formative role the French Revolution played in the modern world. For Tocqueville, the Revolution 'was a political revolution that proceeded along the lines of a religious revolution'. Most scholars interpret this line in metaphorical terms - French revolutionaries proselytized beyond France's borders, sending secular preachers of modernity throughout the world, waging secular warfare, and ritualizing their own political ideals through revolutionary festivals. These scholars evidence Tocqueville to assert the decline and fall of religious faith at the time of the French Revolution. 1789 becomes the breech between the early modern and modern world when religion is replaced by non-religion. The contributions to this volume interpret Tocqueville's assertion in a different way, envisaging a revolutionary experience and modernity deeply indebted to religion rather than opposed to it.

Bryan Banks (Author)

Erica Johnson (Author)