Revelation, Revolution and Utopia, c.1770–1820

Abstract

Abstract The philosophes and France’s revolutionaries are often held jointly responsible for the attack on revealed religion in the course of the eighteenth century. This article suggests that the culture of belief among the laity of Protestant and Catholic Europe was not seriously undermined or even radically altered by the ralliement of State churches to the rationalistic and utilitarian values of the Enlightenment. Scepticism remained a narrowly confined phenomenon and religious ‘enthusiasm’, including literal belief in biblical prophecy, recovered strongly towards the century’s end. Traumatic public events (including the destruction of the Jesuit Order, the war in America, the revolution in France, the rise of Napoleon) were capable of triggering a latent millenarian reflex in nearly all social milieus. Although frequently played down by researchers, biblical literalism, prophetic witness and the quest for spiritual utopia should be considered an integral part of the tumultuous politics of the 1790 and 1800s. The article focuses particularly on the outlook and behaviour of England’s Rational Dissenters, French and Italian Jansenists and German Pietists in order to illustrate this contention. It concludes that, even at elite levels, detachment from religion was superficial and mainly doctrinal in nature. God, in one form or another, survived both the Enlightenment and the French Revolution.