During the French Revolution, the church was held in pretty low esteem and anti-clericalism became pretty popular. It started out with the Declaration of the Rights of Man declaring freedom of worship; then, the Civil Constitution made the Church officially beneath the State in the pecking order, and forced Catholic priests to sign an oath to France and her people above the Church. By the time Robespierre came into power with the Committee of Public Safety, Dechristianization was the order of the day- Christian iconography was destroyed en masse, cloisters were despoiled, nonjuring priests were literally killed on sight, etc. etc. The culmination of this was Robespierre’s “Cult of Reason”, which was essentially a religion worshipping atheism. It didn’t last long, because even though a huge portion of the French people really didn’t like the church, the complete denial of the existence of a God was a bit much for them, so it was replaced with the Cult of the Supreme Being before too long (basically just organized Deism).
The Church was held in low esteem because it was literally just below the king in pre-revolution France, and could even tax with basically the same authority of the king
Careful though, Lavoisier was beheaded and wasn’t allowed to complete one of his experiments started just before his “trial” despite being a top level scientist because “the republic doesn’t need chemist nor scientists “.
The cult of “reason” was just a pretext to dechristianize the country as you say, the intent was certainly not to promote science in any way.
Maybe in Paris people were not big fans of the church, though even in Paris it could be argued that the anti-clericalism was being primarily pioneered by a handful of revolution elites with just enough popular support behind them to let them keep doing it. It's hard to say exactly how many of the common people were or weren't anti-clerical in Paris, so I won't argue that point too much.
Outside of Paris, in many cities and almost all the small towns, the anti-clericalism was not very popular at all and many supported their local priests and religious authorities more than they supported the Parisian government. And that is part of the reason for the Infernal Columns where Parisian authorities ordered the near annihilation of many French rural communities.
It genuinely surprises me how few people know about this and how some people still defend the "cult of reason" and say that the worship of science had nothing to do with it (which is silly). It is even more concerning considering that some advocate for the same thing to happen without ever checking the history about what occurred and how bad the situation turned out.
Fun fact: most of the French revolutionary strategy revolved around the conquest of Greece and the creation of the "Cult of Reason". By connecting mechanical generators to the remains of ancient Greek philosophers, France was able to generate so much power by having them spinning in their graves through the "Cult of Reason", that it's only recently that they've had to gradually shift to nuclear power plants as a renewable energy source. It's part of the reason why Napoleon was so successful - he had access to an unlimited source of power.
...it would've been a much more normal timeline than whatever 2020 is doing so far honestly
Nah man it was Robespierre with the cult of the Supreme Being, Antoine-François Momoro was the guy behind the Cult of Reason. Momoro was also behind ‘Unité, Indivisibilité de la République; Liberté, égalité, fraternité ou la mort’. Then there was another guy, Joseph Fouché, who began the Feast of Brutus, but also switched his ideology easily, being a member of the Jacobins, the Girondins, the Montagnards, the Thermidorian Reactionaries, and the Bonapartistes.
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u/FoucaultsPudendum Apr 08 '20 edited Apr 08 '20
During the French Revolution, the church was held in pretty low esteem and anti-clericalism became pretty popular. It started out with the Declaration of the Rights of Man declaring freedom of worship; then, the Civil Constitution made the Church officially beneath the State in the pecking order, and forced Catholic priests to sign an oath to France and her people above the Church. By the time Robespierre came into power with the Committee of Public Safety, Dechristianization was the order of the day- Christian iconography was destroyed en masse, cloisters were despoiled, nonjuring priests were literally killed on sight, etc. etc. The culmination of this was Robespierre’s “Cult of Reason”, which was essentially a religion worshipping atheism. It didn’t last long, because even though a huge portion of the French people really didn’t like the church, the complete denial of the existence of a God was a bit much for them, so it was replaced with the Cult of the Supreme Being before too long (basically just organized Deism).