Pastor Glenn McDonald: The French Revolution

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Each day this Lent we’re looking at major “turning points” in Christian history – moments or seasons in which the story of God’s people took an important and often unexpected turn.  

It was an astonishing sacrilege. On November 10, 1793, the most famous church in France, the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris, was renamed the Temple of Reason. 

A popular opera star portrayed Liberty. Robed in white, she bowed to the flame of Reason at the very spot where Christ had been honored for over 600 years. What followed was a “worship service” of sorts, during which a group representing the people of France made it clear that secularization was now In, while acknowledgement of God was definitely Out.

While it’s impossible to identify a single moment in which Christendom died, that day in Paris seems symbolically appropriate.  

For the better part of 15 centuries, Europe had fancied itself as “the apple of God’s eye.” It had been widely assumed that the interests of Church and society were one and the same. In the minds of most people, spiritual realities were even considered “more real” than temporal ones.

Then it all came apart. Today a unity of Church and state seems unimaginable. A majority of philosophers and educators have apparently “moved on” from Christianity. Many display outright hostility to religion of any sort.

What happened?  

Historians point to a handful of developments. The Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648), which on the surface pitted Catholics against Protestants, devastated Europe. Sensitive people became utterly weary of “God talk.” When a massive earthquake and tsunami wiped out Lisbon, Portugal on November 1, 1755 (which was All Saints Day, of all things), skeptics wondered how there could possibly be a loving deity.  

Sir Isaac Newton was an observant Christian and spent more time thinking about the Bible than physics. But when he published his groundbreaking Principia Mathematica in 1687, one of the unintended consequences is that the universe began to seem like a well-oiled machine.  

Was it possible that the cosmos could run all by itself? Was God unnecessary?  

The period from 1650 to 1800, which became known as the Enlightenment, witnessed radical developments in philosophy.  

For Immanuel Kant, John Stuart Mill, David Hume and others, the light of Reason was finally flickering into flame. The Bible was just another book. You didn’t have to look beyond this world to find goodness, truth, and beauty. They were all right here for the taking.  

As Kant put it, “True religion is to consist not in the knowing or considering of what God does or has done for our salvation but in what we must do to become worthy of it… Man himself must make or have made himself into whatever, in a moral sense, whether good or evil, he is or is to become.”  

In other words, life is all about us, not about God.  

This was a far cry from Augustine, Aquinas, and Calvin.  

God may have been shown the door in the smoke-filled drawing rooms of Enlightenment philosophers. But such ideas didn’t “hit the streets” until years later. Suddenly, dramatically, the Church became not just an afterthought, but the enemy.

After centuries of simmering discontent with economic, social, political, and ecclesiastical issues, the French Revolution (1789-1804) unleashed what can only be described as a violent overthrow of one of Europe’s most traditional cultures.  

The king and queen were tried and executed. Tens of thousands of politically suspect citizens went to their deaths during the subsequent Reign of Terror. Maximilien Robespierre, who had orchestrated the Terror, was himself arrested and sent to the guillotine within 24 hours.

Along the way the French sought to throw off the shackles of everything that seemed to stand against the Revolutionary core values of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity. For most of the revolutionaries, that meant the Church had to go.   

Thus began what historians have called the “radical dechristianization” of France.   

Christianity was openly assaulted and rejected. Churches became public property. Priests were relieved of their duties. Some were compelled either to join the Revolution or go to the guillotine. More than 1,400 streets in Paris were renamed in an effort to erase the memory of Catholic saints.  

In the minds of the revolutionaries, Reason would banish all tyranny. Humanity would be set free.

But the track record of secularization reveals a very different story. Yes, the worship of God had prompted, in part, deeply regrettable wars and crusades and witch hunts. But far more people – as many as 100 million – have been sacrificed during the past 125 years on the altars of secular philosophies like fascism, communism, and Maoism.    

The overthrow of God has not brought about utopia.  

Fast forward from November 1793 to April 15, 2019.    

Onlookers watched in horror as flames engulfed Notre Dame, long since reinstated as the Cathedral of Paris. Its medieval tower and wooden roof collapsed into the sanctuary.

For many, the most poignant scenes during that time were Parisians holding lighted candles just outside the blackened walls of the church. Those weren’t just lovers of art and architecture. Many were worshipers, longing to offer praise to the God who has never been dethroned by fire or revolution.    

Last summer, tears flowed again when Notre Dame’s ancient bells rang (after almost 2,000 days of silence) at the opening ceremonies of the Summer Olympics. In a demoralized world, we yearn for spiritual truth to throb at the center of public life.

The French philosopher Voltaire, who died in 1788 - just one year before the Revolution he helped inspire - once remarked that Christianity would no longer be taken seriously a century after his death.

By 1888 his own house had become, in part, a Bible distribution center.

It's a good bet that Voltaire himself would have smiled at that wonderful irony. 

Not to mention the never-ending wonder that God, even when intentionally pushed outside the boundaries of a society, simply refuses to stay there.

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