Book Review: Religion and the Post-revolutionary Mind. Idéologues, Catholic Traditionalists, and Liberals, By Arthur McCalla

Religion and the Post-revolutionary Mind: Idéologues, Catholic Traditionalists, and Liberals By Arthur McCalla
McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2023. 464 Pages, $130 CAD (hardcover, eBook).

Extract

“The French Revolution swept away the Old Regime”, begins Arthur McCalla’s book on debate about religion in post-revolutionary France. “What would take its place?” (3) This question, and the many more it raised, would occupy post-revolutionary thinkers in France for years, as governments from the Directory to the Restoration via Napoleon Bonaparte emerged and failed. Religion and the Post-revolutionary Mind sets out to untangle the many competing strands of thought about religion and its place in society between 1794 and 1830. In doing so, it reveals the ubiquity of religion in intellectual debate, reflecting a widespread recognition that post-revolutionary France was unlikely to attain political stability without some degree of religious consensus.

Religion is still too often overlooked in the history of revolutionary and post-revolutionary France, including in intellectual history. Although several recent studies of individuals and ideologies touch on the religion question in post-revolutionary intellectual debate, the most comprehensive guide remains Jérôme Grondeux’s survey La Religion des intellectuels français au XIX^esiècle (Privat, 2002), a work not mentioned in the book under review. Written for a general readership, Grondeux’s account showed how far from doing away with religion, the Revolution instead launched urgent debate about its future form.