Une société civilisée et religieuse: Postrevolutionary French liberalism and the character of Europe (original) (raw)
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European History Quarterly, 2006
In this impressively wide-ranging and scholarly book, Nigel Aston tells the tale of the resilience and strength of Christian belief in a period when, conventionally, it has been seen as under attack, first from the Enlightenment and secular authorities anxious to encroach on ecclesiastical privilege, and then from the French Revolution. While always aware of the dangers of making generalizations, Aston is keen to emphasize both the underlying religiosity of much of European society and the 'inherent attractiveness of an active religious life' (2). If, on the eve of the French Revolution, Europe represented a 'diversified Christian culture, but emphatically a Christian one' (47), the same was largely true in the Restoration period too. Aston is at his best when dealing with the two countries on which he is an expert: France and Britain. Particularly praiseworthy is the way in which he handles relatively well-known topics-dechristianization in revolutionary France, the rise of Methodism, Catholic emancipation-with freshness and insight. He is especially interesting in his treatment of the ambivalent relationship between the Church and the Enlightenment, showing that while the work of Hume and Gibbon or Raynal and Voltaire could challenge the authority of the Church, many churchmen also welcomed developments in philosophy that could lead to a more rational, less superstitious religion. The author has an excellent eye for anecdote too, about both well-known figures (Voltaire's endowing the church at Ferney, Linnaeus's location of the Garden of Eden on a Swedish island, Godoy's proposal to raise an army of clergy to fight the French), and more obscure individuals (the atheist Chief Procurator of the Russian Synod, the Archbishop of Canterbury who called for a fusion of the Gallican and Anglican churches, and the Bishop of Clogher found in a compromising position with a guardsman in a London pub). Yet, while Aston should be congratulated for the nuanced and lively nature of his work, it is not without failings. The first, and perhaps most serious, is that, for a book european history quarterly
History Compass, 2008
Volumes 8 and 9 of the Cambridge History, representing the work of 72 scholars, reflect two major recent historiographical trends: 1) the increased attention paid to religion in modern European history, and 2) the increasing importance of Christianity in as a topic in world history. While these volumes serve to summarize the work already done in the first field, with articles on a wide variety of European countries, they should significantly move the second field forward by bringing together the work of specialists on many different parts of the world in a single place. Volume 8 summarizes scholarship on the Western religious revivals of the nineteenth century, both Catholic and Protestant. By integrating religion and politics, it also presents a more complex picture of the formation of European national identities than Benedict Anderson's Imagined Communities suggests. One third of the volume is devoted to the spread of Christianity to the non-Western world. In Volume 9, the European and world history perspectives are more evenly interspersed. Major themes include the papacy, ecumenism, colonialism, Pentecostalism, and the independent churches of Africa and Asia. The 1960s emerge as a turning point, if for different reasons in different parts of the world. This was the decisive period of secularization in Europe, and the final section documents the social and cultural impact of that shift, particularly on the arts. Although there are inevitable gaps in coverage, these volumes will serve as an invaluable research tool for years to come.
A Christian or a laic Europe? Moving beyond a false dichotomy
In order to assess the debate concerning the constitutional recognition of Christianity in Europe, we need to pose the more general question of the role (if any) of the symbolic function of the modern democratic constitution in relation to religion. In the present paper, we differentiate between three stylized understandings of constitution-making, namely communitarian, liberal and discursive. Our argument is that the discursive "model" of the symbolic function of the constitution combines the merits and avoids the demerits of communitarianism and liberalism.
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This article discusses the historical emergence and transformation of the modern concept of civilisation in the eighteenth and nineteenth century Europe. It demonstrates how the concept gradually emerged out of the earlymodern notion of civility in the second half of the eighteenth century. This emergence, it argues, needs to be understood in the context of the Enlightenment belief in progress. Some eighteenth century writers who promoted or believed in the progressive history of humanity saw ‘civilisation’ as a useful concept. Unlike ‘civility’ that merely refers to a static condition and lacks processual connotation, ‘civilisation’ articulates the dynamic process of human history. It enabled writers to show in a more effective way the gradual transformation of human society from barbarism to a more developed stage.