by Lewis Loflin
English Deism hit France but lost its soul. Where English Deists—kin to Socinians and liberal Anglicans—clung to a rational God in nature (see English Deism), French Deism grabbed materialism and revolution, turning into a battering ram against religion—intolerance, corruption, the works. Call it deistic humanism or pantheism, not true Deism.
The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy sums it: “French Deism stood outside of theology… Their moral theories lost all connection with the position of Deism, which became for them a mere armory of weapons for the destruction of all religion.” English voices—Hobbes, Locke, Shaftesbury, Pope, Bolingbroke, Hume—fed this, but only Collins, the least theological, stuck. Voltaire’s “watchmaker” God—detached, mechanical—ditched Newton’s active deity (see English Rationalism). Diderot pushed it to atheism or pantheism—see Pantheism.
The French Enlightenment stoked this fire. It preached “a rational and scientific approach” to everything, chasing secular progress. Descartes, Pascal, and Bayle laid groundwork; Montesquieu, Voltaire, Diderot, and Rousseau ran with it. Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) was key—his Social Contract (1762) flipped Locke’s consent into a “general will,” a collective god for the state. Where English Deists reformed, Rousseau romanticized nature and equality, priming revolution.
The Revolution (1789-1799) weaponized this. Rousseau’s “general will” fueled the National Convention’s war on the Church—de-Christianization on steroids. They axed Sundays for a ten-day week in a new calendar (1793), swapping Mass for republican holidays. A 20-hour, 100-minute day flopped, but the metric system stuck. Universal education—to flaunt “enlightenment”—tanked in war, leaving propaganda. Rousseau’s shadow loomed: liberty, equality, but enforced by blood.
The Cult of Reason (1792-94) was peak madness. Atheist to the core, it turned churches—Saint-Paul Saint-Louis, Notre Dame of Strasbourg—into “Temples of Reason.” Parades, iconoclasm, and a “Goddess of Reason” (a woman propped up) swapped Christian martyrs for revolutionary ones. It wasn’t Deism—it was nihilist theater.
Maximilien Robespierre (1758-1794), a Deist, balked. Steeped in Rousseau and Montesquieu, he saw virtue as the republic’s spine—Rousseau’s “general will” demanded a moral anchor, not atheism. Ruling the Committee of Public Safety, he drove the Reign of Terror (1793-94), purging “enemies.” Fans called him “The Incorruptible”; foes, a “Tyrant.” In 1794, he crushed the Cult of Reason, launching the Cult of the Supreme Being.
The Festival of the Supreme Being (June 8, 1794) was Rousseau’s dream in action—a Deist God of reason and virtue, not Christianity’s. Robespierre, high priest, echoed English Deism’s Providence (Wilder, Contra Mundum, 1991—see English Rationalism), not Voltaire’s aloofness. But the Law of 22 Prairial (June 10, 1794) tightened his grip on the Terror, sparking panic. Rumors of kingship flew; Jacobins flipped. On July 27-28, 1794, he was arrested and guillotined, ending the Terror’s height. The coup saved the plotters, not the system—by late 1794, the Committee faded, tribunals closed.
French Deism, turbocharged by Rousseau’s utopianism, veered from English theism to revolutionary cults. Jefferson and Franklin stuck to England’s rational God (see Jefferson), not France’s mess. Rousseau’s “general will” birthed terror, not virtue—paving roads to socialism, fascism, Nazism. English Deism reformed; French “reason” razed. More at Deism Origins-History or Deism Mainpage.
Wikipedia; CHNM Revolution; Chapter 7c; Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Thanks to Grok (xAI) for drafting aid. My edits, my take, with nods to T.E. Wilder’s work.
Thanks to Grok (xAI) for drafting aid. My edits, my take, with nods to T.E. Wilder’s work.
