The Enlightenment and religion The myths of modernity [Paperback]

This title offers a critical survey of religious change and its causes in eighteenth-century Europe, and constitutes a radical challenge to the accepted views in traditional Enlightenment studies. Focusing on Enlightenment Italy, France and England, it illustrates how the canonical view of eighteenth-century religious change has in reality been constructed upon scant evidence and assumption, in particular the idea that the thought of the enlightened led to modernity. For despite a lack of evidence, one of the fundamental assumptions of Enlightenment studies has been the assertion that there was a vibrant Deist movement that formed the intellectual solvent of the eighteenth century. The central claim of this book is that the immense ideological appeal of the traditional birth-of-modernity myth has meant that the actual lack of Deists has been glossed over, and a quite misleading historical view has become entrenched.

Preface: The Enlightenment and modernity The rationale of this book The structure of this book 1. The myth of Enlightenment deism The myth of the deist movement The deist myth and modern historians The myth and the historical record The myth and the construction of modernity Historians, religion and the historical record The origins of Enlightenment anticlericalism John Toland, Pierre Bayle and the problem of influence Enlightenment from within or without Christianity? The elite and the written record Scaremongering, public opinion and the construction of the deist scare 3. The English deist movement: a case study in the construction of a myth Post-restoration context. Deists and dissent confused John Toland and Christianity not mysterious Early modern politico-religious propagandists and modern historians Dissent and Enlightenment 4. France: the revolt of democratic Christianity and the rise of public opinion Bourbons, Huguenots and Jansenists The nouvelles ecclesiastiques and Bourbon miscalculation The revolt of the 1750s Popular victory againlÃ-