Inspired by Machiavelli, modern philosophers held that the tension between the goals of biblical piety and the goals of political life needed to be resolved in favor of the political, and so they attempted to recast and delimit traditional Christian teaching to serve and stabilize political life accordingly. This volume examines the thought and arguments of those thinkers who worked to remake Christianity into a civil religion from the early modern through modern periods.
Beginning with Machiavelli and continuing through to Alexander de Tocqueville, the essays in this collection explain in detail the ways in which these philosophers used religious and secular writing to build a civil religion in the West. Early chapters examine topics such as Machiavelli's comparisons of Christianity with Roman religion, Francis Bacon's cherry-picking of Christian doctrines in service of scientific innovation, and Spinoza's attempt to replace long-held superstitions with newer, “progressive ones. Subsequent essays probe the scripture-based, anti-Christian argument that religion must be subordinate to politics espoused by Rene Descartes, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and David Hume, each of whom championed reason over divine authority. The book culminates in the study of civil religion in America, with chapters on John Locke, Montesquieu, and the American Founders probing the relation between religious and civil history, acts, and authority. The last chapter is an examination of Tocqueville's account of civil religion and the American regime.
Detailed, thought-provoking, and based on the careful study of original texts, this survey of religion and politics in the West will appeal to scholars in the history of political philosophy, political theory, and American political thought.
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Machiavelli, Christianity, and Civil Religion
Timothy Sean Quinn
2. How Francis Bacon’s New Organon Co-opts Biblical Theology for His New Atlantis
Martin D. Yaffe
3. Leviathan’s Reconquest of the Christian Person for the State
Mark Shiffman
4. Reading Descartes’s Discours: The Fabulous Way from Philosophy to Science and Technology
Daniel Doneson
5. Will Wonders Never Cease? Spinoza’s Critique of Miracles
Steven Frankel
6. Liberalism and Christianity: Locke’s Use of the Bible in the Second Treatise
Nasser Behnegar
7. Montesquieu’s Machiavellian Account of Civil Religion
Andrea Radasanu
8. Montesquieu and Christianity in the American Project: The Moderate Spirit
Paul Carrese
9. Hume on Church Establishments: History, Moderation, and Liberty
Aaron Szymkowiak
10. Rousseau’s Civil Religion “Problem”
John Ray
11. How the Founders Agreed About Religious Freedom but Disagreed About the Separation of Church and State
Vincent Phillip Muñoz and Kevin Vance
12. Tocqueville on Religion and Democratic Character: Equality, Mediocrity, and Greatness
Aaron L. Herold
List of Contributors
Index
“The question of civil religion deserves our renewed interest, as we witness the longstanding assumptions of modern secularization being shaken. This excellent collection of essays on that old and timely subject brings out both the common assumptions and a range of controversies among liberalism’s founding thinkers. Add to the mix a healthy dose of disagreement among the essays’ authors, and there is much food for thought here.”
—J. Judd Owen, author of Making Religion Safe for Democracy: Transformation from Hobbes to Tocqueville
