1.
The French Revolution (1789)
Turning Point 11
Decisive Moments in the History of Christianity
Brian M. Sandifer 1

2.
Turning Points
in Christian History
1. Fall of Jerusalem (70)  Diet of Worms (1521)
2. Council of Nicaea (325)  English Act of Supremacy
3. Council of Chalcedon (451) (1534)
4. Benedict’s Rule (530)  Founding of Jesuits (1540)
5. Coronation of Charlemagne  Conversion of Wesleys
(800) (1738)
6. Great Schism (1054)  French Revolution
(1789)
 Edinburgh Missionary
Conference (1910)
2

3.
The French Revolution
in Four Minutes
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=IF4lPWU_qxY
3

4.
Systematic
Dechristianization and
Secularization of Society
 Revolutionary leaders attempted to rid all
of society from the hand of the church
 Renamed Parisian streets to eliminate
references to saints and the monarchy
 Priests, bishops, and other religious people
were forced to leave their posts
 Cut all connections to the RC Church
 Discredit all forms of religious belief
4

5.
The Collapse of Christendom
Goddess of Reason who was “worshiped” in the Notre Dame cathedral
 How did this happen in a civilized “Christian” country?
 Of what does this remind you from biblical history? 5

6.
Preparing for Revolution
 Tensions and Strains
 Political: form (absolute monarchy) vs. reality
(monarchical power checked by hereditary
privileges of nobles, corporations, and the RC
church)
 Intellectual: traditional authorities (RC church
and the monarchy) vs. surging confidence in
human reason and capacities
 Social: aristocrats vs. rising middle class vs.
large and poor peasant sector (which
shouldered the heaviest tax burden) 6

7.
Violence and Rebellion
Erupting from Tensions
 Bourgeoisie part of parliament formed a
new National Assembly
 Popular uprising and storming the Bastille
 The Great Fear
 Declaration of the Rights of Man
 “The source of all sovereignty is located in
essence in the nation; no body, no individual
can exercise authority which does not
emanate from it expressly.”
7

8.
Early Supporters of the
Revolution
 Many thoughtful evangelical Christians
supported the French revolt before events
turned horrific
 Samuel Miller, leading Presbyterian minister in New
York City (later Princeton seminary professor)
 Many sensitive Europeans sympathized with the
goal of society directed toward the good of the
whole instead of only the elite
 William Wordsworth, English poet living in France
8

9.
Prophetic Warnings
 Edmund Burke, Irish politician and
philosopher served in Great Britain’s
House of Commons
 Burke is known for supporting the American
but opposing the French Revolution
 “But what is liberty without wisdom, and
without virtue? It is the greatest of all
possible evils; for it is folly, vice, and
madness, without tuition or restraint.”
9

10.
Ideology Gives Birth to
Horror
 1789, July. Storming of the Bastille.
The Great Fear.
 1789, August. Declaration of Rights.
 1790. Limitation on clergy and RC church.
 1792, April. War with Austria (first of French
Revolutionary Wars)
 1792, September. Republic established, monarchy
abolished.
 1793, January. King Louis XVI executed. Begin
dechristianization and liberal use of the guillotine.
Reign of Terror. 10

11.
French Guillotine
11

12.
Ideology Gives Birth to
Horror (cont’d)
 1794, July. Robespierre overthrown; guillotined the
next day.
 1794-95. Weak government, anarchy, inflation,
riots.
 1795-99. Directory established. Many coups and
coup attempts against moderates
 1799-1804. Consulate, with Napoleon as first
consul.
 1804-15. First empire under Napoleon.
 1815. Final defeat of Napoleon and restoration of
French monarchy.
(see Turning Points, pg 250) 12

13.
Emperor Napoleon of France
Napoleon: Field General
Napoleon’s coronation 13

14.
20th Century Historical
Assessment
 Arnold Toynbee, British historian
 “In the Revolution a sinister ancient religion which
had been dormant suddenly re-erupted with
elemental violence. This revenant* was the fanatical
worship of collective human power. The Terror was
only the first of the mass-crimes that have been
committed [since the Revolution] in this evil religion’s
name.”
*Revenant: a visible ghost or animated corpse that was
believed to return from the grave to terrorize the
living. 14

15.
20th Century Historical
Assessment (cont’d)
 Conor Cruise O’Brien, Irish diplomat and
writer
 “The older supernatural God had faded into
the distance indeed, but it was not Reason,
mostly, that took His place. It was new
terrestrial creeds with new Revelations, and
exponents who were often as arbitrary, as
arrogant, and as fanatical as the worst of the
old persecuting priests and monks.”
15

16.
Questions for Discussion
 For the first time in Turning Points, a purely
secular event is named one of the turning points
in the history of Christianity. Why?
 What, in the words of Conor Cruise O’Brien, had
come to take the place of traditional religion in
the late 18th century?
 What secular bases of authority were replacing
Scripture, revelation, and tradition in Western
thought?
16

17.
Where did Christ’s
Kingdom go?
 The seed of secularization (Enlightenment)
 European intellectuals attempted to explain all of
life self-referentially, leaving God out
 1650-1750 were the seminal years of modern
intellectual history (Newton, Locke, Voltaire, Hume)
 The growth of secularization (Dechristianization)
 The French Revolution is a fitting symbol for the beginning
of systematic replacement of Christian reality with temporal
realities
 The center of European loyalty, preoccupation, and
cultivation shifted from Christendom to the secular
“The problem of secularization is not the same as the problem of Enlightenment.
Enlightenment was of the few. Secularization is of the many.” Owen Chadwick
17

18.
A Picture of
Post-Christian Europe
 Modern economy: urban and industrial
 Wealth. Its production, uses, disparities in
possession, applications to social problems
increased beyond the watch or guidance of
the churches.
 Warfare and nationalism
 Territories were consolidated into unified
nation-states by forcefully pushing the church
and Christian leaders aside.
 No pretenses or deferences to Christianity
during WWI and the Russian Revolution. 18

19.
A Picture of Post-Christian
Europe (cont’d)
 Philosophy and Reason
 Metaphysics and ethics formulated during
Christendom were replaced by systems of
thought declaring man as the measure of all
things.
 European philosophers began to rethink the
purpose of religion in society (Kant, Hegel,
Mill)
19

20.
“True Religion”
According to Kant
“True religion is to consist not in the
knowing or considering of what God does
or has done for our salvation but in what
we must do to become worthy of it…and
of whose necessity every man can become
wholly certain without any Scriptural
learning whatever…Man himself must
make or have made himself into whatever,
in a moral sense, whether good or evil, he
is or is to become.”
20

21.
“True Science”
According to Darwin
 Origin of Species, 1859. Although the book left
open the possibility of some kind of divine origin
of life, it nevertheless proposed a purely
naturalistic explanation for life’s beginnings.
 For Darwin’s followers (e.g. Huxley), Origin
became a symbol of science proceeding on its
own without reference to a Creator.
 Gave rise to “professional” science funded by
government and academy that worked tirelessly
and rapidly to show why they should replace
amateur naturalists in providing definitive
explanations of nature. 21

22.
Questions for Discussion
 What are Kant’s (and his followers’)
assumptions, insights, and mistakes about
true religion?
 What are Darwin’s (and his followers’)
assumptions, insights, and mistakes about
true science?
22

23.
True Bible Study
According to “Higher
Critics”
 Critiquing the NT: the (first) Quest for the
“Historical” Jesus
 1835. Life of Jesus by David Strauss. Christ of the
NT a product of projection back in time from the early
Christian community.
 1792-1860. F.D. Baur applied Hegel’s dialectic
philosophy of history to suggest the writings of
Peter’s disciples (thesis) and Paul’s disciples
(antithesis) were creatively combined by NT editors
into its picture of Jesus (synthesis).
 1863. Life of Jesus by Renan. Jesus was actually a
simple Galilean preacher who would have been
flabbergasted at what later generations said about his
supposed supernatural power and origins.
23

24.
True Bible Study According to
the “Higher Critics” (cont’d)
 Critiquing the OT: an evolving religion
 1870s. Beginning of higher critical consensus
that the Hebraic writings were the product of
evolving Semitic experience rather than
revelations from God
 The shifting tide in biblical studies
 Despite the rise of orthodox apologists
defending the divine origin of Scripture, it
became clear that the Christendom that once
had given total (if not inattentive) loyalty to
the Bible was no more. 24

25.
True Humanity
According to the Romantics
 Romanticism
 Not Romeo & Juliet, or the spirit of Valentine’s Day.
 The theory that humanity and the self are God-like in
heroic potential.
 The sense of human boundlessness
 English poets and writers (Wordsworth, Coleridge,
Shelley, Byron, Goethe)
 Musicians and composers (Beethoven, Wagner)
 Romanticism as a broad and important cultural
movement in Europe was relatively untouched
by the influence of Christian revelation, practice,
and piety. 25

26.
Questions for Discussion
 What are the higher critical assumptions,
insights, and mistakes about true Bible
study?
 What are the Romantic assumptions,
insights, and mistakes about true
humanity?
26

27.
Fruit of the
French Revolution:
The Modern Age
 Christianity not banished from Europe, but
marginalized.
 Since the 4th century, Christianity had been the major
factor in European culture and public life because it
won the loyalty of so many in their private life.
 In the 19th century, religious influence of the churches
waned, and the ranks of the faithful dramatically
thinned.
 Christendom lingered in some formal ways
 Theological faculties in German state universities
 Deference to the papacy in some historically RC countries
 Church-sanctioned rituals of state occasions in England 27

28.
28

29.
Christian Responses to the
“Modern” Age
 Modernism and the ebb of Christendom
 Matter in motion is the most basic reality
 Human mind in the ultimate arbiter of truth
 Human happiness the ultimate social good
 Challenges for Christians and the Church
 Preservation: How can we keep the ancient
faith alive?
 Advance: How can we, despite obstacles,
spread the gospel? 29

30.
Christian Responses:
Intellectual
 Philosophy: Søren Kierkegaard
 Intense, whimsical Danish writer, who
gave the most rigorous intellectual
critique of modernism.
 Christian life more important than doctrine
 Biblical/Theological Scholarship: English speakers
 Cambridge Triumvirate: Westcott, Hort, and Lightfoot.
 Americans: Moses Stuart, Charles Hodge, Henry
Boynton Smith, John Williamson Nevin, Alexander
Payne.
 Ably defended orthodoxy against contemporary biblical
criticism.
 Collectively they ultimately lacked the intellectual
firepower to equal the modernists Comte, Darwin,
Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud.
30

31.
Christian Responses:
Evangelistic
 Renewal movements
 Scandinavia: Danish Lutheran minister Nikolai
Grundtvig and Norwegian layman Hans
Nielsen Hauge established revival networks
still working today.
 Germany: Johann Christoph Blumhardt
promoted evangelism, faith healing, and
missionary labors. RCs Gossner and Henhöfer
promoted “inner Christianity” (that landed
them in the Lutheran Church!).
31

32.
Christian Responses:
Evangelistic (cont’d)
 Renewal movements
 Germany and USA: Redemptorists promoted
RC evangelism that led to many converts
 Scotland: Brothers Robert and James Haldane
promoted various missionary activities in
Scotland (also England, France, Switzerland,
and worldwide).
 France: Brothers Frédéric and Adolphe Monad
involved with Le Réveil that revived Reformed
churches in France and Switzerland. 32

33.
Christian Responses:
Evangelistic (cont’d)
 Renewal movements
 Netherlands: Izaak da Costa wrote effective
apologetics books against some of the major
modernist books. Also wrote poetry that was widely-
read in his time.
 Despite disagreements on doctrine and revivalist
technique, the visibility and success of 19th
century revival movements paved the way for
more celebrated evangelists:
 Billy Sunday, Charles Spurgeon, D.L. Moody, Billy
Graham 33

34.
Christian Responses:
Social
 Christian political reformers of society
 Britain: Anti-slavery (William Wilberforce)
 Britain: Regulate child labor (Anthony Cooper)
 Germany: Justice for industrial laborers (Wilhelm von
Ketteler)
 Non-political social reformers
 Britain: Humane prisons (Elizabeth Fry)
 Britain: Salvation Army addressed urban social needs
(William & Catherine Booth)
 Germany: Deaconesses addressed practical social
needs (Theodor & Freiderike Fliedner) 34

35.
Christian Responses:
Liberal
 Protestant liberalizing of the Christian faith
 Germany: The influential theologian Friedrich
Schleiermacher moved the heart of
Christianity toward human “God-
consciousness” (a sense of dependence).
 Germany: The exceptional scholar Adolph von
Harnack summarized the gospel as:
 The universal fatherhood of God
 The universal brotherhood of man
 The infinite value of the human soul
35

36.
Christian Responses:
Liberal (cont’d)
 H. Richard Niebuhr’s summary of liberal
(reconceptualized) Christianity
 “A God without wrath brought men without
sin into a kingdom without judgment through
the ministrations of a Christ without a cross.”
 Typical response to the end of
Christendom: Fight or Flight
36

37.
Christian Responses:
Sectarian
 Many Protestants and Catholics responded
with “flight” amidst crumbling Christendom
 Diversity of sectarians regarding
 Emphases: Doctrinal or Devotional
 The look of ideal Christianity
 Unity of sectarians regarding the world’s
value
 If a Christian “in flight” from modernity finds
genuine Christian faith, then losing worldly
influence is no great loss. 37

38.
Christian Responses:
Sectarian (cont’d)
 Many: RCs influenced by devotions promoting RC
faith apart from RC power
 Renewed devotion to the Virgin Mary
 New forms of meditations on Christ’s sufferings
 Pilgrimages to the relics of venerated saints
 More: Prots established new structures and
movements aims at renewing faith
 Plymouth Brethren out of Anglicanism
 Establishment of prayer houses within Lutheranism
 Holiness movement within Methodism
 Pentecostal movement stressing divine healing and
speaking in tongues 38

39.
Christian Responses:
Traditional
 Most ardent defenders of
Christendom were RCs
 Pope Pius IX (pope 1846-78)
 Syllabus of Errors denouncing modernism
 Doctrine of immaculate conception confirmed the
practice of Marian devotion
 First Vatican Council
 Doctrine of papal infallibility (ex cathedra)
 RCC, although lost all traditional papal
power (except for Vatican City), emerged
as Europe’s most conservative institution 39

40.
Christian Responses:
Traditional (cont’d)
 Protestant responses
 Oxford Movement in England among High
Church Anglicans. Attempted to apply the
lessons of the early church to current problems
 Kuyperian Calvinists in the Netherlands.
Attempted to match institutional Christian vigor
to an intelligent exposition of Christianity.
40

41.
Questions for Discussion
 Discuss whether and how Christianity (not
Christendom) benefited from the secularization
of the West in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
 How are contemporary Christians directly
impacted by the demise of Christendom that
occurred in the 18th and 19th centuries?
 What responses are needed today by the
church? How do you contribute to this
response?
41

42.
Secularism Rolls On
 The “long century” of dechristianization
 Birth of secularization: French Revolution (1789)
 Fruit of secularization: World War I (1914-18)
 In the absence of an influential institutional church, the
substitutes for European Christianity combined in colossal
inhumane disaster. And the survivors did not tremble before
God!
 New idols of religious secularism
 Supreme allegiance to nation
 Implicit reliance upon technology (divorced from
biblical morality)
 Propaganda (spread with mass communication) 42

43.
Christendom Dead
But Christianity Lives
 The gates of hell shall not prevail
 Just as when Christianity waned in the eastern
Mediterranean but began to flourish in
Europe…
 …Christendom died in Europe but Christianity
began to blossom well beyond Europe.
 By the end of the 19th century
 USA: a modern nation where Christianity flourished
 Canada: RC & Protestant practice more vigorous than USA
 By the start of the 20th century, worldwide
Christianity anticipated a state of affairs that would
have been unthinkable only a century before. 43

44.
44

45.
Application for Today’s Church
 What changed in the economic, cultural, social,
intellectual, and national life of Europe as a
result of Christianity being “marginalized”?
 What changes have we seen in the history of
our country as a result of Christianity being
“marginalized”?
 Where do you see in your life and sphere of
influence the effects of a marginalized faith?
How will you address these effects to the glory
of God?
45

46.
USA: Christian or
Enlightenment Roots?
Apotheosis (glorification to the divine) of George Washington. George
Washington, father of our country, hovering on the Rainbow Bridge in the
US Capital Dome, portrayed as a deified being riding a rainbow. Sitting
upon the rainbow to George’s left is Lady Liberty (the Goddess of Reason). 46