CHAPTER VII. Religion

RELIGION

INTRODUCTION: The religious situation in France in the nineteenth century—The intellectual and political forces against the Roman Catholic Church—Its claims, its orthodoxy and tyranny—The humanitarians—The power of Rome—Church and State—The educational problem—Clericalism—The cult of Jeanne d’Arc—The lack of a via media between Roman orthodoxy and libre pensée—Protestantism negligible.

I. Comte’s effort in his “Religion of Humanity”—Renan and the Church—Freedom—Denial of supernatural elements in Christianity—Vie de Jésus—Renan not irreligious—Piety—Love and Goodness reveal the Divine—God the “ideal”—Vacherot and Taine.

II. Renouvier’s efforts, with Pillon, in the Critique philosophique and Critique religieuse—His republican theology—Freedom, personality and God—The deity as finite—God as Goodness and as a Person.

III. Ravaisson’s blend of Hellenism and Christian thought—Boutroux—Fouillée on the Idea of God—The importance of Guyau’s L’Irreligion de l’Avenir—The decay of dogma and ecclesiasticism—The term “irreligion” misleading—Sociology and religion-Freedom—Religious education and tolerance—Modernism and the Church—Loisy and others—Symbolism and Fidéisme.

CONCLUSION: The personal factor in faith—Freedom vital to religion—Change of attitude since the eighteenth century—Value of religion—Tendency towards a free religion devoid of dogmas, expressive of the best aspirations of man’s mind.