‘Let’s Bless our father, Let’s adore God’: the nature of God in the prayers and hymns to God of the French Revolutionary deists

ABSTRACT

While many scholars have realized that the Enlightenment period was much more religious than previously thought, the deists are still seen as basically secular figures who believed in a distant and inactive deity. This article shows that the hundred and thirteen French Revolutionary deists who wrote prayers and hymns to God believed in a caring, loving, and active deity. They maintained that God wanted people to be free, and so God actively helped the French Revolution by leading the French armies to victory and revealing enemy plots. The majority of these prayers and hymns were said at government-sponsored religious festivals. It is a mistake, however, to dismiss this religious language as being about sacralizing the new nation. Instead, there were places in the festivals where individuals could express their own religious views. Furthermore, most of these prayers and hymns were written while Maximilien Robespierre was pushing his deist civil religion and labelling irreligious people as enemies of the French republic. However, the same views about God were expressed after his death by the Theophilanthropists. Thus, these deists were not merely echoing the party line while Robespierre was alive, but were expressing their true religious feelings.

KEYWORDS:

• French Revolutionary festivals
• deism and watchmaker deity
• deism and miracles
• religion in the French revolution
• the religious enlightenment
• deism’s view of God

In the last forty years, the view of the Enlightenment period has changed significantly as many scholars, such as David Sorkin and J. C. D. Clark, have shown that most people during this time were religious.¹ Indeed, the way scholars view the Enlightenment has changed so much that Ulrich L. Lehner asserts, ‘Today, historians recognize that only a small fraction of the Enlighteners was anti-religious; the overwhelming majority was interested in finding a balanced relationship between reason and faith.’² While the view of the Enlightenment period has changed radically in the last forty years, the way scholars see the deists has not changed. The deists are generally portrayed as believing in an inactive deity who was so distant and impersonal that this deity had no relationship with people. Even scholars who maintain that the Enlightenment was a religious time still think of the deists as having no real religious sentiments and no relationship with God. For example, Clark asserts that in deism ‘God was conceived as a Creator or First Cause who subsequently stood aside from his creation to allow it to run according to its own rules.’³ Similarly, Sorkin characterizes deism as a belief in ‘God as a creator (“clockmaker”) who does not intervene in the world.’⁴

Many scholars, rather than re-evaluating the deists to see if they were religious, have decided the deists did not really have any religious beliefs. For example, Kirsten Fischer says, modern-day scholars find the term so capacious as to be nearly without meaning. Deism was not a system of faith as much as an attitude of skepticism and defiance toward religious establishments … . No deist doctrine appeared, and people who identified themselves as deists held widely differing views.⁵ Justin Champion maintains that we should not attempt to comprehend the religious beliefs of the deists because deists ‘like [Charles] Blount and John Toland were not attempting to describe and promote a new set of philosophical or theological propositions.’ Instead, of caring about theology, Champion claims that the deists were primarily interested in creating a secular society free from the authority of Christian ideas and Christian ministers.⁶ Finally, S. J. Barnett asserts that there was not even a significant number of deists in the Enlightenment. Barnett argues that while scholars claim there was a widespread deist movement, scholars have not been able to identify more than a couple handfuls of deists. He claims that scholars cannot name more deists than that because the idea of a widespread deist movement was a myth created by eighteenth-century clergy and politicians to shore up support for their churches and governments.⁷

This article is about the religious beliefs of the French Revolutionary deists, and contends that if we re-evaluate their religious beliefs, we can see that many of them were much more religious than commonly thought. As this article is only about the French Revolutionary deists, I do not need to show that there were a significant number of deists in other countries or that there was a common theology among all the Enlightenment deists. However, the concerns of the scholars mentioned in the last paragraph mean that I should show there was a significant number of French Revolutionaries who can be identified as deists and that they shared a common theology.

Absent an agreed upon definition of deism, the best way to identify deists during the French Revolution is to look for revolutionaries who called themselves deists, said they were advocating deism, or identified their religious beliefs with deism. Revolutionaries who did this included Jacques-Pierre Brissot, Jean-François Sobry, Navoigille, Desforges, Regnier Sr., Bouvet, Auber, Hebert, Belhost, Thierry, Canu, Pierre Paganel, François Nicolas Bénoist-Lamothe, and François Lanthenas.⁸ These thinkers believed that God existed, but rejected Christianity and any other supernaturally revealed religion. These deists asserted that Christianity taught a false view of God because it said that God wanted people to perform superstitious ceremonies and believe irrational doctrines. These deists maintained that anyone who loved God and did their duties to their family and country would be rewarded in the afterlife. Furthermore, many of these thinkers described their religious beliefs as ‘natural religion’ because people knew about it through natural means, such as through their reason, their conscience, or by looking at nature.

The French Revolutionaries who identified themselves as deists had a distinctive common theology of believing in God but rejecting Christianity and all other supernaturally revealed religions. This means that other French Revolutionaries who shared this theology should be considered deists. Altogether, more than five hundred French Revolutionaries have been identified from their writings and speeches as deists, which means that there were a significant number of deists in revolutionary France.⁹

This article focuses on a particular group of the French Revolutionary deists: the one hundred and thirteen who wrote prayers and hymns to God and included them in their writings or speeches.¹⁰ These deists did not portray God as a distant and cold deity, but a loving and caring one. They adored God and almost half of them thought that God had miraculously helped the French Revolution by leading the French armies to victory, infusing French soldiers with bravery, or influencing enemy leaders to make poor decisions.

The majority of these prayers and hymns to God were said at government-sponsored religious festivals, such as the Festival of the Supreme Being. In arguing that we should understand some of this theological language as being about God, I am going against the mainstream scholarly view. This view, advocated most prominently by François-Alphonse Aulard and Mona Ozouf, maintains that the theological language at these festivals was not about a personal and transcendent God, but about transferring sacredness from God to the revolutionary nation. I will discuss these scholars’ argument later and contend that while the religious festival as a whole might have been about the nation, there were still spaces within the festival for individual speakers to advocate the sincere worship of a loving and caring God.

In maintaining that some of the religious language at these festivals tells us about the religious beliefs of the French Revolutionary deists, I am in agreement with Mathias Sonnleithner. He argues that scholars like Ozouf and Aulard do not realize that many of the revolutionaries were deists, and they were using the Cult of Reason and the Festival of the Supreme Being to establish a deist national religion. Because many revolutionaries were religious deists, Sonnleithner says that in the Cult of Reason ‘it was not the fatherland that had to be adored here (as Aulard, Mathiez, and Ozouf would later claim). It was rather just the only correct form of worshipping God.’ Sonnleithner points out that several French Revolutionary deists prayed for God’s assistance and that a couple portrayed God as actively helping the French Revolution.¹¹ However, these points were a minor concern for him, while they are the focus of this article.

Ulrich L. Lehner has argued that many eighteenth-century Benedictine monks had a ‘balanced relationship’ between their religious beliefs and the Enlightenment values of reason, toleration, and science.¹² Jeffrey D. Burson has done the same for the Jesuits.¹³ This paper claims that the French Revolutionary deists who wrote prayers and hymns to God also had a ‘balanced relationship’ between their religious beliefs and Enlightenment values. It thus contributes to the recent current of scholarship showing that the Enlightenment was a more religious period than previously thought.

The basic view of God in the prayers and hymns to God of the French Revolutionary deists

The French Revolutionaries created many festivals to encourage the French people to support the new nation that no longer had a king as its focal point. The most striking festival was the Festival of the Supreme Being, which was first proposed by Maximilien Robespierre in the Spring of 1794. At the Festival of the Supreme Being in Tours, a hymn was sung that revealed some important ways the French Revolutionary deists viewed God. The hymn, written by an unknown person or group of people, was sung to the tune of a popular patriotic song of the day, and part of it went:

Source of good, source of life

Father of the day, Divinity!

The French people glorify

Your sagacity and your majesty … .

Let us celebrate God, his glory and his kindness.

Let us march on, let us march on in the path of happiness.¹⁴

The hymn pictures God as both a kind and wise person who should be celebrated and glorified. It refers to God as a ‘Father,’ and God is not seen as too distant to hear people’s homage or too cold to care about them.

Another hymn chanted at the Festival of the Supreme Being in Paris shows further important ways the French Revolutionary deists viewed God. This hymn, written by Jacques-Marie Deschamps, went:

O mighty God, invisible to our eyes,

But in your works we contemplate you … .

Receive from us for our worship and altars

Our hearts, which are totally filled with you! …

We will be your true children

If we offer you virtues for incense

And actions for prayer.¹⁵

In the previous hymn God was addressed as ‘Father,’ and in this hymn, people are referred to as the ‘children’ of God. This was the relationship the French Revolutionary deists commonly saw between themselves and God. God was not seen as impersonal or abstract, but as a real person who cared for his children. Another important thing this hymn reveals is how the French Revolutionary deists thought there was a proper way to worship God. They thought the way to be truly religious was not to offer up incense and prayers like the Catholics did. Instead of incense, the deists offered up virtues; instead of prayers, they offered up actions that benefitted people.

Another hymn sung at the Festival of the Supreme Being makes it even clearer that God only cares about virtue. Part of this hymn, written by Rochon, went:

God does not condemn virtuous people,

No matter what religion they follow in their weakness.

The perfume offered on the altars to false gods

Rises always to heaven …

Do good, people, serve humanity

Take care of those crying from poverty,

That is the most beautiful offering to God.¹⁶

Rochon expressed the French Revolutionary deists’ belief that it did not matter what religion people believed in: God would approve of them as long as they were virtuous and benevolent.

While they thought all virtuous people went to heaven, the French Revolutionary deists did not think all religions were equally true. They thought only deism or natural religion was true, and other religions, particularly Christianity, presented a false view of God and how to worship him. For example, Saint Ange wrote a ‘Hymn to God’ in which he first said the Christian deity ‘was a father to some people and a tyrant to others.’ Saint Ange then said to God:

You have not taught people by the Bible.

To our eyes, to our hearts, you talk without figure.

The law of nature

Is the sacred book that your hands open to us.

The interpreter of heaven, nature, cries to us:

Adore God, be just, cherish your country … .

But the impostor priests have corrupted your work.¹⁷

Saint Ange thought nature – not the Bible – instructed people about God, and nature showed God was a father, not a tyrant.

The French Revolutionary deists thought Christianity presented not only a false view of God, but one that insulted God. In a prayer said in Yonne, German Rubigni declared, ‘God, O you who created the Earth and the heavens, people and liberty! You who are insulted … that the true religion and the sacred dogmas of nature have been desecrated in the deplorable blindness of insane centuries!’¹⁸ Lepetit, a member of the Revolutionary Committee of Saumur, made the same point in a hymn:

Before the Being of Beings,

In this moment, are collapsing

The monuments of the priests

And of blindness … .

Far from us a useless worship

By deceit invented,

Which was only an insult

To God.¹⁹

Rubigni and Lepetit’s belief that Christianity was insulting to God shows the French Revolutionary deists had a deep emotional attachment to God and cared about protecting his honor. The French Revolutionary deists were not abstract intellectuals who saw God merely as a metaphysical first principle, as some scholars maintain.²⁰

The French Revolutionary deists did not see Jesus as a liar who made up Christianity. Instead, Jesus’ later followers, especially the priests, were blamed for fabricating a religion that dishonored God. A hymn written by Serant, a judge in the Falaise district, makes this point. It was chanted in a church which had been temporarily converted into a Temple of Reason. Before asking God to exterminate every tyrant, Serant denigrated priests, saying:

Frenchmen, it is in this ancient temple

That the traitorous priests

Arranged by their policies

The most precious doctrines [about God]

To put us into slavery.

Always attacking [people who use] reason

With fire, chains, and poison.

All these were acceptable for priests to use. [in persecuting unbelievers]

Know the crimes

Of all these impostors.

Frenchmen, Frenchmen,

Despise all the deceptive priests.

Remember the barbarism

Of these deceptive priests

Who pursue with fury

All those who did not believe them.

They wish to cement their power

And control you as tyrants.

Here the rich idlers

Made you to ignorantly worship [God].²¹

Serant despised priests because he thought that all priests were impostors and deceivers who persecuted people who did not follow their religion.

Instead of thinking that people should listen to priests telling them about God, the French Revolutionary deists said people should listen to their hearts as God spoke directly to them there. An anonymous deist who wrote a ‘Hymn to God’ that was chanted at Tulle during the Festival of the Supreme Being said to God,

First Cause of all Being!

Author of the virtues and the laws!

Be always our one master … .

Make the false prophets disappear.

They are usurpers of your altars.

God does not need an interpreter.

His voice speaks to the heart of mortals … .

Honor to God! War and death to the tyrants!

Let us sing, let us sing, let us adore God on the tyrants’ expiring bodies.²²

This deist told people they did not need priests to interpret God’s words for them because God spoke directly to their hearts.

The French Revolutionary deists thought God was caring and loving, and so they responded with adoration and zealous love. Claude Thiébaut, in a catechism he wrote for adolescents, thought they should say this prayer: ‘O you, God! … I adore your existence and your power, and in this sentiment which lifts me to you, I am transported with zeal and gratitude.’²³ Louis-Marin Henriquez likewise said in a prayer to God, ‘you who conserve the universe, and who fills it with your benefits, Being of Beings, I adore you, I love you like a father … . God, my heart calls to you, I desire you, listen to my voice, grant my wishes.’²⁴ Thiébaut and Henriquez both adored God.

The prayers and hymns of the French Revolutionary deists shows they believed in a good and kind God while they thought the Christians insulted God.

The dismissal of the revolutionaries’ religious language

Seven of the ten prayers and hymns discussed in the previous section were said or chanted at government-sponsored religious festivals. Furthermore, in all, sixty-six of the French Revolutionary deists’ one hundred and thirteen prayers and hymns to God were said or chanted at government-sponsored festivals.²⁵ Many French Revolutionary scholars dismiss the religious language used at these festivals by claiming this religious language was not really about a transcendent God, but about the French nation. The scholar best known for studying these festivals is Mona Ozouf, who says the festivals were extremely important institutions where the revolutionaries created a new revolutionary French nation. Ozouf states that the revolutionary festivals were not about worshipping a transcendent God or being thankful to him. Instead, the festivals were about sacralizing or making sacred the newly democratic nation of France that no longer had a king to provide an element of sacredness to it. According to Ozouf, the organizers of the festivals used religious language to transfer people’s affections from a transcendent God to the new nation formed by the French Revolution.²⁶

François-Alphonse Aulard, another historian who has studied the revolutionary festivals, made a stronger statement about the religious language used in the festivals. He said, ‘Under the name of the Supreme Being, as under the name of Reason, it was the patrie [nation] that men really worshipped.’²⁷ If Aulard is right, and at these festivals, ‘it was the patrie [nation] that men really worshipped,’ this would seem to mean that the French Revolutionary deists who wrote prayers and hymns for the government-sponsored festivals were not really worshipping a loving and caring God; instead, they, like everyone else at the festival, were worshipping the French nation. While we obviously cannot know what the authors of the prayers and hymns said or chanted at government-sponsored festivals really thought, we can look at the language they used. As the previous sections discussed, in their hymns and prayers the deists gushed about how loving and caring God was. They excoriated Christians for insulting God’s goodness by portraying God as a cruel tyrant who only cared about some people. They sung chants of adoration and deep love for their father and how he was finally being worshipped in the right way. These deists’ religious language all seem to indicate that the deists were praising a transcendent deity and not really worshipping the nation.

The idea that the religious language of these deists’ prayers and hymns to God was about God is further supported by the many prayers and hymns of the French Revolutionary deists that were not part of any government festival. While sixty-six of the prayers and hymns were said or chanted at government-sponsored festivals, forty-seven of these prayers and hymns had nothing to do with the festivals.²⁸ The prayers and hymns that were not said at government festivals also gushed about how people should adore a caring and fatherly deity who only wanted people to be good and love him. These prayers and hymns to God attacked Christian priests for portraying God as cruel and mean and said that deism or natural religion was the one true religion.

When Ozouf analyzes the government-sponsored festivals, she has a much different concern than I do. She does not focus on what individual speakers said in their speeches or hymns. Instead, she focuses on the meaning of the whole festival and the meaning of all the festivals together for what they say about the nature of the French Revolution and its relation to religion. She thinks there was a unified revolutionary religion running through all the festivals, and this was ‘a reinvestment of the sentiment of the sacred in the fatherland and humanity.’ This religion had as its central tenet ‘the sacrifice of the individual to the whole.’ This claim about the festival as a whole is not in tension with my point that some individual speakers were worshipping God in their prayers and hymns. There was space in the festivals for both to coexist.

Sometimes, though, Ozouf seems to claim that all parts of the festivals were only about the fatherland, and so the festivals did not have any space for individuals to express deist religious beliefs. For example, she says, the fatherland was nonetheless the focal point of the whole festival: the altar was the altar of the fatherland; the defenders were the defenders of the fatherland; the battalion of children was the hope of the fatherland; the duty of every citizen, as every speech hammered home, was to be worthy of the fatherland; and the injunction on all the banners was to live and die for the fatherland.²⁹ Ozouf is not here claiming, as Aulard did, that everyone at the festivals was really not worshipping God but the nation, but someone could interpret her statement to mean that. Furthermore, this statement comes close to saying that there was no space in the festivals for individuals to advocate deist beliefs about God.

If we look at the festivals closely, though, we can see there was space for deist ideas because Ozouf’s statement that everything in the festivals was about the fatherland, including all the banners and altars, is inaccurate. Many banners did emphasize the importance of the fatherland, but many other banners had inscriptions about God and how to properly worship him. For example, at the Festival of the Supreme Being at Tours, the Popular Society marched with a flag in front of them that said ‘A man lies to his conscience who denies the existence of God.’³⁰ At the Festival of the Supreme Being at Rocher-de-la-Liberté, there were many banners to God. The last banner to God was about how to worship him, and it read, ‘All religious sects come together in the universal Religion of Nature.’³¹ Ozouf is also mistaken about the altars at the festivals because they were not all dedicated as altars of the fatherland. For instance, at the Tours celebration of the Festival of the Supreme Being, there was an altar to nature.³² At Douai’s Festival of the Supreme Being, there was a ‘sacred altar’ to God on top of a mountain, and people burnt incense to God at this altar as well as offering flowers and perfumes.³³ Finally, Ozouf is mistaken when she says that ‘the duty of every citizen, as every speech hammered home, was to be worthy of the fatherland.’ While some speeches hammered this point home, other speeches did not. For example, a speech by Baudre, the president of the Revolutionary Committee of Bayeux, never mentioned the fatherland in his speech at the Temple of Reason during the celebration of the retaking of the city of Toulon. At the start of his speech, he quickly mentioned the tyrants who were attacking France from other countries. But then he said, ‘My design here is not to argue against those tyrants. I want to argue against tyrants of another kind, those who want to dominate our consciences.’ After this, he gave a long speech (filling three columns in the Archives parlementaires) attacking priests while defending true religion, which was ‘to honor God and to love other people.’³⁴

Many of the French Revolutionary deists’ prayers and hymns to God said during the government-sponsored festivals were said or chanted during the Festival of the Supreme Being. The main organizing committee in Paris sent explicit, detailed instructions to the local committees about how the marches and music should be organized.³⁵ These organizers, though, did not include the instruction that there should be a prayer, and at the main festival held in Paris, no one said a prayer.³⁶ Nevertheless, at different local festivals, at least twelve French Revolutionary deists said prayers to God. Furthermore, at seven other local festivals, French Revolutionary deists included prayers in their hymns.³⁷ This means the French Revolutionary deists who said prayers at the Festival of the Supreme Being did not feel any pressure to say their prayers, and they were doing it on their own initiative. This supports my claim there was space in the festivals for individual deists to actually worship God instead of the nation.

It is a mistake to dismiss all the religious language used at government-sponsored festivals as not being about God but merely about making the nation sacred. While each festival as a whole may have helped sacralize the newly democratic France, there was still space in the festivals for individual deists to worship a caring and fatherly deity.

The French Revolutionary deists believed God actively helped them

The French Revolutionary deists’ prayers and hymns reveal another feature about God’s nature besides that he was a loving father who cared for his children. These prayers and hymns also show that these deists believed God was very active in the world. They thought God was active in some ways that benefitted every human. But they also thought God did some things that particularly benefitted the French people.

The French Revolutionary deists often stated that God was continually involved with seemingly natural processes such as the growth of grains and fruits. For example, Claude-Joseph Trouvé, a newspaper editor, addressed God in a hymn, saying,

O God of the just! O God of the wise! …

Your fertile hand, on our fields

Came to spread abundance on them …

On our hills, in our valleys

Everywhere bursts forth your largess.

This gold which covers our furrows

Is the true surety of riches.

Who is the painter who has made our fruits so colorful?

Let us chant to God who has instructed his children

By so many benefits.³⁸

Trouvé thought God caused plants and fruits to grow.

Besides this important way the French Revolutionary deists thought God’s general providence benefitted every person in the world, the deists thought God particularly helped the French Revolutionaries by working miracles to help them win battles and defeat their enemies. One of the best-known hymns to God was written by Jacques-Marie Deschamps. During the celebration of the Festival of the Supreme Being in Paris, large groups of children sang this hymn. In the hymn, Deschamps declared God had done wonderful things to help the French Revolution succeed. He said to God,

You always do such great miracles

Which signal your power!

Have you not delivered France

From the ancient yoke [of false religion] and from vile tyrants! … .

Against the tyrants’ detestable alliance, [you give]

Such benefits which prove to us your support!

You cover our armies with glory

And our fields with rich harvests.³⁹

Deschamps thought God had intervened to help the French armies win battles and to give France bountiful harvests.

In a prayer said at the Temple of Reason in Toulouse on 18 June 1794, Bellecour the Younger, a professor of constitutional law, prayed, Being of beings! Father of humans! Protect the French, aid their efforts. Divinity Tutelaire! August providence! … The rapid march of the French Revolution, the defeats of the cohorts of despotism, the death of all conspiracies, the chastisement of traitors, the downfall of fanaticism and immorality, the triumph of reason and truth attests there exists a God, protector of public spirit and integrity. O Divinity!⁴⁰ Bellecour stated that God was the cause of the rapid progress of the French Revolution and the defeat of tyrants and traitors.

Another way God particularly helped the French was by working through people’s consciences, hearts, and emotions to influence their thoughts and actions. The poet Marie-Joseph Chénier wrote that God influenced men to be good warriors. Chénier stated in a hymn:

God himself, inhabiting the heart of the just man,

Tastes there an incense free and pure!

In the blazing eye of the bold warrior,

In majestic traits you have engraved your splendor.⁴¹

Chenier thought God not only lived in people’s hearts, God also gave warriors courage.

G. F. Dieny, in an ‘Ode to Liberty and Reason,’ said that God gives the French soldiers their courage. After denigrating priests and how God does not approve of the way they worship him, Dieny said,

But to our voices God finally begins to smile.

His heart has returned to us. His laws, which in traits of fire

He has engraved in us have retaken their empire.

And soon we are going to be happy forever.

It is from him that this astonishing courage comes to us

Which sustains our warriors, makes them conquerers everywhere.⁴²

Dieny thought the French soldiers were given courage by God, and this courage made them victorious everywhere.

Besides giving courage to the French Revolutionary warriors, God was also thought to torment wicked people who pursued only their own selfish interests instead of helping the revolution succeed. An anonymous citizen of the town of Rozet-le-Ménil wrote in a prayer: Universal and infallible intelligence, O God, your untiring eye sees now and always to the bottom of our hearts. You, who by pursuing crime into the darkest byways … your voice thunders in the hearts of wicked men who deny you.⁴³

S. Jullien, an administrator in the National Treasury, made a similar point about wicked people being tormented by God for their crimes. In an ‘Ode to God,’ he wrote,

Author of Nature,

Master of the universe,

Support of a pure heart,

And torment of the perverse!

In vain the wicked person would like to ignore you.

The terror which follows him in the midst of his crimes

To their enthralled eyes, you make the terror appear again.

The wicked person trembles, but the just person is calm and lives in peace.⁴⁴

Jullien thought God made wicked people tremble in terror for their crimes.

The French Revolutionary deists did not think God was helping them because God simply loved France more than other any nation; they thought God was doing miracles to help them because God wanted people to be free, and the French Revolutionaries were fighting for their liberty from tyrannical kings. As Beuzelin said in a prayer to God, you wish that we should be free. You wish to make the triumph of the arms of the Republic, against all the despots who admire our firmness and courage. Be always in the midst of our defenders. Protect our armies, they prepare the happiness of the world … . God, we adore you.⁴⁵ Théophile Mandar went a little further, saying in a prayer, ‘God! Who says to free men: I fight with you!’⁴⁶

Because so many the French Revolutionary deists thought God helped them gain their liberty, they often prayed for God’s continuing help in winning battles and revealing traitors. The members of the General Council of Preuilly prayed: Divine Providence! Who protects so visibly and so certainly the cause of liberty against tyranny, … do not stop giving your assistance to a nation which is worthy of your help because it is fighting for the inalienable rights they have from you. Continue to favor the success of its armies, which are only fighting against the despotism and slavery you dislike.⁴⁷

Prayers and hymns to God after Robespierre’s death

All the prayers and hymns to God discussed so far were written while Robespierre was in power. Robespierre believed that a republic could only survive if its citizens were virtuous, meaning that they put the good of the republic ahead of their private welfare. Robespierre maintained that atheists and other irreligious people were not virtuous because they did not fear God’s punishment for their wicked actions. This meant that Robespierre considered atheists and other irreligious people harmful to the French republic, and some very important atheist and irreligious Jacobin leaders, including Jacques Hébert and Pierre Gaspard Chaumette, were guillotined in late March and early April of 1794.

While Robespierre was in power, it was very dangerous to be seen as irreligious or even not sufficiently religious. This made people fearful and caused a large number of people to pretend to be more religious than they actually were. This can be seen by looking at many of the letters written by local political organizations after there was an assassination attempt on Robespierre and Jean-Marie Collot on 23 May 1794. Before Robespierre was in power and after Robespierre was guillotined three months later, the letters from local political societies to the governing body of France, the National Convention, had relatively little religious content. (The exception was when these writers were describing their local religious festivals.) Right after this assassination attempt, however, there was an outpouring of over a hundred letters from local political organizations saying that God had miraculously saved Robespierre and Collot from assassination.⁴⁸ These letters were full of effusive and fawning praise for Robespierre and Collot and the totally wise and virtuous leaders of the National Convention. Generally, the letters barely mentioned God other than saying these two leaders were saved by God’s miraculous intervention. These letter writers did not reveal any real religious feelings for God or concern for deism; instead, they seemed to be parroting the safe political line of the time and fawning over their revolutionary leaders.

One reason to think the deists who wrote prayers and hymns to God were sincere is that their focus was very different from the letter writers claiming that a miracle saved Robespierre and Collot. The prayers and hymns to God were not focused on praising the republic’s wise leaders for their bold leadership. Instead, they evinced a genuine feeling of love for God, even gushing about his goodness, kindness, and care for humanity. Often, these deists went into detail about why deism was the one true religion while excoriating the Christians for misrepresenting God as a cruel tyrant who demanded that people perform superstitious ceremonies and believe irrational doctrines.

There is another reason to think the deists who wrote prayers and hymns to God while Robespierre was alive were stating their real religious beliefs. This reason is that before Robespierre was in power and after he was guillotined, forty-two French Revolutionary deists wrote prayers and hymns to God and saw God in the same way as the ones written while Robespierre was in power.⁴⁹ This is best seen by looking at the prayers and hymns to God of the members of Theophilanthropy, a private deist religion started in 1797. (Theophilanthropy is a combination of Greek words which mean ‘love of God and people.’) A prominent government official, Louis Marie de La Révellière-Lépeaux, agreed with Theophilanthropy’s beliefs, and for a period he helped the group by giving it money from the government’s coffers and using governmental resources to distribute its literature.⁵⁰ Theophilanthropy, however, was never an official state-sponsored religion as Robespierre’s civil religion was, and it continued to thrive after La Révellière-Lépeaux lost power.⁵¹

Theophilanthropy is often belittled by scholars. Even though its services were basically those of a typical plain Protestant church, Andrew Jainchill called it a ‘somewhat bizarre movement.’⁵² Sylvia Neely denigrated it by saying ‘its dry intellectual tone appealed only to a few in the cities.’⁵³ But the Theophilanthropists were not dry intellectuals; they revered God and came together to worship him because they had a deep, heart-felt need to worship him. As Pierre Trottier, one of its leading advocates, declared, ‘it is an irresistible need of our hearts which caused us to assemble together to do public acts of worship towards our supreme benefactor to whom we owe all that we are.’⁵⁴

Further evidence that Neely is mistaken in her claim that the Theophilanthropy had a ‘dry intellectual tone’ can be seen by looking at the prayers and hymns to God written by the founder of Theophilanthropy, Jean-Baptiste Chemin-Dupontès. He wrote about a hundred prayers and hymns to God for the Theophilanthropists’ worship services. In these prayers and hymns, he pictured God as a loving and caring father, which means that he saw God in the same way as the French Revolutionary deists who wrote prayers and hymns while Robespierre was alive. One hymn Chemin-Dupontès wrote started,

Man, adore the Supreme Being.

He is your father and your support.

He nourishes you, enlightens you, and loves you.

Avoid being wicked and do good.

Man, avoid doing to your brother,

That which you would not want him to do to you.

The voice of your heart tells you:

We all have the same father.⁵⁵

Chemin-Dupontès continually saw God as a caring father who loved all people. He also thought that people’s hearts told them that God was every one’s father.

For each season of the year, Chemin-Dupontès wrote hymns to be sung in the worship services. For Spring, the hymn started,

All celebrates the glory of God.

All to my eyes paints a creator God.

Of his kindness have I lost the memory?

All the universe announces to me its author.

After stating that the natural world showed there was a God, Chemin-Dupontès compared people to a butterfly flitting from flower to flower. He said that people tried to find real happiness in all kinds of illusory ways, but only God could fill their hearts and make them happy. Chemin-Dupontès wrote,

Beautiful butterfly with light wings,

Flying from flower to flower without stopping.

This is the character of our desires.

No object is able to content us.

We all run from chimera to chimera,

Believing soon to touch real happiness.

But here below, it is a vain hope,

As God alone can fill all our heart.⁵⁶

Chemin-Dupontès’ hymns did not have a ‘dry intellectual tone,’ but were full of adoration and love for God, with this one even saying that nothing besides God could fill people’s hearts and make them happy.

Chemin-Dupontès also saw God as very active in the world, directing seemingly natural processes like the growth of grain and the blooming of flowers. In a canticle to God, Chemin-Dupontès wrote, With the tenderness of a father you provide for the needs of men and animals. You give all of them the nutrition that is appropriate for them. From one sunrise to the following sunrise, your benefits follow without cease, and the wicked themselves experience your kindness. Oh God who is like you! In this canticle, Chemin-Dupontès went through a list of things that God did. He said that God made the earth fertile, made the grain grow, and sent water and dew to people’s fields. Chemin-Dupontès paid particular attention to what God did to make trees grow, saying ‘You make the roots on a tree, and we see that it prospers. You make a nutritious sap circulate in the stem and in the branches. You give it the energy to push out the leaves, the branches, the flowers, and the abundant fruits under which we see its branches bend, showing how much you are pleased to spread your kindness.’ Because God did so many things to make the world a hospitable place for people, Chemin-Dupontès finished his song of praise to God by saying ‘Come and give glory to the Creator. Bless his name, celebrate with transport his magnificence. Great is God: all his works are marvelous. Come and let us exalt his power. God is good, let the just person utter his praises.’ ⁵⁷

Chemin-Dupontès not only saw God as active in natural processes, but also saw him as active in human affairs. For instance, in 1797, after the Treaty of Campo Formio, Chemin-Dupontès praised God for making the French army victorious over the Austrians and giving them a peace with the Austrians. Chemin-Dupontès said,

Great God, who covers with benefits

The mighty people who adore you.

Maintain among us this peace,

Which victory has hatched! …

You made triumph our warriors

To give peace to the earth.⁵⁸

Chemin-Dupontès thought that God had made the French army victorious in its battles.

The Theophilanthropists show it is a mistake to dismiss the earlier writers of hymns to God and prayers as toeing Robespierre’s political line. Regardless of whether Robespierre was in power or not, God was pictured the same way by all the French Revolutionary deists who wrote prayers and hymns to God.

Conclusion

While the Enlightenment period has been recharacterized as a religious period, the deists are still seen as secular figures who believed in a distant and inactive deity who had no relationship with people. The hundred and thirteen French Revolutionary deists who wrote prayers and hymns to God did not see him this way. These prayers and hymns to God show that many French Revolutionary deists believed in a caring and loving deity, who was a kind parent to everyone. These deists also did not think God was inactive; they thought God often intervened in the world. They thought God actively guided the French Revolutionary armies to victories and helped reveal the plots of traitors. God even influenced the thoughts and emotions of the French soldiers so that they would be more courageous and valiant.

It is a mistake for scholars to dismiss this religious language as being about the new nation or taking the safe political line while Robespierre was in power. Instead, this religious language should be seen as the expression of the French Revolutionary deists’ deep religious feelings.

The French Revolutionary deists who wrote prayers and hymns to God were not secular and irreligious figures. Instead, their deep love for their benevolent Father impelled them to write prayers and hymns to God. Scholars have recently shown that some religious groups, such as the Benedictines and Jesuits, combined Enlightenment values with their belief in God. The French Revolutionary deists who wrote prayers and hymns to God did the same: they combined the values of the Enlightenment with a heart-felt love for a caring and fatherly God.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Joseph Waligore

Joseph Waligore has a Ph. D. in philosophy from Syracuse University. He taught philosophy and religious studies at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point for twenty years before retiring. He has published one book, The Spirituality of the English and American Deists: How God Became Good (Lexington Books, 2023), and three articles about deism. He also maintains a website, www. Enlightenmentdeism.com.

Notes

1. Clark, “Secularization and Modernization”; David Sorkin, The Religious Enlightenment.

2. Lehner, The Catholic Enlightenment, 2.

3. Clark, English Society 1688–1832, 280.

4. Sorkin, Religious Enlightenment, 315.

5. Fischer, “‘Religion Governed by Terror,’” paragraph 4.

6. Champion, “Deism,” 441.

7. Barnett, The Enlightenment and Religion, 7, 11–27, 68–70.

8. Brissot, Mémoires de Brissot, 109–11, & Brissot, Lettres Philosophique, 3–4, 50–55, 47–8; Paganel, Essai historique et critique, 457–65; Bénoist-Lamothe, Discours sur la religion, 17–22, 5–8, 16; Lanthenas, Déclaration des devoirs de l’homme, 7–8, 28–33, 47, 21–26; for Jean-François Sobry, Desforges, Navoigille, Regnier Sr., see Jean-François Sobry, Le Culte Libre, 2, 8; for Bouvet, Auber, Hebert, Belhost, Thierry, and Canu, see Archives parlementaires de 1787 à 1860 (Paris: Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1952–1976): series 1, 91:593.

9. Waligore, Spirituality Deists, 294–9; Waligore, “Catalog Deists.”

10. Waligore, Spirituality Deists, 283–6; Waligore, “List Deists Prayers Hymns.”

11. Sonnleithner, “More Voltaire than Rousseau,” 184, 183, 188.

12. Lehner, Enlightened Monks.

13. Burson, Rise and Fall.

14. Plan de la fête à l’Être supreme, 7.

15. Deschamps, Hymne à l’Etre Suprême, 1.

16. Rochon, “Hymn to God,” 48–49.

17. Saint Ange, “Hymn to God,” 42–43.

18. Rubigni, Archives parlementaires, 88:460.

19. Lepetit, Archives parlementaires, 92:91.

20. Walters, Revolutionary Deists, 261.

21. Serant, Pièces de poésies, 1–2.

22. Hymne à l’Etre suprême, 1, 3.

23. Thiébaut, Catéchisme des républicains, 67.

24. Henriquez, Histoires et morales choisies, 71.

25. Waligore, “List Deists Prayers Hymns,” List #3, page 6.

26. Ozouf, Festivals and the French Revolution, 280–282.

27. Aulard, The French Revolution, 191.

28. Waligore, “List Deists Prayers Hymns,” List #3, page 6.

29. Ozouf, Festivals and the French Revolution, 280.

30. Plan de la fête, 8.

31. Archives parlementaires, 93:166.

32. Plan de la fête, 12

33. Liberté, égalité, 13–14.

34. Archives parlementaires, 83:485–487.

35. Ozouf, “Revolutionary Religion,” 565.

36. Détail des cérémonies; Instruction particulière.

37. Waligore, “List Deists Prayers Hymns,” List #1, page 5.

38. Trouvé, “Hymn to God,” 324.

39. Deschamps, Hymne à l’Etre Suprême, 3.

40. Bellecour the Younger, Discours prononcé, 4–5.

41. Chénier, Hymne à la Etre, 2.

42. Dieny, Archives parlementaires, 95:223.

43. Archives parlementaires, 91:299.

44. Jullien, “Ode to God,” 37.

45. Beuzelin, Couplets destines, 7.

46. Mandar, Le génie, 111.

47. Suzor, Briel, Chrétien, Courtin, Lherbeaudieu, and Bois, Archives parlementaires, 91:520.

48. Archives parlementaires, 91–2. For a representative sample, see 91:278–279, 131–132, 414, 502–503 & 466.

49. See Waligore, “List French Revolutionary deists,” List #4, 6.

50. Mathiez, Le Théophilanthropie, 196.

51. Mathiez, Le Théophilanthropie, 648–655, 688–692, 703–704.

52. Jainchill, Reimagining Politics, 89.

53. Neely, A Concise History, 232.

54. Trottier, Exposé de la cérémonie, 8.

55. Chemin-Dupontès, Rituel, 25–26.

56. Chemin-Dupontès, Rituel, 29–30.

57. Chemin-Dupontès, Année religieuse, 113–116.

58. Chemin-Dupontès, Rituel, 92.