Revisiting Rousseau’s Civil Religion

… the true disciples of Christ must suffer persecution; but that the church of Christ should persecute others, and force others by fire and sword to embrace her faith and doctrine, I could never yet find in any of the books of the New Testament. (John Locke, A Letter Concerning Toleration [Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1990], p. 25)

Now that there is no longer and can never again be an exclusive national Religion, one should tolerate all those religions that tolerate others insofar as their dogmas are in no way contrary to the duties of the Citizen. But whoever dares to say there is no Salvation outside of the Church should be chased out of the State … (Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract. CW IV.223–4; OC III.469)

The Genevan Council rebuked Rousseau’s ‘On Civil Religion’ soon after its publication, and over two centuries later hostility persists. Henri Gaston Gouhier saw the piece as an unabashed argument for total secularization of the state. Ronald Ian Boss provided a more common rejoinder, portraying Rousseau’s model as a thinly veiled justification for religious coercion. Alfred Cobban agreed, arguing that ‘Civil Religion’ cemented Rousseau’s reputation ‘as the apostle of tyranny and an enemy to liberty in the state’. ¹ And Lester G. Crocker insisted that the practical consequences of his civic faith ‘can only be imagined from the worst excesses of the Terror, or Stalinism, or of Chinese communism’. ²

Even by Rousseau’s incendiary standards, such receptions ring harsh. Why all the fuss? For starters, ‘Civil Religion’ is, at best, tersely developed. ³ The last substantive chapter in The Social Contract, it feels as conspicuously awkward a fit as the ‘Profession of Faith’ did in Emile. Of meager length and invective in tone, it also smacks of afterthought and ambivalence. On one hand, Rousseau appears to follow Montesquieu by espousing religion’s value in fostering civic virtue. Yet he devotes a majority of the text to categorically denouncing the role of religious practice within polities, concluding that three distinct strains of worship (interior, exterior and ecclesiastical) are anathema to civic unity. And despite insisting upon the need for tolerance, his ‘civil’ alternative regulates faith with an iron fist, proposing expulsion and (almost in passing) the death penalty to non-compliers. ⁴

These are conspicuous problems, particularly for a work whose practical value its author insisted upon. Furthermore, the sheer aggression with which Rousseau brings these paradoxes to the fore makes the task of assessing ‘Civil Religion’s value difficult at best. This is because, from First Discourse to final Reveries, his polemics beg sides. And most commentators take the bait by either rushing to his defense or quickening to condemn.

Nonetheless, as flawed as ‘Civil Religion’ undoubtedly remains, it merits renewed attention for engaging an enduring problem: how best to reconcile religious faith and democratic cohesion. Towards this end, Rousseau proposes radical abolition and reconstruction, effectively privatizing Christianity and supplanting it with a civic-minded model of public worship. Tracing the violent, disruptive relationship between religion and politics as it had been, he recast it as he believed it should be, constitutive to a republican virtue upheld by legal and physical force.

Refusing to abandon his commitment to either spiritual or secular faith, Rousseau’s willfully provocative formulation begs a concrete question: how far must democratic societies be willing to go in order to transform a historically divisive entity into a source of political and social cohesion? He forces this point by adopting conspicuously inflammatory prose, and insisting that our response is inextricably linked to a democratic polity’s welfare. Possessing the courage of its author’s convictions and contradictions alike, ‘On Civil Religion’ therefore wrests our collective attention by clearly outlining the depths of the politico-theological crisis, and demanding a stern, pragmatic resolution which places positive worship under political jurisdiction, even as it seeks to preserve the sanctity of individual, interior relationships with divinity.

Does Rousseau succeed? Does his ‘purely civil profession of faith’ present a viable means of reconciling the relationship between religious and political institutions? At turns inflammatory and conciliatory, pessimistic and idealistic, I believe ‘On Civil Religion’ ultimately provides a compelling if flawed model of public worship subordinate to the demands of civil society. And while his means and ends are neither comforting nor definitive, his recasting of one of democracy’s most divisive and compelling tensions ultimately pushes us closer towards an imperative state of rapprochement.

Rousseau begins ‘On Civil Religion’ with historical conjecture: ‘Men at first had no other Kings than Gods, nor any other government than theocracy.’ ⁵ They looked to divine rulers for governance long before they ‘could bring themselves to accept a fellow man as a master and flatter themselves that this was a good arrangement’. ⁶ From the outset of human history religion therefore served an explicitly political function: the contemplation of heavenly figures provided a source of normative authority.

As in the Second Discourse, Rousseau argued that socialization changed everything. Individuals formed loose congregations that over time evolved into nations, and citizens began to worship common deities legitimized by corporeal leaders. ‘By the sole fact that God was placed at the head of every political society,’ he concludes, ‘it followed that there were as many Gods as there were peoples.’ ⁷ Subsequent homogenization and centralization of these divine figureheads within territorial borders helped to define national identities, but also enflamed national rivalries. Because ‘peoples foreign to each other and nearly always enemies could not recognize the same master … [nor] obey the same leader’, politico-theological differences became a source of conflict; ‘national divisions resulted in polytheism, and beyond that in theological as well as civil intolerance’. ⁸ For better and worse, politics and theology were inextricably linked in pagan times because ‘each State, having its own cult as well as its Government, did not distinguish between its Gods and its laws. Political war was also Theological.’ ⁹

This was certainly true of the Greeks, self-anointed ‘natural Sovereigns’ of foreign tribes, who believed barbarians fell under their political jurisdiction by virtue of worshipping the same pagan Gods. Rome’s expansion was similarly fueled by religious righteousness, ¹⁰ yet unlike Greece their vast geo-political empire gave rise to a sort of theological globalization:

… the Romans, having spread their cult and their Gods along with their empire, and having themselves often adopted the Gods of the vanquished by granting legal status … to them all, the peoples of that vast empire gradually [came] to have multitudes of Gods and of cults, which were approximately the same everywhere. ¹¹

Ironically, the very conditions which facilitated the proliferation of Rome’s religion also contributed to its diffusion. Because the burgeoning empire was logistically incapable of micro-managing worship in newly acquired territories, the authority of its pantheon eroded. Although Rome continued to export deities throughout its colonies, the sheer scope of its expansion prohibited the strict imposition and codification of Roman faith. Religious cults therefore flourished in this absence of strong, centralized religious authority. In practice, nations incorporated into the empire’s fold (that lay beyond their conqueror’s direct dominion) continued to worship their own Gods even, Rousseau observes, with Rome’s legal approbation.

The emergence of autonomous cults within the empire’s territories marked a catalyst for momentous change. Specifically, it ushered in the separation between church and state, a radical schism with decidedly deleterious consequences. ‘By separating the theological system from the political system,’ Rousseau laments, ‘this brought about the end of the unity of the State.’ ¹² Histrionics aside, the divorce of religion from politics left subjects with two distinct, competing authorities. ‘It was under these circumstances’, Rousseau argues, ‘that Jesus came to establish a spiritual kingdom on earth.’ ¹³ Initially, Jesus and his followers sought merely to practise their worship free of state persecution. Yet skeptical pagan leaders sensed a graver danger, regarding the sect ‘as true rebels who, beneath a hypocritical submissiveness, were only awaiting the moment to become independent of the masters, and to usurp adroitly the authority they pretended to respect out of weakness’. ¹⁴ Such fears were realized when, following Jesus’ death, ‘the humble Christians changed their language, and soon this supposedly otherworldly kingdom was seen to become, under a visible leader, the most violent despotism in this world’. ¹⁵

Rousseau’s sudden, sharp conclusion begs emphasis: the destructive relationship between religion and politics began not with their integration but with their radical separation. To reiterate his argument, religious cults flourished as Rome’s political and spiritual authority weakened. The most enduring and infectious among these – Christianity – rejected the jurisdiction of secular governments in spiritual affairs, and anointed Christ humankind’s unequivocal master. As the Christian following increased so did its clergy’s political power extend, eventually ruling the very corporeal dominion it had originally shunned. The once-hunted cult of ‘the Way’ became a prolific hunter, as ‘[t]he spirit of Christianity … won over everything’ in spiritual and secular realms alike. ¹⁶

It was a victory not without cost. As Rousseau makes plain, clerical dominance of secular polities crippled civil society. The seeds of disunity planted during Rome’s downfall had blossomed into governments divided by mutually conflicting loyalties to God and monarch. Civil and spiritual authorities butted heads, and this ‘double power has resulted in a perpetual conflict of jurisdiction that has made any good polity impossible in Christian States’. ¹⁷ Jurisdictional schizophrenia cultivated a perpetual confusion under which ‘no people has ever been able to figure out whom it was obligated to obey, the master or the priest’. ¹⁸

This was true even when master was priest. As Rousseau argues (perhaps implausibly, and with dubious historical accuracy), rulers in England and Russia – who had ‘established themselves as heads of the Church’ – were ultimately subordinate to ecclesiastical authority. Dual allegiances to earthly and other-worldly interests rendered them politically impotent. Their powers were more managerial than legislative: ‘They have acquired not so much the right to change [the Church] as the power to maintain it.’ ¹⁹ As ‘ministers’ subordinate to papal precepts (rather than autonomous ‘masters’ of their realms), these leaders possessed neither the political nor the moral authority to rule or reform the Church.

The Church’s dominance therefore posed a real-world threat to secular rule, one that Hobbes had identified a century prior. Like Rousseau he ‘saw the evil and the remedy’ of divided sovereignty and ‘dared to propose the reunification of the two heads of the eagle, and the complete return to political unity, without which no State or Government will ever be well constituted’. ²⁰ Still, Hobbes’ monarchal solution was ultimately impractical; he underestimated the Church’s influence upon a single ruler, no matter how powerful. As Rousseau chided, he was a ‘Christian Author’ ²¹ who ‘ought to have seen that the dominating spirit of Christianity was incompatible with his system, and that the interest of the Priest would always be stronger than that of the State’. ²² Hobbes should have known that his own solution failed to realistically anticipate organized religion’s predatory instincts. Sword be damned, the Leviathan’s rule would inevitably be subjugated by the power of the priests.

Clearly, Rousseau’s rash dismissal obscures the thoughtfulness with which Hobbes confronted the politico-theological problem. After all, half of his Leviathan is devoted to the subject of religion. In chapter 43 he explicitly identifies the competing pulls of secular and spiritual loyalties as the principal cause of civil conflict:

The most frequent pretext of Sedition, and Civil War, in Christian Commonwealths hath a long time proceeded from a difficulty, not yet sufficiently resolved, of obeying at once, both God, and man, then when their commandments are one contrary to the other. ²³

Hobbes had a ready answer, one that showed deference to the divine will. In such instances ‘when a man receiveth two contrary commands, and knows that one of them is God’s, he ought to obey that, and not the other, though it be the command even of his lawful sovereign (whether a Monarch, or a sovereign Assembly,) or the command of his Father’. ²⁴

This solution to the ‘most frequent pretext’ of civil strife is not as naïve as Rousseau would have us believe. Hobbes immediately recognized that his emphasis upon obedience raised an epistemological difficulty: ‘men when they are commanded in the name of God, know not in diverse Cases, whether the command be from God, or whether he that commandeth, do but abuse God’s name for some private ends of his own.’ ²⁵ Although more staid in tone, these concerns revealed a sentiment consistent with Rousseau’s own mistrust of ecclesiasts. Just as ‘many false Prophets’ ²⁶ bolstered their own reputations among ancient Jews with ‘feigned Dreams, and Visions’.

Hobbes continued: ‘[S]o there have been in all times in the Church of Christ, false Teachers, that seek reputation with the people, by fantastical and false Doctrines; that seek reputation (as is the nature of Ambition,) to govern them for their private benefit.’ ²⁷ He, like Rousseau, was acutely aware of the dangers ‘ambition’ – under which private gain masqueraded as public good generally, and spiritual salvation specifically – posed to a gullible flock.

Shared mistrusts notwithstanding, they diverged sharply on two major theological points. First, Hobbes believed that ‘we are all guilty of disobedience to God’s Law’ both ontologically (as descendants of Adam) and individually (‘by our own transgressions’). ²⁸ And second, in De Cive [On the Citizen] he argued that the right to interpret scripture – the basis of divine law – ‘belongs to individual churches’. ²⁹ As he explained, such a power falls beyond the jurisdiction of ‘civil authority’ and must ‘depend either on the judgment of individual citizens or an outside authority. But it cannot depend on the judgment of individual citizens.’ ³⁰ In sum, ‘it is the task of a church to settle disputes; and therefore it is for a church, not for individuals, to interpret holy scripture’. ³¹ As a Genevan Protestant with Pelagian sympathies, Rousseau must have abhorred both conclusions; an individual’s relationship with God was, after all, a strictly private matter. ³² Furthermore, he unequivocally championed humankind’s natural innocence and rejected the narrative of original sin. Given these profound disagreements, Rousseau could hardly have considered Hobbes an ally in the politico-theological debates.

The Genevan was born into a heritage that shunned Roman Catholic directives as intrusions upon the individual liberty to worship, breaches of political jurisdiction and offenses to the lessons of the gospel. ³³ On a more intimate note, this inherited anti-clericalism was reinforced by personal experience. No stranger to the Church’s wrath, Rousseau understood all too well the dangerous repercussions of openly defying orthodox precepts. ³⁴ For such a widely read public figure as he – one who dared challenge the priest’s authority – the politico-theological question was hardly academic.

Rousseau was firmly convinced that the Roman Catholic Church had overstepped legitimate spiritual and secular bounds. Priests abused their duties as religious authorities by dictating terms of material worship that both assumed humankind’s intrinsic guilt and required rote (and hence unfeeling) repetition of hollow catechisms. And they exploited their political influence, purveying an agenda characterized by private interest, intolerance and persecution. Subjecting citizens to such self-serving conceptions of religious duty, positive law and spiritual salvation alike, they also destroyed the civic cohesion requisite for a healthy polity.

In so criticizing orthodox Roman Catholicism, Rousseau had not merely entered a scriptural debate. His charge denied the Church’s authority as a legitimate mediator between ‘man’ and God. Interior faith was a matter of individual conscience and personal belief; any ruling body that intervened contradicted the very will of God. If true faith was nourished in the heart, particular rites fell under the realm of public jurisdiction; exterior worship was by contrast a matter (as he quipped in Emile) of public policy. ³⁵ Yet following the terms established in The Social Contract, religious congregations (like any civic association) were legitimate only if they reflected a truly general will. ³⁶ By contrast, the unilateral dictates of priests cultivated a singular dogmatism that disserved both God and humankind. Correcting these abuses posed practical and political challenges: disavowing the Church of its sole authority in spiritual matters; and reforming public worship in accord with the democratic tenets of tolerance and civic unity.

As noted earlier, Rousseau insisted upon the necessity and utility of his thought. The pragmatic emphasis evident in his introduction to ‘Civil Religion’ was equally explicit in the Geneva Manuscript. ³⁷ Rousseau began this earlier draft by stating his objective: ‘to put the machine in running order’. ³⁸ By ‘machine’ he meant the political institutions that necessarily order social life. As in the Second Discourse, malfunction was a consequence of denaturization, an evolutionary condition that created new needs which ‘bring us together in proportion as our passions divide us’. ³⁹ Although human beings are naturally innocent, socialization gave rise to wickedness. As our wants grew to surpass our needs, the ‘cupidity’ exemplified by amour-propre weakened man’s sense of collective welfare and interdependence. The satiation of particularist desires undermined natural harmony, an intuitive sentiment that served as ‘the first bonds of general society’ and ‘the foundations of … universal good will’. ⁴⁰ Still, ‘the more we become enemies of our fellow men’ – the more we pursue personal gain at the expense of others – ‘the less we can do without them’. ⁴¹ This was a dilemma whose redress required hard labor, yet ‘universal goodwill’ remained a ‘fruit everyone would like to reap without being obliged to cultivate it’. ⁴²

If effort was wanting, the need was undeniable. In society, a ‘new order of things gives rise to a multitude of relationships lacking order, regulation, and stability’. ⁴³ To further complicate matters, Rousseau admits that ‘nature’s gentle voice is no longer an infallible guide for us, nor is the independence we have received from her a desirable state’. ⁴⁴ Human beings are, for better or worse, social creatures. In this deracinated state, we no longer follow (let alone discern) the guidance of our God-given conscience. Humankind is also painfully oblivious: ‘the sublime concepts of a God of the wise, the gentle laws of brotherhood He imposes upon us, the social virtues of pure souls – which are the true cult He desires of us – will always escape the multitude’. ⁴⁵ This is because people are easily swayed. They are fed ‘senseless’ Gods who, far from upholding morality and social cohesion, would lead them to ‘indulge in a thousand horrible, destructive passions … if Philosophy and laws did not hold back the furies of fanaticism’. ⁴⁶

The problem, however, lies with sectarianism rather than religion. ‘Ever since particular instructions became necessary, each People has its own ideas which it is taught are the only valid ones, and which lead to Carnage and murder more often than to harmony and peace.’ ⁴⁷ Rousseau instead urged us to ‘set aside the sacred precepts of the various Religions, whose abuse causes as many crimes as their use can avoid, and give back to the Philosopher the examination of a question that the Theologian has never dealt with except to the detriment of the human race’. ⁴⁸ Although these lines were removed in The Social Contract, they strike a dissonant chord coming from one so mistrustful of his philosophe peers. Rather than read this as a reversal of Rousseau’s well-documented suspicions, we should recognize in his plea an unflinching indictment of those charged with religion’s keeping. Forced to choose (on society’s behalf) between priests and philosophers, he sides here with the latter; keepers of the faith, it appears, were even worse than atheists. ⁴⁹ Although this admission occurs only in passing (in a draft, at that), it underscores an insistence consistent throughout Rousseau’s writings: theologians have made a mess of religious institutions, and humankind has consequently paid a dear price.

Clearly, those charged with safeguarding and promoting that ‘greatest good of all’ (positive religion) have failed us. As Rousseau concludes,

… although there is no natural and general society among men, although men become unhappy and wicked in becoming sociable, although the laws of justice and equality mean nothing to those who live both in the freedom of the state of nature and subject to the needs of the social state, far from thinking that there is neither virtue nor happiness for us and that heaven has abandoned us without resources to the deprivation of the species, let us attempt to draw from the ill itself the remedy that should cure it. Let us use new associations to correct, if possible, the defect of the general association. ⁵⁰

Seemingly awash in despair, he draws hope from his faith in natural human innocence and divine beneficence. Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, God has not abandoned his worthy creations. ⁵¹ Rather than meekly suffer an inalterable fate, we must summon courage and employ that most human of traits ⁵² – perfectibility – to reform the ‘particular institutions’ as necessary (and difficult to enact) as governments.

Writing on politics, education and social relations, Rousseau’s stark pessimistic realism (critical assessment of current affairs) served as a catalyst for heuristic idealism (maintaining hope in, and providing potential road maps for, productive reform). His approach to the politico-theological problem was no different. As with inequalities, religious intolerance was a by-product of socialization, a corruption of the natural harmony instilled in us as creatures of God. As in the Second Discourse, redressing these wrongs demanded drawing ‘from the ill itself the remedy that should cure it’: creating new associations to replace those that have failed us in politics, society and religion alike. If positive religion is particularly adrift, and its reform is essential to a polity’s well-being, then the task of instituting a civil religion is nothing short of imperative.

We might here recall that Rousseau begins The Social Contract in search of ‘legitimate and reliable rule’, a vision of strong citizenship defined by the exercise of a general will. ⁵³ This political objective demands recasting the relationship between religion and politics, lest subjects remain divisively ruled by ‘two powers, two Sovereigns’ ⁵⁴ – that of Christ as defined by a hegemonic Church, and that of the state as putatively defined by a monarch.

In the Second Discourse, speculative genealogy laid the foundation for a socio-political critique of inequality. Rousseau’s introduction to ‘Civil Religion’ serves a similar purpose: tracing the source of a social problem in need of political redress. In both cases, examining origins establishes the context to better assess and correct present failings. We might therefore take a moment to review Rousseau’s historical account of religion, as it defines the problems theoretically solved by ‘Civil Religion’.

As we have seen, although the relationship between religion and politics took the initial form of a relatively benign polytheism (mirroring the loose congregation of cooperative individuals that comprised early societies), it eventually became a source of despotism among human societies. In the Second Discourse, the invention of private property marked a decisive turning point in the evolution of civil society. In ‘Civil Religion’, Rousseau locates a similar world-changing moment in the history of spiritual worship: the advent of theological intolerance between nation-states, and the subsequent export of deities to vanquished territories. Rome’s over-expansion subverted this practice, as fringe cults sprouted throughout the empire’s territory. Among these, Christianity proved most enduring, and divested spiritual faith of its need for political affirmation. More strongly, Christians opposed an empire’s authority, drawing legitimacy from faith in a single omnipotent divinity, and creating an autonomous ruling body who answered to Christ above the emperor. What began as a movement opposed to earthly involvement eventually grew to dominate corporeal affairs.

In addition to providing conceptual and historical foundations for his argument, Rousseau’s introduction establishes three main concerns. First, theological and civil intolerance – prejudices he describes as synonymous ⁵⁵ – are products of human history, unnatural to the extent that they (like inequalities) develop with socialization and are non-existent in the natural state. Second, politics and religion were intimately linked from the first seedlings of human society. This relationship was initially mutually beneficial, as divine rule served a normative, legislative, unifying political function. Third, this balance was fundamentally (and permanently) altered by Christianity, a faith that supplanted nationally sponsored deities with a universal God whose authority was autonomous from (and more powerful than) the state. This schism between religious and secular authority in turn created a political problem, the phenomenon of sovereignty divided among monarchs and priests. As Rousseau observes, the ‘sacred cult has always remained, or again become independent of the Sovereign, and without a necessary bond with the body of the State’. ⁵⁶ It was this ‘necessary bond’ that he sought to repair.

Before developing his solution, Rousseau quickly distances himself from the fray of contemporary theological debate. Describing two dominant poles of thought epitomized by ‘the opposing sentiments of Bayle and Warburton, one of whom claims that no Religion is useful to the body politic, the other of whom maintains, to the contrary, that Christianity is its firmest support’, ⁵⁷ he makes clear his distaste for such arguments. Rousseau’s overriding aim is to reforge religion’s civic ties and reunite civil and religious faith, thereby imbuing strong democratic self-rule with religion’s unifying moral foundation. He dismisses chic theological and philosophical arguments as fundamentally irrelevant to his study, one guided by practical – not metaphysical – concerns.

Rousseau’s aversion to theological debates reflects an even deeper conviction. As his ‘Profession of Faith of a Savoyard Vicar’ makes clear, he believed divine mysteries were categorically impenetrable. Humankind was capable of discerning only the most general characteristics of God (omnipotence and beneficence) and his will (exemplified in the order of the natural world). Beyond these vague certainties, theological speculation is wholly indeterminate. Efforts to apply particular characteristics to a Being beyond human comprehension are vain in both senses of the word: ineffectual, and unduly proud. Rather than attempt to settle questions irresolvable to the human mind, ⁵⁸ Rousseau strove only to ‘give a little more precision to the overly vague ideas about Religion that are relevant to my subject’. ⁵⁹

Before developing his subject – a ‘purely civil profession of faith’ – Rousseau begins with a typology, dividing religion ‘into two types, namely the Religion of man and that of the Citizen’. ⁶⁰ The first ‘is the pure and simple Religion of the Gospel … and what may be called natural divine right’, an internal worship ‘without Temples, altars, or rituals’. ⁶¹ The second is practised by and within specific countries, an external worship of ‘dogma, rites, and external cult … prescribed by law’. ⁶² Rousseau adds a ‘third, more bizarre, type of Religion which, by giving men two legislative systems, two leaders, and two fatherlands, subjects them to contradictory duties, and prevents them from being simultaneously devout men and Citizens’. ⁶³ He has in mind Roman Catholicism or ‘the religion of the Priest’, one that ‘leads to a type of mixed and unsocial right that has no name’. ⁶⁴

Rousseau immediately dismisses the ‘religion of the Priest’ as being ‘so manifestly bad that it is a waste of time to amuse oneself by proving it’. ⁶⁵ Roman Catholicism fails to uphold the most basic requisites of the social contract: it ‘destroys social unity’ and ‘put[s] man in contradiction with himself’, rendering it ‘worthless’ and – given Rousseau’s concept of divine order – fundamentally irreligious. ⁶⁶ The remaining categories have more forgivable flaws.

External worship ‘combines the divine cult and love of the laws’, a union that renders ‘the fatherland the object of the Citizens’ adoration’. ⁶⁷ Such a formula transforms the state into a ‘tutelary God’, a ‘kind of Theocracy in which there ought to be no other pontiff than the Prince, nor other priests than the magistrates’. ⁶⁸ If Rousseau appreciated such patriotic eros, he remained mistrustful of unilateral hierarchical authority. Like priests, theocrats conflated secular and spiritual jurisdiction. ⁶⁹ Furthermore, their muddled creed was ‘bad in that, being based on error and falsehood, it deceives men, makes them credulous, superstitious, and drowns the true cult of divinity in empty ceremonial’. ⁷⁰ Under this system, the gospel is supplanted by arbitrary ritual, cultivating a faith based upon credulity and intolerance rather than the truth and harmony characteristic of God’s will.

Having examined the problems of state- and priest-based worship, Rousseau returns to his first category: ‘the Religion of man, or Christianity’, which he immediately distinguishes from ‘that of today’. The faith he envisions is a ‘saintly, sublime, genuine Religion, [which urges] men – all children of the same God – [to] acknowledge one another as brothers’, a bond which survives even death. ⁷¹ From the perspective of civil society, the problem with Christianity is that it lacks any ‘particular relation to the body politic, [and] leaves laws with only their intrinsic force, without adding any other force to them’. ⁷² Rousseau here resurrects a familiar critique of Christianity’s incompatibility with political action, describing earthly indifference as a symptom of focusing solely upon the afterlife. As he laments, ‘far from attaching the Citizens’ hearts to the State, it detaches them from it as from all worldly things’, a phenomenon completely ‘contrary to the social spirit’. ⁷³ Even more strongly, he argues that ‘a society of true Christians would no longer be a society of men’. ⁷⁴ Such individuals would be wholly united with God and wholly detached from their fellows.

This is because ‘Christianity is a totally spiritual religion, uniquely concerned with Heavenly matters’. ⁷⁵ Although true Christians are dutiful, law-abiding, moderate, incorruptible, brave and temperate, ‘[t]he Christian’s fatherland is not of this world’. ⁷⁶ Civil duties would be performed ‘with profound indifference for the good or bad outcomes of his efforts’. ⁷⁷ Whatever his state’s fortunes may be, the Christian either ignores its felicity or ‘blesses the hand of God that weighs heavily on his people’. ⁷⁸ He allows himself neither pride in his patrie, nor the will needed to reform a polity in decline. This mirrors a fundamental division between Augustine and Pelagius. Augustine saw little hope in meaningful human reform, save constant vigilance carried out with the realization that redemption might only follow the grace of God. By contrast, Pelagius embraced corporeal improvement as a means of actively soliciting the divine Creator’s mercy. Arguing that salvation and earthly improvement were mutually constitutive aims, Rousseau seems to side with Pelagius.

If the Christian state denuded citizens of their capacity for physical self-betterment, it possessed another fatal weakness. Such a polity could prosper only if ‘all Citizens without exception … [were] equally good Christians’. This is because those truly devoted to Christ are not simply indifferent to their corporeal fates; they are also utterly naïve, awash in blind brotherly love that makes them easy victims for even ‘a single ambitious man, a single hypocrite’. ⁷⁹ Such ingenuousness combined with a passive attribution of fate to the will of God does not strong citizens make. Because the Christian’s ‘essential thing is to go to paradise’, he or she lacks the worldly devotion needed to cultivate or defend the state. ⁸⁰ Christianity may nourish deeper existential truths and worship a just deity, but – like natural man – its ‘true’ practitioners are ill-suited for society. As Rousseau concludes:

I am mistaken when I speak of a Christian Republic; these two words are mutually exclusive. Christianity preaches nothing but servitude and dependence. Its spirit is so favorable to tyranny that tyranny always profits from it. True Christians are made to be slaves. They know it and are scarcely moved thereby; this brief life is of too little worth in their view. ⁸¹

If Rousseau’s indictment of Christian citizens followed Machiavelli’s Discourses on Livy (at times to the letter), it also resurrected Bayle’s depiction of Christian states as fundamentally apolitical entities. ⁸² By reviving these controversial stances Rousseau seems to enter the very theological debates he dismissed mere pages earlier. Such apparent reversals make ‘On Civil Religion’ a particularly frustrating text, even by Rousseau’s paradoxical standards. Yet what appears blatantly contradictory suggests a deep ambivalence. Rousseau insists upon the necessity of integrating religious practice within legitimate political associations. At the same time, he recognizes that organized religion historically opposed republican civic interests: theocratic states were built upon lies and cultivated credulous intolerance; and Roman Catholic polities were dominated by dogmatists. Even ‘true’ Christians were ill-suited to the rigorous corporeal duties of strong citizenship.

Each form of religious practice categorically undermines the conditions requisite of a prosperous civic body. None is capable of simultaneously preserving religion’s most beneficial elements (truth, harmony, connectedness, moral will) and the core values of legitimate polities (freedom, tolerance, unity). In all three instances, spiritual associations seem fatally incompatible with political associations, doomed either to dominate corporeal governance, supplant true faith with narrow-minded superstition, or create a citizenry gravely uninterested in worldly affairs. Before even sketching his alternative, Rousseau plants significant doubt: are religion and politics fundamentally incompatible, or can Civil Religion succeed where all others have failed? In provoking such uncertainty, he prods readers to question his very enterprise.

Because Rousseau seemed to portray religious associations as the proverbial oil to a healthy polity’s water, it should come as no surprise that commentators have read his chapter ‘On Civil Religion’ as a wholly secular plea in spiritual clothing and (more broadly) labeled its author emphatically irreligious. The evidence for such an interpretation lies in plain view. Yet such conclusions dismiss a crucial element of Rousseau’s thought: his sincere religiosity. To ignore this is to place him in the company of atheist philosophes such as Helvétius, Holbach and d’Alembert whose views, he argued in Emile, were more dangerous than fanaticism itself. ⁸³ Religion fulfills a unique and fundamental role in cultivating the moral fiber and civic harmony of communities. That dogmatic creeds nullify this value should compel (rather than deter) us to reform spiritual associations. An essential facet of human life, like social bonds they must be repaired.

To justify this claim that Rousseau was a thinker equally committed to secular and spiritual well-being, we must nonetheless address the doubts his condemnations of Christianity rightfully raise. Rousseau’s critique of the Christian citizen is problematic on at least three levels. First, it seems to render his very enterprise (‘considering [religion] in relation to society’) moot by categorically positing religion in opposition to society. Second, it seems self-subverting when considered in relation to Rousseau’s descriptions of himself as a ‘true’ Christian. Finally, unlike his anti-clericalism against overtly (and actively) self-serving priests, it targets a relatively benign group: the genuinely faithful. What then are we to make of an argument to integrate religious practice into civil society that begins by dismissing even the most exemplary practitioners?

By way of explanation, Helena Rosenblatt argues that these ‘provocative statements … should not be taken at face value’. ⁸⁴ Placing Rousseau’s chapter on ‘Civil Religion’ within the context of Genevan politics, she describes Rousseau’s ‘strategy’ as a method of ‘adopt[ing] and amplify[ing] the Genevan patriciate’s version of Christianity, only to turn it against them’. ⁸⁵ To secure their own political power, the patriciate ‘claimed that Christianity preached only otherworldliness, submission, and resignation’. ⁸⁶ Rousseau simply took this conclusion to its logical extreme, describing a ‘Christian republic’ as a contradiction in terms. ⁸⁷ According to Rosenblatt, his position was deliberate, a means of ‘provoking people to defend their religion and, in the process, to refute the patriciate’s “Christian submission” argument. Rousseau’s readers had to choose: either Christianity does not preach submission, or its political relevance must be rejected.’ ⁸⁸

Because ‘Civil Religion’ proceeds from the premise that religion is politically relevant, Rosenblatt argues that its exaggerated anti-Christian stance must be read as a negative lesson, a means of pressing readers to accept the dangers in categorically dismissing Christianity’s political value. This was the very explanation Genevan minister Antoine-Jacques Roustan offered in an amicable retort to his friend’s hyperbolic position. In Offrande aux Autels et à la Patrie [An Offering to the Altars and the Fatherland], Roustan wondered aloud if ‘M. Rousseau believe[s what he has written] himself’. ⁸⁹ After all, Christianity requires good acts; it encourages self-sacrifice in the face of tyranny; and it preaches submission only as a last resort.

Yet if these values were well-suited to republicanism, and ‘if Christianity is so favorable to liberty, [why are there] so few free states in Europe’? ⁹⁰ Roustan provided a decidedly Rousseauist answer to this Rousseauist question: ‘because there are so few Christians’. ⁹¹ As he elaborates,

… an ambitious person … would have to think twice before attacking the liberty of a really Christian people, whose citizens would scorn riches, would lead a simple, laborious, frugal life, would love each other like brothers and future fellow-citizens of heaven. ⁹²

Roustan’s analysis tacitly suggests that greed and covetousness (qualities Rousseau associated with the Genevan patriciate), not humility and brotherly love, threaten strong citizenship. It also reiterates an argument familiar to Rousseau’s readers: religion rightly understood bears little in common with most contemporary religious practice.

Just as papal abuses should not obscure true religion’s value to humankind, Rousseau’s anti-clericalism should not be confused with irreligiosity. Indeed, his vision of a legitimate society was grounded in a unified sense of duty or ‘moral will’ which, in turn, ‘was dependent upon the existence of God’. ⁹³ Did these convictions redeem him from charges of impiety? Rousseau certainly thought so. Revisiting The Social Contract in the third of his Letters Written from the Mountain, he writes:

One cannot say … that I attack morality in a Book in which I establish with all my power the preference for the general good over the private good and in which I relate our duties toward men to our duties toward God; the only principle upon which morality can be founded, in order to be real and go beyond appearance. ⁹⁴

An obligation to serve God, fellow man and the general good: these are the moral precepts Rousseau draws from his belief in a divine universal order. And as the ‘most reasonable and holy Religion on earth’, Christianity powerfully affirms these duties. ⁹⁵

Rousseau was emphatic on this point. Flatly denying ‘that Christianity is attacked in my [Social Contract]’, ⁹⁶ he described it as ‘a book where the truth, utility, and necessity of Religion in general is established with the greatest force; where, without making any exception, the Author prefers the Christian Religion to any other worship and the evangelical Reformation to any other sect’. ⁹⁷ Yet despite this assertion, Rousseau never retracted his more disparaging sentiments about the ‘purely spiritual faith’. Clarifying his critical position, he argued that Christianity – although ‘making men just, moderate, and friends of peace’ and being ‘very favorable to the general society’ – ‘weakens the force of the political spring [and] complicates the movements of the machine’. ⁹⁸ Being ‘not sufficiently suited to [corporeal politics] … it must either degenerate or remain a foreign and cumbersome component’. ⁹⁹ Although Christianity served human life and livelihood, it was still a disembodied belief-system ill-equipped to impose the rigorous corporeal duties essential to a strong polity’s welfare. Rousseau’s conclusion, born of realistically appraising the practical values and limits of different forms of religion, carved a sharp distinction between interior and exterior worship. In the process, it also forced readers to judge his project on its own explicitly social terms.

True religion neither divides nor oppresses; it simply cultivates a healthy deference to divine order. Yet as Rousseau illustrated, religious associations rarely reinforced God’s harmonious will. In a 1755 letter to Voltaire, he blamed ‘the Priests and the Devout’ for this failing. ¹⁰⁰ Rather than developing our moral sense by preaching compliance with ‘the established order’, they ‘have Divine justice intervene’ only when it serves their dogmatic teachings. ¹⁰¹ They supplant the fraternité and pitié natural to God’s creations with fear (of papal authority) and intolerance (towards non-believers). And finally, because ‘it matters greatly to the State that each Citizen have a Religion that causes him to love his [civic and moral] duties’, they undermined the very requisites of healthy, virtuous polities. ¹⁰²

Rousseau’s alternative to divisive dogmatism was Civil Religion, a purely civic faith fettered only by ‘the limits of public utility’. ¹⁰³ Beyond this guiding principle, his formulation was purposefully broad. ¹⁰⁴ So long as religious worship did not conflict with society’s general interests, the specific tenets of the faith were irrelevant:

… the dogmas of that Religion are of no interest either to the State or to its members; except insofar as these dogmas relate to morality, and to the duties that anyone who professes it is obliged to fulfill toward others. Everyone can have whatever opinions he pleases beyond that, without the Sovereign having to know what they are. For since the sovereign has no competence in the other world, whatever the fate of subjects in the life hereafter, it is none of its business, as long as they are good citizens. ¹⁰⁵

A sharp line is carved in stone. The state has no business intruding upon personal beliefs which do not compromise the general welfare of its citizens. Although our relationship with God is a sacred and private source of individual moral strength, religious associations must serve public interests and be held accountable to the same civic standards applicable to any legitimate democratic community.

Because the articles of such a ‘purely civil profession of faith’ are less ‘Religious dogmas’ than ‘sentiments of sociability without which it is impossible to be a good Citizen or a faithful subject’, they must be established by the sovereign. ¹⁰⁶ Precepts essential to a polity’s moral health, they reflect only the most general, universally accessible tenets of the gospel. In this, Rousseau sides with his vicar: ‘The dogmas of the civil Religion ought to be simple, few in number, stated with precision, without explanation or commentaries.’ ¹⁰⁷ Specifically, they require belief in ‘[t]he existence of a powerful, intelligent, beneficent, foresighted, and providential Divinity; the afterlife; the happiness of the just; the punishment of the wicked’. ¹⁰⁸ Rousseau also adds a strict civil caveat to these core Christian assumptions: ‘the sanctity of the social Contract and the Laws’ must always be observed. ¹⁰⁹

From the outset, ‘Civil Religion’ shows simultaneous deference to both divine and human order, vesting its authority in spiritual truths and secular precepts. Beliefs in an omnipotent God and the afterlife, and a righteous heavenly order which rewards justice and punishes wickedness, are balanced by the inviolability of positive law defined by the general will. To these ‘positive’ stipulations, however, Rousseau adds one crucial ‘negative’ dogma: intolerance is proscribed. ¹¹⁰ A caveat essential to upholding individual liberty, this final term reflects Rousseau’s insistence that intolerance fundamentally opposes spiritual and secular freedom.

His negative dogma also reveals a deep mistrust of a creed like Roman Catholicism which ‘dares to say there is no Salvation outside of the Church’. ¹¹¹ Such presumptuous sects should, in no uncertain terms, ‘be chased out of the state’. ¹¹² Their expulsion is merited by crimes against both civil and theological order: claiming to monopolize the gift of salvation, ecclesiasts falsely usurp a power held solely by God; and they sharply divide polities by condemning those outside their flocks to hell. This is certainly no way to build a congregation, much less a society. As Rousseau notes, on a practical level ‘[i]t is impossible to live in peace with people whom one believes are damned. To love them would be to hate God who punishes them. They must absolutely be brought into the faith or tormented.’ ¹¹³ Presenting itself as the sole executor of God’s will, the Church therefore acts out of wrath and intolerance, rather than truly divine motives of forgiveness and love. And politically, the consequences of one creed claiming jurisdiction over an entire species’ eternal fate is devastating. If a single dogmatic authority controls humankind’s greatest prize, then no citizen is free; even ‘the Sovereign is no longer Sovereign … over temporal matters’. ¹¹⁴

Although his exposé builds a strong case for religious tolerance, closer scrutiny reveals a serious discrepancy in his argument: Rousseau is wholly intolerant towards the intolerant. ‘Without being able to obligate anyone to believe [its dogmas]’, he writes, ‘the sovereign can banish from the State anyone who does not believe them.’ ¹¹⁵ Expulsion is a legitimate punishment not for the ‘impious’ but for the ‘unsociable; for [a citizen] incapable of sincerely loving the laws, justice, and of giving his life, if need be, for his duty’. ¹¹⁶ Those who reject Civil Religion reject the very terms of sociability critical to society’s well-being. Such dissenters cannot be trusted to uphold the rigorous demands of citizenship, or devote sacrificial love to a value (common welfare) or entity (the state) that transcends their own particular interests. Failure to accept a civil faith therefore indicates a fundamentally anti-social pathology punishable by the revocation of citizenship. Rousseau’s unbending tone is reinforced by a vehement threat: ‘If someone who has publicly acknowledged these same dogmas behaves as though he does not believe them, he should be punished with death. He has committed the greatest of crimes: he lied before the law.’ ¹¹⁷

These sentiments are discomforting for several reasons. First, Rousseau advocates banishment without so much as suggesting the possibility of individual reform or allowing space for public dialogue. Second, he is notably quick to violence, threatening the death penalty to those who lie ‘before the law’. And third, he seems to foster a culture of persecution; Civil Religion’s positive dogmas presumably exclude atheists from a state in which all citizens must recognize the existence of a beneficent Divinity. ¹¹⁸ Rosenblatt argues that ‘Rousseau’s chapter on civil religion should be seen as an attack on the political uses of religion by an absolutizing and oligarchical regime’, yet his Civil Religion seems unapologetically draconian when taken on its own ‘simple’ terms. ¹¹⁹ How does a model built around the sanctity of tolerance, fraternity and individual liberty so swiftly descend into a platform of forced exile and corporal punishment? Can a truly democratic society exclude any of its members, particularly atheists? Are such proposals even in accord with Rousseau’s own Golden Rule, to do ‘what is good for you with the least possible harm to others’? ¹²⁰ Or was Lester Crocker correct in labeling this work a premonition of 20th-century totalitarianism?

Lest we conclude Rousseau has gone mad, we might offer two explanations in the mercurial author’s defense. The first comes courtesy of Christopher Kelly and Roger Masters who locate within ‘Civil Religion’ a ‘“toughness” … that is often overlooked’ in Rousseau’s thought. ¹²¹ Certainly, beneath the surface of his gentle reveries on nature, God and the possibility of human redemption lies an unyielding backbone aligned with Spartan severity. Yet even Kelly and Masters soften this disposition, stressing ‘that for Rousseau, only behavior – and never an opinion or belief – can be punished by society’. ¹²² Their argument relies upon a generous assessment of Civil Religion’s jurisdictional limits. Rousseau certainly protects individual faith from magisterial authority, but he qualifies this liberty by insisting upon compliance with the 4 positive dogmas, and buttressing this condition with the threat of physical force. If, for example, denying the existence of the afterlife constitutes a rejection of the civil code (and, therefore, a crime against the social order), beliefs would appear to be punishable by law. ¹²³

No matter the degree, ‘Civil Religion’ certainly exhibits ‘toughness’. But this should hardly assuage our fears. Instead, let us consider Rousseau’s controversial proposals within the context of his Social Contract’s broader aim: legitimizing the ‘chains’ of denatured society by instituting associations under which equality, individual liberty and civil unity might flourish. For Rousseau, ecclesiastical dogma was anathema to such legitimate political reform. Because sectarian creeds posed ever-present threats to civil and spiritual harmony alike, their influence had to be contained at all costs. Forced to make difficult choices between a world liberated from the Church’s dominion and a polity that excluded members destructive of its civic unity, ‘On Civil Religion’ unequivocally advocates the latter. ¹²⁴ We might therefore consider the intolerant terms of Rousseau’s civil faith as a sort of heuristic threat: the lengths to which the author is willing to go in order to ensure that religious practice does not subvert the requisites of legitimate self-rule. ¹²⁵ After all, atheists are, first and foremost, criminals of the state; their punishment (breaking the social contract) must therefore fit the (civic) crime.

Rousseau’s hardline stance should come as no surprise. After all, sometimes human beings must be forced into freedom. ¹²⁶ This was particularly true in politico-theological matters where only the combined weights of law, individual consent and group consensus could counteract sectarianism’s strongly anti-democratic impulses. Although ‘Civil Religion’ made painfully clear the difficulty of this challenge, grim reality (as in the Second Discourse) did not deter Rousseau from envisioning its fruition. ¹²⁷ Quite the opposite. Taking religion as it was and religious associations as they should be, dissatisfaction provided the impetus for radical reform. Yet even if his ambitions were well-intentioned, the intolerant terms of his proposal are still unsettling. In suggesting exile and the death penalty, Rousseau apparently subverts his own aims, substituting one form of intolerance (religious) for another (civic). Did the ‘end’ of civil liberty necessarily beg such questionable means?

‘On Civil Religion’ hardly settled the matter, as even Rousseau himself seemed to acknowledge. Subsequent letters to his friend Moultou and the pastor Usteri find him both clarifying and modifying his position. ¹²⁸ He further refined his stance in the Letter to Beaumont, adhering to ‘On Civil Religion’’s core assertions while abandoning its more reactionary threats. Rousseau began by repeating a refrain consistent throughout his works: ‘[I]f man is made for society, the truest Religion is also the most social and the most humane.’ ¹²⁹

Still, he forthrightly admitted ‘this sentiment is subject to great difficulties from the historical account and the facts that contradict it’. ¹³⁰ As he elaborates:

I neither say nor think there is no good Religion on earth. But I do say, and it is only too true, that there is none among those that are or have been dominant that has not cruelly wounded humanity. All parties have tormented their brothers, all have offered to God sacrifices of human blood. Whatever the source of these contradictions, they exist. Is it a crime to want to eliminate them? ¹³¹

Here, in a nutshell, was Rousseau’s self-defense of ‘Civil Religion’. His text did not categorically condemn ‘Religion on earth’; it merely recognized a problem in need of redress, the fact that ‘dominant’ religions had scorched God’s earth, shed human blood and weakened social unity.

As explanations go, Rousseau’s was conspicuously unrepentant. He forced a dubious distinction between practical observation and profane censure, one further blurred by his subsequent critique of the meek masses. If creeds had ‘cruelly wounded humanity’, their followers voiced little objection. As Rousseau lamented, ‘[p]eople submit in silence’, conforming without protest to the pernicious precepts of a domineering Church. ¹³² Yet despite appearances, he was not simply presaging Nietzsche. He viewed such connivance as a natural reaction to clerical coercion. Indeed, his point was even firmer: outer compliance did not reveal inward complicity because individual belief systems could not be bullied into submission.

He was hardly the first to air such opinions. Luther argued forcefully that outward obedience offered little proof of sincere conviction; unlike motives or faith, good works were easily contrived. ¹³³ And in his Letter Concerning Toleration, Locke insisted that ‘no man can, [even] if he would, conform his faith to the dictates of another’. ¹³⁴ Because ‘the life and power of true religion consists in the inward and full persuasion of the true mind[,] faith is not faith without believing’. ¹³⁵ Furthermore, for Locke ‘the liberty of conscience is every man’s natural right’. ¹³⁶ Rousseau likewise championed the sanctity of individual conscience, and agreed that external force did not cultivate internal conviction. Superficial compliance to orthodox precepts was just that: ‘only in appearance’. ¹³⁷

The ‘inconsistency … noted between [subjects’] morality and their actions’ was therefore less the fault of individuals than of institutions that demanded public affirmation of opinions private by nature. ¹³⁸ As Rousseau countered in ‘Civil Religion’, only the most general tenets shared by all could serve as a basis for civil communion; individual beliefs lay beyond the jurisdiction of church and state alike. Reiterating this argument in his Letter to Beaumont, Rousseau wondered:

Why does one man have the right of inspection over another man’s belief, and why does the State have it over the belief of the Citizens? It is because it is assumed that what men believe determines their morality, and that their conduct in this life is dependent upon their ideas about the life to come. If this is not true, what difference does it make what they believe or what they pretend to believe? ¹³⁹

The answer, as Machiavelli famously argued, is none, so long as citizens uphold the common duties necessary to preserve their polity’s well-being. ¹⁴⁰ In society, ‘everyone has the right to find out whether another person believes himself obligated to be just, and the Sovereign has the right to examine the reasons on which each person bases this obligation’. ¹⁴¹ This standard did not, however, apply to an individual’s faith. As Rousseau emphasized, for

… opinions that are not connected to morality, that do not influence actions in any way, and that do not transgress Laws, each person has only his own judgment as a master on these, and no one has either right or interest in prescribing his way of thinking for others. ¹⁴²

He expounded upon this distinction between public and private faith in the Letters Written from the Mountain. Beginning with a tripartite division of religion into dogma, morality and worship (‘which is only ceremonial’), Rousseau split ‘dogma further into two parts, namely the one which in setting forth the principles of our duties serves as a foundation for morality, and the one which, purely of faith, contains only speculative dogmas’. ¹⁴³ Civil faith was concerned only with the former, foundational codes that define society’s moral will:

As for the part of Religion that deals with morality, that is to say justice, the public good, obedience to the natural and positive Laws, the social virtues and all the duties of man and Citizen, it is the business of government to take cognizance of them. It is on this point alone that Religion falls directly under its jurisdiction, and that it must banish not error, of which it is not the judge, but every harmful sentiment that tends to cut the social knot. ¹⁴⁴

As Rousseau’s stance on Christianity made clear, religion takes different forms, each with its own unique function. Those that serve morality, justice, the public good and civic duty define the terms of social relations, and therefore fall under the domain of sovereign jurisdiction.

Reiterating his claim that ‘it is important for the State not to be without Religion … for serious reasons, upon which I have strongly insisted throughout’, Rousseau nonetheless argued that it would be better to do without ‘than to have a barbarous and persecuting [creed] that, tyrannizing the Laws themselves, would thwart the duties of the Citizen’. ¹⁴⁵ In this worst of possible scenarios, a wise legislator is left with only two options:

… the first is to establish a purely civil Religion, which includes all fundamental dogmas of every good Religion, all dogmas truly useful to either a universal or a particular society … The other expedient is to leave Christianity as it is in its genuine spirit: free, disengaged from all bonds of flesh, with no other obligation than that of conscience, no other constraint in its dogmas than morals and Laws. ¹⁴⁶

Because ‘the Gospel has only one aim … to call and save all men’, and because this lesson is fundamentally removed from worldly concerns (as Jesus himself said ‘a thousand times’), ‘Christianity as it is’ could not combat the tyranny of a ‘barbarous and persecuting’ creed. Under such circumstances, legislators had only one feasible strategy: ‘removing the Christian Religion from national Institutions’ and instituting a Civil Religion. In so urging, Rousseau claimed to ‘establish what is best for the human race’, a religious association distinct from (and protective of) interior faith compatible with the cultivation of civic duty.

His solution to the politico-theological problem therefore demanded sharp jurisdictional boundaries, a clear understanding of the varieties of religious practice and a sober assessment of religion’s strengths and weaknesses when ‘considered in relation to society’. The only way to preserve Christianity was to keep it out of politics. This argument was consistent with the lesson (as Rousseau understood it) of Jesus, the first to completely divest religion of corporeal concerns. Furthermore, as we have seen, Rousseau believed that ‘purely spirit ual’ faiths tended towards political apathy or dogmatic intolerance, and were thus ill-suited to the specific demands of citizenship. By contrast, the only way to protect society and preserve true adherence to divine order was to implement a ‘purely civil’ faith. If Civil Religion discouraged dogmatism, cultivated civic unity and conformed to the general will, it also upheld the sanctity of personal religious belief so necessary to keep human beings attuned to their divinely scribed natures.

Rousseau’s dual commitment to religious piety and individual liberty is easy to overlook in a text that reeks of authoritarianism. After all, he presents exile and corporal punishment as sentences necessary to protect a greater good. Yet for Rousseau, attacks upon individual faith had always aroused such unbending hostility. Consider these two examples of righteous indignation from earlier works, first in his 18 August 1756 Letter to Voltaire and then in Julie:

I am indignant that the faith of everyone is not in the most perfect liberty, and that man dares control the interior of consciences, where he is unable to penetrate, as if it depended on us to believe in matters where demonstration has no place. ¹⁴⁷

[N]o true believer can possibly practice intolerance or persecution. If I were a judge, and the law prescribed the death penalty against atheists, I would begin by having burned for atheism anyone who came to turn in someone else. ¹⁴⁸

To Voltaire, Rousseau forthrightly denounced those who would dare ‘control the interior of consciences’. And in Julie, he suggested that those who condemned non-believers to death were themselves more deserving of execution.

If Rousseau sustained these severe sentiments throughout his career, ‘On Civil Religion’ nonetheless marked a turning point, a struggle to apply his convictions to practice. It was the concrete culmination of a vague idea initially conceived in 1756 as ‘a sort of profession of faith that the laws can impose’. ¹⁴⁹ Even at this nascent stage, however, Rousseau sounded obdurate. He approached the task of religious reform as though it were war, warning that ‘there can exist Religions which attack the foundation of society, and … it is necessary to begin by exterminating these Religions in order to assure the peace of the State’. ¹⁵⁰ So were set the harsh tones of a battle he returned to wage in full more than 6 years later.

Why did Rousseau strike so violent a pose from beginning to end? In a 1755 letter to Voltaire, he made plain that sometimes ‘evil is such that the very causes that gave birth to it are necessary to prevent it from becoming larger. It is the sword that must be left in the wound for fear that the wounded person will die when it is removed.’ ¹⁵¹ Sometimes, evil cannot be completely eradicated; and sometimes, as the Second Discourse and Social Contract argued, the very faculties that corrupt us can facilitate our salvation. Sometimes, in such extreme instances, you have to fight fire with fire.

Desperate times may require desperate measures, but never apathy or resignation. This was precisely the challenge posed in ‘Civil Religion’. In claiming to solely represent God, clerics undermined his benevolence and misrepresented his very will. Their coercive creeds crippled social unity, assailed individual liberty and perverted his magnificent order. Rather than remain complacent, Rousseau urged readers to fight back. After all, the secular and spiritual damage wrought by ecclesiasts could only be repaired through radical reform. Only by instituting a faith that rejected despotic dogma and expunged religious intolerance might a vision of secular and spiritual salvation achieve fruition.

Towards this end, Rousseau made one essential demand. He asked that we keep our relationship with God to ourselves, and allow others the same freedom. Consider as evidence his response to being pressed on a theological point of contention:

… after telling [an interlocutor] I do not understand it and do not care about understanding it, I would ask him as decently as I could to mind his own business, and if he persisted, I would leave him there.

That is the only principle on which something stable and equitable can be established about disputes of Religion. Lacking that, everyone establishes on his own part what is in question, there will never be agreement on anything, people will never in their lives understand one another, and Religion, which ought to make men happy, will always cause their greatest ills. ¹⁵²

In short, mind your own business. This is less suggestive than imperative. Religion ‘ought to make men happy’ because it affirms our connection to God and his benevolent order. Doctrinal differences subverted this relationship, enflaming corporeal divisions at odds with the divine spirit of universal benevolence. Since humankind could never hope to settle these ‘disputes’ we must agree not to agree, relegating sectarian beliefs to the private sphere while cultivating a public faith underscored by only those general, fundamental tenets all religions share.

Rousseau’s solution to the problem of organized religion’s historical malfeasance is, it would appear, the abolition of anything even vaguely resembling organized religion. Put another way, he effectively denudes religion of its religiosity – the particularist mandates that define specific creeds – under the auspices of cultivating social and political welfare.

While Rousseau’s uncompromising conclusion elicited justifiable fears from critics such as Gouhier, Cobban and Crocker, it should have come as no surprise. After all, and by his polemical description, the ‘furies of fanaticism’ had enflamed ‘horrible, destructive passions’ throughout history. Dogmatism’s tale was the stuff of horror films, cruel wounds and torment consummated with ‘sacrifices of human blood’, and a force of imminent destruction to be contained at all costs. Given his prose, was it any wonder he wielded such a heavy stick?

That said, we must not conflate Rousseau’s severity with fascism. In radically restructuring and sequestering organized religion, he sought to uphold the inviolability of community and liberty alike, precisely, as Felicity Baker has argued, ‘against the backdrop of oppressive structures’ and the imminent threat of fanaticism. ¹⁵³ Such adversaries proved particularly challenging because, as the Letter to d’Alembert made plain:

Fanaticism is … a blind and stupid fury that reason can never confine. The only secret for preventing it from coming to birth is to restrain those who excite it. You can very well demonstrate to madmen that their chiefs are fooling them; they are no less fervent in following them. ¹⁵⁴

Fanatics operate beyond the pale of reasoning, to which they are immune. As such, neither philosophy nor logic holds dominion over ‘madmen’ and their followers. How might we then hope to contain them? On this point Rousseau is clear:

Once fanaticism exists, I see only one way left to stop its progress; that is to use its own arms against it. It has nothing to do with reasoning or convincing. One must leave philosophy behind, close the Books, take the sword, and punish the impostors.

Cast Enlightenment wisdom aside, and take up arms: this, his jarring yet rational conclusion to confront an irrational, destructive force.

Rousseau’s terms clearly reflect his conviction that self-defense requires, in this instance, adopting the very methods employed by the enemy: a binding faith underscored by the threat of punitive violence. After all, even as positive religion’s promise had remained largely unfulfilled since the times of Jesus, spiritual (or non-rational) conviction was necessary to foster that ‘passionate link with the sacred law’ needed to fight fanaticism on its own emotive terms, and cultivate an organized religion that protected, rather than corrupted or cannibalized, the body politic and its citizens. ¹⁵⁵ For Rousseau, the twin threats of banishment and capital punishment were necessary correlatives in service of this cause. They reinforced the sanctity of the social pact by legitimizing severe repercussions for infraction, inspired individual acts of willed self-restraint, and subsequently fostered a deeper commitment to preserve and protect civil society against exogenous threats.

Far from rationalizing fascism, these conditions explicitly reinforce the Social Contract’s core belief in the inviolability of the legitimate social pact. As Baker elaborates:

Nothing could be more fundamental than the prohibition of intolerance by the community, since the community is the object of desire for individuals and groups by virtue of their very diversity. If the law did not establish at least in principle the death penalty for a great persecutor, the state would stand in contradiction of everything which makes it exist and subsist; that is, according to Rousseau, with the citizens’ love for the community. ¹⁵⁶

Strategically positioned at the Social Contract’s conclusion, we might therefore consider ‘On Civil Religion’ the philosophic equivalent of a profoundly optimistic zero-tolerance policy, a punctuating argument guided as much by Rousseau’s historical fears and realist view of politics as by his faith in the value of community and the possibility of redemption.

Together, these convictions reveal what Robert Derathé labeled that ‘strange confusion of the profane and the sacred’ consistent throughout Rousseau’s writings. ¹⁵⁷ But are they really as conflicted as they appear? The solution presented in ‘On Civil Religion’ applies this tension towards coherent ends: preserving the sanctity of internal worship, a private spiritual matter of individual liberty, and treating external worship as a profoundly political issue, a set of rules and customs grounded in faith yet beholden to civic and legal standards.

Alas, this distinction has proven far easier to theorize than uphold in practice. The difficulty lies in the details, in determining effective (if contingent) boundaries, limits and methods of enforcement that relegate organized religion to an instrumental role, without altogether eschewing or denying its value as a necessary source of civic cohesion. To his credit, Rousseau makes an earnest effort. As in other works (most notably the treatise on Poland), ‘On Civil Religion’ sincerely struggles to bring a more ideal state to fruition under less-than-ideal circumstances, challenging us to foster laws and institutions that serve, rather than threaten, our collective welfare and liberty, specifically in light of the imminent threats posed by fanaticism against the body politic.

Hence Rousseau’s vehemence: his intolerance towards forces destructive of the social contract reaffirms the primacy of civility, and justifies relatively extreme measures to enable its preservation. And therein lies the key to Civil Religion’s value. In the absence of a panacea, Rousseau’s contradictions and limits underscore the need for significant compromise and re-evaluation when recasting the relationship between religion and politics. Our historical failures suggest pragmatic reformation requires incremental, even reactionary, change. After all, when it comes to politico-theological relations, definitive answers are elusive and delusive alike. But Rousseau’s somewhat frantic insistence that we try eschews naïveté, apathy, or (worse still) debilitating cynicism. By linking our civic attachments to a simultaneous fear of retribution and faith in a brighter future, he moves us beyond those rote, procedural models of law and fidelity ill-equipped to withstand dogmatism’s irrationally compelling pull.

In the end, ‘Civil Religion’ is therefore best viewed as a starkly pragmatic reverie of civil society. And even as the lengths to which it argues can seem patently absurd, the work presses concrete questions upon democratic polities. How can we preserve community and liberty, and to what extent must we be willing to delimit individual freedom to support civic welfare? Rousseau’s boundaries, far more stringent than democratic theorists often deem appropriate, are substantiated and qualified by 4 interrelated methods and claims. First, his use of genealogy establishes the severity and historical depth of politico-theological tensions. Second, by positing external worship as a political (as opposed to purely spiritual) practice, he establishes the jurisdictional foundation that positive worship falls under the realm of positive law. Third, he imbues the social contract with a spiritual dimension upheld by physical force to inspire collective identification with the broader community. And fourth, he ironically promotes conditions conducive to religious liberty by urging a functional awareness of those tenets that unite all creeds, a general, harmonic value system that forcibly mutes differences in the public sphere, thereby insisting upon the need for an interfaith unity so conspicuously absent from sectarian debate.

Drawing our attention to the deeper general problem of organized religion as a political phenomenon subordinate to secular law, while emphasizing a faith-based unity that transcends specific creeds, Rousseau’s position is far more nuanced and grounded than critics allow. What is more, ‘On Civil Religion’ delivers a mandate arguably more vital today than it was during the Enlightenment: citizens need faith, yet faiths that divide and conquer the welfare of citizens hold no legitimate role in the public sphere. Nor can they rightly be called religious, as they reflect divisive particularist interests at odds with the gospel’s benevolent spirit.

To see this theory applied in practice we need only turn to President Obama who, explaining his avoidance of the words ‘Muslim’ and ‘Islam’ when discussing Al Qaeda and ISIS, claimed that such groups ‘try to portray themselves as religious leaders, holy warriors in defense of Islam’. But, he elaborates, this ‘is a lie. [They] are not religious leaders – they’re terrorists.’ ¹⁵⁸ The president was immediately condemned on multiple ideological fronts for his lack of ‘realism’. As Akbar Ahmed, American University’s chair of Islamic Studies argued, he ‘sounds like a distinguished professor in the ivory tower, [who] may have to come down into the hurly-burly of politics’.

Rousseau might counter that Ahmed and similar critics miss the point: Al Qaeda and ISIS are, by Civil Religion’s terms, fundamentally political entities that disingenuously evoke religion as a source of self-proclaimed secular authority. In refusing to accept their self-characterization as ‘Islamic’, Obama is not simply oblivious to the reality that their actions are informed by their specific conceptions of Islam. Rather, and in a very Rousseauist fashion, he is establishing clear conceptual and jurisdictional boundaries. Despite what they claim, Al Qaeda and ISIS are interest groups that, as ‘On Civil Religion’ insists, must be held to political standards of comportment and countered with legal and physical force when threatening civic welfare. As Rousseau would argue, their creed is far less important than the manner in which they appropriate faith as a rationale for threatening civil society – a consequence firmly opposed to the universal divine spirit. Denying these groups religious status is therefore far less naïve or ‘academic’ than charged; it is, Rousseau suggests, precisely what a ‘hurly-burly’ realpolitik demands.

While these terms are hardly ideal, or even comforting, such is the nature of the relationship with which Rousseau contends. Guided by faith and realism both, he presses us towards a form of democratic rapprochement predicated upon clear distinctions between public and private interests. Uncompromising to the end, ‘On Civil Religion’ is therefore best read as a harshly optimistic ultimatum, one that adopts human paradox – a species of spiritual and secular needs, creations of God and denatured individuals blessed with conscience and free will, natural goodness and the ability to err alike – as a source of solace. History be damned (but never ignored), God gave us perfectibility, a faculty that enabled our decline and allowed us the means of self-redemption. ‘Civil Religion’ embraces these stark tensions with iron-willed resolve. At once pious and profane, pessimistic and idealistic, imperfect and perfectionist, civil and intolerant, civic-minded and individualistic, comforting and violent, reasoned and emotive, historically grounded and forward-thinking, it strikes dissonant chords to clarify the problem and potential solutions at hand, prodding us even now to accept religion and humankind as they are, and envision the relationship between religion and politics as it should – and most importantly, could – be: mutually beneficial.