Cult of Reason

The Cult of Reason (French: Culte de la Raison) was an atheistic religion established in France and intended as a replacement for Roman Catholicism during the French Revolution. It was one of history's first examples of state-sponsored atheism.

Opposition to the Roman Catholic Church was integral among the causes of the French Revolution, and this anti-clericalism solidified into official government policy in 1792 after the First French Republic was declared. Most of the dechristianisation of France was motivated by political and economic concerns, and philosophical alternatives to the Church developed gradually. Among the growing heterodoxy, the structural concepts of the Culte de la Raison became defined by Jacques Hébert, Antoine-François Momoro, Pierre-Gaspard Chaumette, Joseph Fouché, and other radical revolutionaries. Jacques Hébert gained a significant degree of popularity after being arrested for attacks on Girondists. Upon his release and with his newfound popularity, along with Pierre Gaspard Chaumette, Hébert founded the "worship of Reason." Unlike Robespierre's Cult of the Supreme Being, Hébert's cult rejected the existence of a deity. The cult was founded on the principles of the Enlightenment and anticlericalism.