Anti-clericalism

Anti-clericalism is opposition to religious authority, typically in social or political matters. Historical anti-clericalism has mainly been opposed to the influence of Roman Catholicism. Anti-clericalism is related to secularism, which seeks to remove the church from all aspects of public and political life, and its involvement in the everyday life of the citizen.

Anarchist and Communist movements are anti-religion and anti-clerical, but not all anti-clericals are irreligious or anti-religion. Some have opposed clergy on the basis of moral corruption, institutional issues and/or disagreements in religious interpretation, such as during the Protestant Reformation. Anti-clericalism became extremely violent during the French Revolution because revolutionaries believed the church had played a pivotal role in the systems of oppression which led to it. Many clerics were killed, and French revolutionary governments tried to control priests by making them state employees.

Anti-clericalism appeared in Catholic Europe throughout the 19th Century, in various forms, and later in Canada, Cuba, and Latin America. Various rumblings can be seen erupting from time to time in the Islamic world, and anticlericalism has not been absent among Protestants either, with many sects doing without clergy entirely.

The Civil Constitution of the Clergy was passed on July 12, 1790, requiring all clerics to swear allegiance to the French government and, by extension, to the increasingly anti-clerical National Constituent Assembly. All but seven of the 160 bishops refused the oath, as did about half of the parish priests. Persecution of the clergy and of the faithful was the first trigger of the rebellion; the second being conscription. Nonjuring priests were exiled or imprisoned and women on their way to Mass were beaten in the streets.

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