>On Sun, 18 Feb 2001, Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>
>> Why do you think that the everyday life of Revolutionary America is
>> so markedly different -- in fact opposite to -- that of Revolutionary
>> France?
>
>The religious situations of the two revolutions couldn't have been more
>different. In France, you had an all or nothing hierarchical church that
>was identifed with the old regime, embodied in a counter-revolutionary
>class, and conspiring with counterrevolutionary foreign powers. In
>America, you had a well-established religious tolerance that was
>identified with the forces of revolution and was a matter of national
>pride.
A "well-established religious tolerance"? That contradicts your earlier argument:
At 2:40 AM -0500 2/17/01, Michael Pollak wrote:
>To say that America is more
>religious now that it was at its founding is just wrong on its face.
>It's like saying that we're poorer now than we were then. To give just
>one out of innumerable examples, you couldn't even become a citizen of one
>of the original colonies unless you belonged to one of the prescribed
>faiths. Pennsylvania's citizenship laws were the cutting edge of
>tolerance, not only for America, but also for Europe and perhaps even the
>world at that time. They let anyone become a citizen -- except Catholics,
>Jews, Unitarians, and atheists (which just happens to cover the four
>corners of my own religious heritage).
You also wrote:
>There is no necessary connection between atheism and revolutions. The
>English revolution didn't have any. Nor did the American Civil War, which
>I thought most dialectical materialists considered our "true" bourgeois
>revolution for comparative purposes. Conversely, the most stirring hymn
>to revolutionary atheism I've ever read is Shelley's Queen Mab, which was
>written when his country was politically frozen over.
The debate, however, is not about whether or not there is a necessary condition between atheism & revolutions. That depends upon the social & ideological conditions prior to revolutions. The Iranian revolution, rebelling against the secularizing & modernizing regime supported by the West, assumed the ideological character of Islamic fundamentalism, to take just one example. The necessary connection, however, exists between revolutionary ferment and opportunities to call into question the ideas taken for granted before it, including religion, as in the case of the French Revolution. What changes in the ideological conditions -- including the influence of religion -- took place in colonial America, what were social & ideological conditions shortly before & during the rise of revolutionary ferment, etc. are matters of empirical investigations.
Yoshie