Privatisation and Toleration: How the Eighteenth-Century Enlightenment Impacted European Attitudes Towards Religion

For centuries, scholars have debated the significance of the Enlightenment in its impact on European attitudes to religion. On one hand, many scholars immediately following the eighteenth century saw the period as a particularly anti-religious one. For many, particularly at the popular level, the supposed birth of toleration during the Enlightenment and the post-Renaissance rise of free thought and rationalism brought about a dramatic shift in opinions and attitudes towards religion—manifesting, particularly, in the widespread acceptance of irreligion. Today, most historians adopt a more cautious approach, recognising that rarely does history conform to such simple narratives. This paper seeks to understand how the eighteenth-century Enlightenment may have affected European attitudes to religion. It makes a modest case for an acceleration in the field of toleration—in both reform and rhetoric—and the privatisation of religious faith in the eighteenth century, through dominant intellectual practice and through the growth of the Pietistic and Evangelical movements. Ultimately, it argues that the Enlightenment on its own did not greatly affect people’s attitudes to religion; rather, it accelerated and in some respects strengthened changes that were already evident before the eighteenth century.