This post is from the final chapter of my book
UNDERSTANDING JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU: THE SMART STUDENT'S GUIDE TO THE SOCIAL CONTRACT
Book IV, Chapter 8 CIVIL RELIGION
1 Religion in relation to society.
Rousseau divides the relation of religion to society into two kinds: the religion of man and the religion of the citizen.
The religion of man has no temples, altars, or rites. It recognizes only one God, supreme over all humans, regardless of where they reside on earth. It has “eternal obligations of morality” based on “natural divine right or law.”
The religion of the citizen is prescribed by law in a single country. The law gives that country “its gods, its own tutelary patrons; it has its dogmas, its rites, and its external cult.” These were the religions of ancient peoples. Outside of their nation, they regarded every other country as “infidel, foreign and barbarous.” The duties and rights of man are defined by Rousseau as “civil or positive divine right or law.”
There is a third sort of religion that Rousseau calls “worthless” and hardly worth mentioning. He calls it the religion of the priest. “It is worthless because it “destroys social unity… by giving men two codes of legislation, two rulers, and two countries, rendering them subject to contradictory duties, and making it impossible for them to be faithful both to religion and to citizenship.” Roman Catholicism is one of Rousseau’s examples of this kind of religion. It has “a sort of mixed and anti-social code which has no name.”
2 Political defects and strengths of the religion of the citizen.
The strength of the religion of the citizen is that it “unites the divine cult with a love of the laws, and, making the country the object of the citizens' adoration, teaches them that service done to the State is service done to its tutelary god.” The pontiff (bishop, pope) is the prince, and the priests are the magistrates. “To die for one's country then becomes martyrdom; violation of its laws, impiety; and to subject one who is guilty to public execration is to condemn him to the anger of the gods.”
The religion of the citizen is defective in that it is “founded on lies and error…, becomes tyrannous and exclusive, and makes a people bloodthirsty and intolerant, … and regards as a sacred act the killing of everyone who does not believe in its gods.” The ultimate consequence of this turmoil is that the people are in a natural state of war with all others so that its security is deeply endangered.”
3 Political defects and strengths of the religion of man.
Rousseau identifies the religion of man as Christianity, but immediately says “not the Christianity of today, but that of the Gospel, which is entirely different.” Rousseau means that the teachings of Jesus in the first four books of the New Testament constitute “the real religion” of all people. He focuses on the teaching that “being children of one God, [the people will] recognize one another as brothers, and the society that unites them is not dissolved even at death.”
This is not a political strength but a significant defect of the religion of man. Christianity does not bind the hearts of the citizens to the State. It has the opposite effect of “taking them away from all earthly things. I know of nothing more contrary to the social spirit.”
We are told that a people of true Christians would form the most perfect society imaginable. I see in this supposition only one great difficulty: that a society of true Christians would not be a society of men.
I say further that such a society, with all its perfection, would be neither the strongest nor the most lasting: the very fact that it was perfect would rob it of its bond of union; the flaw that would destroy it would lie in its very perfection.
Rousseau admits that “everyone would do his duty; the people would be law-abiding, the rulers just and temperate; the magistrates upright and incorruptible; the soldiers would scorn death; there would be neither vanity nor luxury.” But this is irrelevant. “The country of the Christian is not of this world.” What happens in this world is fleeting and temporary. What happens in the spiritual world after death is eternal and permanent. It does not matter whether he is a free man or a slave. The essential thing in the mind of the true Christian is to get to heaven, and “resignation is only an additional means of doing so.”
But I am mistaken in speaking of a Christian republic; the terms are mutually exclusive. Christianity preaches only servitude and dependence. Its spirit is so favorable to tyranny that it always profits by such a régime. True Christians are made to be slaves, and they know it and do not much mind: this short life counts for too little in their eyes.
4 Religion and the limits of political expediency.
The right which the social compact gives the Sovereign over the subjects does not, we have seen, exceed the limits of public expediency.[1] The subjects then owe the Sovereign an account of their opinions only to such an extent as they matter to the community.
Rousseau adds to this that “it matters very much to the community that each citizen should have a religion” because it makes him “love his duty.” However, the dogmas of that religion should be of no concern to the State and its members if they have no reference to morality.
Each man may have, over and above, what opinions he pleases, without it being the Sovereign's business to take cognizance of them; for, as the Sovereign has no authority in the other world, whatever the lot of its subjects may be in the life to come, that is not its business, provided they are good citizens in this life.
The dogmas of the Catholic Church now and during Rousseau’s lifetime are “baptism, confirmation, the Eucharist, reconciliation (penance), anointing of the sick, marriage, and holy orders” (Roman Catholicism, Britannica). These beliefs might be important to those who want entrance to Heaven, but they have little to do with being a good citizen or a faithful subject of the State.
There is therefore a purely civil profession of faith of which the Sovereign should fix the articles, not exactly as religious dogmas, but as social sentiments without which a man cannot be a good citizen or a faithful subject.
Rousseau refers to these social sentiments as “the dogmas of civil religion” and says that “they ought to be few, simple, and exactly worded, without explanation or commentary.” They include positive dogmas (beliefs) in “the existence of a mighty, intelligent and beneficent Divinity, possessed of foresight and providence, the life to come, the happiness of the just, the punishment of the wicked, the sanctity of the social contract and the laws.”
The only negative dogma mentioned by Rousseau is intolerance. Having rejected an exclusive national religion, Rousseau says that “tolerance should be given to all religions that tolerate others, so long as their dogmas contain nothing contrary to the duties of citizenship.”
No one can be compelled to believe in the dogmas of civil religion, but it can “banish from the State whoever does not believe them.” It can banish the non-believer, “not for impiety, but as an anti-social being, incapable of truly loving the laws and justice, and of sacrificing, at need, his life to his duty.”
Rousseau recommends harsh punishment for those who, after publicly recognizing these dogmas, behave as if they do not believe them: “Let him be punished by death: he has committed the worst of all crimes, that of lying before the law.”
In the concluding paragraphs of The Social Contract, Rousseau praises Thomas Hobbes for seeing "the evil of Christianity” and how to remedy it by restoring political unity of religion and state, “without which no State or government will ever be rightly constituted.”
I believe that if the study of history were developed from this point of view, it would be easy to refute the contrary opinions of Bayle and Warburton, one of whom holds that religion can be of no use to the body politic, while the other, on the contrary, maintains that Christianity is its strongest support. We should demonstrate to the former that no State has ever been founded without a religious basis, and to the latter, that the law of Christianity at bottom does more harm by weakening than good by strengthening the constitution of the State.
Rousseau realizes that he needs to more exact about “the vague ideas of religion” if he is to be understood. But he does not clarify these ideas here. As noted in his biography, it was because of the ideas expressed in this chapter that Rousseau was “banished” from France and two Swiss city-states on charges of blasphemy and even a public denouncement by his pastor that he is “the anti-Christ.”
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