The French Revolution is Being Revived in the USA

Our Declaration of Independence states in unequivocal terms that we are “endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights”; among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The logic of the Declaration is clear: No God—no rights.

This premise is no longer foundational in the United States or in once-Christian Europe. We are following in the footsteps of the radical revolutionaries who gave us the French Revolution. Like those with the guillotine, we have a sizable number of the population who claim it’s OK to kill people for whatever supposed ‘just’ cause. The barbarism in comments about the murder of Charlie Kirk has been shocking, as is the support for Luigi Nicholas Mangione, who pleaded guilty to the 2024 killing of Brian Thompson, the CEO of United Healthcare. Eleven jurors wept after the Lindsay Clancy murder case ended in a mistrial. She murdered her three children. A lone juror held out for a guilty verdict. (Source) The French Revolution has become our revolution.

The American Founders made no attempt to disestablish a biblical moral order by endorsing a moral revolution. The colonial governments, with their laws, many of which were founded on the Bible, and institutions, including churches and their courts, remained intact. Contrary to some historians, the United States Constitution did not disestablish Christianity. It recognized Sunday as the Christian Sabbath by designating it as a non-workday for conducting official government business (art. 1, sec. 7) and kept the Christian Calendar intact: “DONE in the Year of our Lord….”

None of the State constitutions, with their many references to religion in general and Christianity in particular, were nullified by the adoption of the Federal Constitution. The Constitution, like the Declaration, assumes an existing moral order that was generally held to be based on “revealed law or divine law” (1:42) and “the law of nature,” which William Blackstone taught was “coeval with mankind and dictated by God Himself” (1:41). The Constitution did not attempt to set forth a new civil casuistry. This is why there is no legal code found in the Constitution.

The French Declaration of the Rights of Man did not recognize a theistic view of rights. Article 3 of the Declaration stated: “The principle of all sovereignty resides essentially in the nation. No body nor individual may exercise any authority which does not proceed directly from the nation.” Corrupting the logic of the Declaration of Independence: No nation—no rights.

The French revolutionaries were self-conscious about their efforts to turn France into a secular state. Throughout the nation, a “campaign to dechristianize France spread like wildfire.”[1] Dechristianizing the French Republic required a substitute religion. There is no neutrality. The leaders of the Paris Commune demanded that the former metropolitan church of Notre Dame be reconsecrated as a “Temple of Reason.”[2] Blackstone’s comments on reason are appropriate on this point: “And if our reason were always, as in our first ancestor before the transgression, clear and perfect, unruffled by passions, unclouded by prejudice, unimpaired by disease or intemperance, the task would be pleasant and easy; we should need no other guide but this. But every man now finds the contrary in his own experience; that his reason is corrupt, and his understanding full of ignorance and error” (1:42).

On November 10, 1793, a civic festival was held in the new temple, its facade bearing the words “To Philosophy.” In Paris, the goddess Reason “was personified by an actress [who was] carried shoulder‑high into the cathedral by men dressed in Roman costumes.”[3]

The Commune ordered that all churches be closed and converted into poor houses and schools. “Church bells were melted down and used to cast cannons.”[4]

Blatant infidelity precipitated that storm of pitiless fury. The National Assembly passed a resolution deliberately declaring ‘There is no God;’ vacated the throne of Deity by simple resolution, abolished the Sabbath, unfrocked her ministers of religion, turned temples of spiritual worship into places of secular business, and enthroned a vile woman as the Goddess of Reason.”[5]

The French Revolution replaced the God of Revelation with the Goddess of Reason, with disastrous results. Day after day “enemies of the republic” met their death under the sharp blade of Madam Guillotine. “France, in its terrific revolution, saw the violent culmination of theoretical and practical infidelity.”[6]

The French calendar was also changed. “At the suggestion of the deputy Romme, the Convention voted on 5 October 1793 to abolish the Christian calendar and introduce a republican calendar.”[7]

The founding of the Republic on September 22, 1792, was the beginning of the new era. Although the year still had twelve months, each was made thirty days long. “Weeks were replaced with periods of ten days (decades) so that the Christian Sunday would disappear….”[8]

As part of their de-Christianization campaign, the French revolutionaries over 230 years ago rebuffed this divine commandment. Instead, they determined that anyone who managed to survive their historic bloodletting would have to rest on the final day of a 10-day cycle marked on a new calendar no longer commemorating the birth of Jesus Christ.

The New Republic went beyond this by changing place names that had “reference to a Christian past…. Children were named after republican heroes such as Brutus and Cato, and observance of the new Revolutionary calendar, which abolished Sunday and Christian Feast days, was enforced.”[9] The revisionist calendar was abandoned after twelve years, but not before blood literally ran in the streets.

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[1] Walter Grab, The French Revolution: The Beginning of Modern Democracy (London: Bracken Books, 1989), 165.

[2] Keith Feiling observed: “Human reason set up a cross on Calvary, human reason set up the cup of hemlock, human reason was canonized in Notre Dame.” Keith Feiling, Toryism: A Political Dialogue (London, 1913), 37-38. Quoted in Russell Kirk, The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot, 5th ed. (Chicago: Regnery, 1972), 7-8

[3] Francis A. Schaeffer, How Should We Then Live? (1976) in The Complete Works of Francis A. Schaeffer: A Christian Worldview, 5 vols. (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1984), 5:122.

[4] Grab, The French Revolution, 166. Robespierre considered the anti-Christianization campaign to be a political miscalculation. “At the beginning of December [1793], at Robespierre’s suggestion, the Convention withdrew its anti-religious measures and restored the principle of religious freedom” (166-67). Robespierre later met up with Madame Guillotine.

[5] Charles B. Galloway, Christianity and the American Commonwealth; or, The Influence of Christianity in making This Nation (Nashville, TN: Publishing House Methodist Episcopal Church, 1898), 25.

[6] Jesse T. Peck, The History of the Great Republic, Considered from a Christian Stand-Point (New York: Broughton and Wyman, 1868), 321.

[7] Grab, The French Revolution, 165. Also see “Marking Time: Different Ways to Count the Changing Seasons,” Did You Know? New Insight into the World that is Full of Astonishing Stories and Astounding Facts (London: Reader’s Digest, 1990), 267.

[8] Grab, The French Revolution, 165.

[9] Richard Cobb, gen. ed., Voices of the French Revolution (Topsfield, MA: Salem House Publishers, 1988), 202. Also see Simon Schama, Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1989), 771-80.

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