Yet other than occuring within a decade or so of each other (1776 and 1789 are the years in which the American and French revolutions began) and aspiring to establish Constitutionally protected rights, the two revolutions and their aftermaths were really very different.
For instance:
- The French were seeking to topple their monarchy, Americans were seeking to withdraw from one.
- The French revolution led to instability and a series of tyrannies that lasted for decades. The American revolution led to a stable, ideologically moderate republic.
- The French revolution devolved into horrific bloodletting, The American revolution did not.
- The French revolution led to a regime that was exceedingly hostile to Christianity. The American revolution was led by men who were themselves Christians or sympathetic to Christianity.
Beginning in 1793, the French revolutionary government abolished the Catholic monarchy and confiscated all church property. Cities and streets that had been named after saints were given secular names. Some 30,000 French priests were exiled and hundreds were murdered by mobs. The Christian calendar was replaced by one that measured the years beginning not with the birth of Jesus, but with the first year of the revolution. The seven-day week was also banned and replaced with a ten-day week.As for the bloodshed in the wake of 1789 Sanders writes:
Churches and monasteries across France were closed. The amazing abbey at Cluny (with its enormous library and archives) was burned in 1793. The church had been the largest in the Christian world until St. Peter's was built in Rome, but it was plundered and its stone was later used for buildings in town. Most of it is still nothing but ruins today.
Statues of saints and crosses were destroyed. Churches were forbidden to ring their bells.
In the French Revolution, the government banned Christian holy days such as Feast Days of Saints, Christmas, and Easter. In the place of these days, government leaders established a "Festival of Liberty" or a "Festival of Reason." The beautiful, magnificent Cathedral of Notre Dame became known as the "Temple of Reason" for a time, and people had services dedicated to their "Goddess of Reason."
Every attempt was made to erase any vestige of Christianity.
The famous revolutionary Maximilien Robespierre actually established his own religion — it was called "The Cult of the Supreme Being" (he was a deist). He inaugurated this new religion on June 8, 1794 (Pentecost on the Christian calendar) with a procession and "divine service." Six weeks later the revolution turned on him, placed him in the same cell where Marie Antoinette had stayed before her execution, and he was sent to the guillotine on July 28, 1794.
The American Revolution, however, was not like that at all. In fact, in America the Christian faith has traditionally been nurtured and protected by society as a whole, and respected by government as part of every person's natural freedom of conscience (until recently). The First Great Awakening (a national revival led by such men as Jonathan Edwards) had a tremendous impact upon colonial America....
In America, Christians were part of the "revolution." Of the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence, only two were confirmed deists (Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin). Two were Roman Catholic, and the other 52 were all members in good standing in orthodox Protestant churches. They never saw themselves as anything else but Christians who were taking a stand for freedom against tyranny.
They saw their Christian faith as an ally, not as a hindrance. In fact, Sam Adams stated on July 4, 1776: "We have this day restored the Sovereign to whom all men ought to be obedient. He reigns in heaven, and from the rising of the sun to the setting, let His kingdom come." (He certainly was no deist.) One of the signers of the Declaration was a clergyman himself, the Reverend John Witherspoon (ordained Presbyterian minister and president of the College of New Jersey at the time).
The Continental Army was so full of ordained clergy in its ranks that the British would refer to those men as "the Black-Robed Regiment."
Between 1793 and 1794 some 16,594 death sentences were handed out ... most without a trial (certainly not any kind of trial we would call fair today). It was Robespierre himself who justified mass executions without trial. He believed that a government executing all suspected "enemies of the state" was actually being quite virtuous: "Terror is nothing more than speedy severe and inflexible justice; it is thus an emanation of virtue."Robespierre himself was taken to the guillotine in 1794.
France today is a wonderful country with wonderful people, but their revolution and the Terror which ensued was quite different from the American experience in the late 18th century.
