Religion and Identity in Modern France

Religion and Identity in Modern France examines the effects of a religious revival in France called the Réveil that developed and spread through French Protestantism in the first half of the nineteenth century. This revival, first cast as a restorationist movement to preserve the "great truths" of the Reformation from modern innovations, actually turned out far less than conservative. Instead, it introduced ecclesiastical diversity into the community, furthered the privatization of religious belief, weakened the connection between the French Reformed Church and the Protestant population by recasting the church as a voluntary association, and spawned a variety of social and charitable institutions that were the product of voluntary action and initiative outside the control of hierarchies of status and position that had dominated the reformed community. James C. Deming shows that reinvigoration of French Protestantism helped mediate the transition between the structures of an isolated and insular minority religious community, and more identifiably, a country developing around notions of nation, individual liberty, and democracy. This proved a radical turnabout from the early nineteenth century Protestantism organized around the Reformed faith and the structures of the French Reformed Church as a reaction to the White Terror of 1815-1817.