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Pierre Leroux: A Democratic Religion for a New World

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Jack Bakunin
Jack Bakunin
Affiliation:
teaches inthe Seward Park High School, New York City
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Extract

In the first part of the nineteenth century, Frenchmen had to adjust their world view to the ideological issues raised by the Revolution and to the economic problems that came with the development of industrial society. At issue was the extent to which traditional institutions could adjust to a rapidly changing world. At that time literate Frenchmen felt that they were living in an ideological crisis. Many asked themselves whether Christianity could survive and attempt to resolve the problems of the new world. Such a question had great relevance in an era during which the discussion of social and political issues was felt by most educated Europeans to have a religious foundation. Either the Roman Catholic Church would have to take renewed stock of itself and learn how to deal with the problems of the new era, or a new religion would have to be constructed to resolve the early nineteenth-century ideological crisis.

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 44 , Issue 1 , March 1975 , pp. 57 - 72
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1975

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