The Revolution of 1789 declares the rights of man, confiscates the Church's lands, and within four years is enthroning Reason in Notre Dame. Its settlement fails, but the questions it forces, citizenship without confession and law without altar, define the secularism stream from that year forward.
Tagged: Secular and Non-Theistic Secularism
The Event
- Date
- 1789 (exact)
- Era
- The Enlightenment Settlement; Standard periodization of secular and non-religious history
- Location
- Paris; today France
- Traditions
- Secular
- Streams
- Secularism
Primary Sources
- The tradition's own record of the event.
Secondary Sources
- Gottlieb, Anthony. The Dream of Enlightenment: The Rise of Modern Philosophy. New York: Liveright, 2016.
- Jacoby, Susan. Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2004.
- Taylor, Charles. A Secular Age. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007.
- Zuckerman, Phil, ed. Atheism and Secularity. Santa Barbara: Praeger, 2010.
Provenance: HIST-1309; confidence 0.95; accessed 2026-10-28.
Related on This Site
No image; the post explains why
Art Entry
AI-Generated Religious Art
Image generators now produce Christs, Buddhas, and temple scenes on demand. The traditions are answering; some with welcome, some with prohibitions that reach the new medium directly. This page shows no generated image, because any single example would misrepresent the argument.
Art Tradition
Non-Theistic and Secular
Art without transcendence: humanist meaning-making, museums as secular temples, and protest art.
Artist
Doris Salcedo
The Colombian sculptor of political violence's traces; her Fragmentos floor in Bogotá is a counter-monument hammered from surrendered weapons by women victims of the conflict.
Artist
Käthe Kollwitz
The German artist of grief: her Pietà, enlarged in Berlin's Neue Wache, is Germany's central memorial to the victims of war; a mother holding her dead son, made by a mother who lost hers.
History Event
Encyclopédie
1751-1772
History Event
National Secular Society founded
1866
History Event
Spinoza's Tractatus Theologico-Politicus
1670
History Event
US First Amendment
1791
Art Tradition
Non-Theistic and Secular
Art without transcendence: humanist meaning-making, museums as secular temples, and protest art.
Artist
Doris Salcedo
The Colombian sculptor of political violence's traces; her Fragmentos floor in Bogotá is a counter-monument hammered from surrendered weapons by women victims of the conflict.
Artist
Käthe Kollwitz
The German artist of grief: her Pietà, enlarged in Berlin's Neue Wache, is Germany's central memorial to the victims of war; a mother holding her dead son, made by a mother who lost hers.
History Event
Encyclopédie
1751-1772
History Event
National Secular Society founded
1866
History Event
Spinoza's Tractatus Theologico-Politicus
1670
History Event
US First Amendment
1791