Liberalism and Religion

Broadly speaking, two currents in liberal political thought about religion emerged from the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the age of the Enlightenment. One tendency, particularly strong in England and America, sought to develop a political framework of religious liberty that would accommodate diverse faiths. The second tendency, particularly strong in France, identified religion with superstition and unreason and attacked clerical power.

The first was the spirit of Locke, the second that of Voltaire; the first, liberalism toward religion; the second, liberalism against religion. The first called for a shared public sphere, the second for a secular public sphere. The first sought to release minority faiths from the tyranny of the established faith; the second sought to release science, education, and the mind itself from all faith and dogma. The first culminated in the American Revolution, the second in the French Revolution.

[Paul Starr, FREEDOM’S POWER - The History and Promise of Liberalism, pg:75]