Cult of the Supreme Being
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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The Cult of the Supreme Being was a form of deism devised by Maximilien Robespierre, intended to become the state religion after the French Revolution.
The cult represented an innovation in the "de-Catholicization" of French society during the Revolution, in that Robespierre sought to move beyond simple deism (often described as Voltairean by its adherents) to a new and, in his view, more rational devotion to the godhead. (Compare the cult of Reason, advocated by Jacques Hébert and the enragés, and explicitly opposed to Robespierre's deistic concept of the Supreme Being.)
It became popular for ardent revolutionaries to baptise their children not in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit but in the ideals of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity, the values of the French Revolution. It was also common for people to venerate its principal saint, Jean-Paul Marat.
Robespierre's proclamation in 1794 of the cult as the new state religion was one of the factors that prompted the Thermidorian Reaction, which counts The Cult of the Supreme Being among its victims.
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