Reason, toleration, and the birth of the modern secular political order
1. Why this episode sits next in the content flow
Having traced how confessional empires and then post-Westphalian statecraft managed religious plurality through sovereignty and public order, the Enlightenment marks a further step: legitimacy begins to be argued in the language of reason, rights, and civic consent, rather than primarily in the language of sacred kingship or ecclesial settlement. (britannica.com)
2. What the Enlightenment was, politically speaking
The Enlightenment is commonly described as a European intellectual movement (c. seventeenth–eighteenth centuries) that elevated reason as the principal instrument for understanding the world and improving the human condition—an agenda that proved politically consequential. (britannica.com)
Kant’s influential formulation defines “enlightenment” as humanity’s emergence from “self-incurred immaturity”—in other words, the resolve to use one’s own understanding rather than defer uncritically to inherited authority. This is not merely a personal ethic; it becomes a political expectation about public argument, law, and legitimacy. (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
3. Reason and religion: critique without a single uniform outcome
A common misunderstanding is that the Enlightenment was simply “anti-religious”. The historical picture is more nuanced: Enlightenment thinkers diverged widely, yet many applied rational critique to religion and promoted notions such as natural religion and Deism, which competed with traditional Christian claims while still retaining a concept of God. (britannica.com)
Politically, the key shift is this: religion increasingly becomes something the state manages through law and toleration, rather than the primary source of political authority.
4. Locke, toleration, and the “voluntary association” model of Church
In the English tradition, John Locke is pivotal for the political architecture that later societies would call “liberal”: legitimate government is grounded in consent and oriented to the protection of rights, and religious communities are understood as voluntary associations that do not wield coercive force. (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
Locke’s toleration arguments did not instantly create modern pluralism, but they accelerated a durable idea: the state’s stability is better secured by toleration and civil order than by enforced religious uniformity—a logic that increasingly displaced the confessional model of government. (britannica.com)
5. Revolution as an accelerant: France and the reordering of Church–state relations
If Locke represents gradual constitutional reasoning, the French Revolution represents coercive re-engineering. The Civil Constitution of the Clergy (1790) attempted to reorganise the Catholic Church in France “on a national basis”, triggering schism and intensifying political conflict around religion. (britannica.com)
The significance for this series is structural: Enlightenment-era politics does not merely “separate” church and state; it often redefines which institution has final authority over public life, sometimes by absorbing religious structures into state frameworks.
6. Implications for Christianity in Europe
By the end of the Enlightenment–Revolutionary arc, Christianity in much of Europe increasingly operates within conditions of:
- Pluralism (competing truth-claims in public),
- Voluntary belonging (church as a chosen community, not merely a civic inheritance), and
- Legitimacy-by-argument (public reason, law, rights discourse).
This does not eliminate Christian witness; rather, it relocates it—often from coercive cultural dominance toward persuasion, renewal movements, and new forms of mission in a contested public sphere.
7. Biblical bridge: why this matters for reading the Triumphal Entry
Your earlier analysis of the Triumphal Entry becomes sharper here:
- Jesus asserts kingship through a prophetic sign-act, yet rejects coercive domination.
- Enlightenment politics increasingly distrusts sacral coercion, but it often replaces it with another absolute (state sovereignty, rationalist moralism, or revolutionary virtue).
So the Triumphal Entry remains a diagnostic lens: it exposes how easily “authority” becomes either force (Rome) or control via religious management (temple elite), and it challenges modern readers to ask whether our own systems—religious or secular—are merely new versions of the same coercive impulse.
Preaching frame you can give from this episode
Theme: Authority without coercion; conviction without domination.
Text set: Matthew 21:1–11 (with Zechariah 9:9 as the prophetic anchor)
Three movements:
- Jesus’ kingship is public and legitimate (prophetic fulfilment), yet not maintained by violence.
- Human systems crave control—whether imperial power, religious gatekeeping, or modern “reasonable” regimes that exclude transcendent claims.
- The Church’s credibility in a plural public square is recovered through Christlike authority: truth, humility, costly integrity, and peace that confronts injustice without mirroring it.
Application questions (congregational):
- Where have we confused influence with control?
- What would it look like to be “publicly faithful” without becoming coercive?
- Where is God calling us to a donkey-shaped obedience rather than a war-horse strategy?
References
Bristow, W. (2010) ‘Enlightenment’, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Available at: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy website (Accessed: 22 January 2026). (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
Encyclopaedia Britannica (2026) ‘Enlightenment’. Encyclopaedia Britannica. Available at: Encyclopaedia Britannica website (Accessed: 22 January 2026). (britannica.com)
Encyclopaedia Britannica (2025) ‘The Enlightenment’ (History of Europe). Encyclopaedia Britannica. Available at: Encyclopaedia Britannica website (Accessed: 22 January 2026). (britannica.com)
Encyclopaedia Britannica (2026) ‘Enlightenment: Reason and religion’. Encyclopaedia Britannica. Available at: Encyclopaedia Britannica website (Accessed: 22 January 2026). (britannica.com)
Encyclopaedia Britannica (2026) ‘Civil Constitution of the Clergy’. Encyclopaedia Britannica. Available at: Encyclopaedia Britannica website (Accessed: 22 January 2026). (britannica.com)
Encyclopaedia Britannica (2025) ‘A Letter Concerning Toleration’. Encyclopaedia Britannica. Available at: Encyclopaedia Britannica website (Accessed: 22 January 2026). (britannica.com)
Forst, R. (2007) ‘Toleration’, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Available at: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy website (Accessed: 22 January 2026). (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
Kant, I. (1784) An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment? (trans. Humphrey, T.). Available at: New York Public Library (PDF) (Accessed: 22 January 2026). (The New York Public Library)
Uzgalis, W. (2001) ‘John Locke’, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Available at: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy website (Accessed: 22 January 2026). (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
If you want Episode 21 to continue the flow cleanly, the natural next step is “Industrial modernity, nationalism, and the mass public: how ‘peoplehood’ replaces ‘Christendom’ as Europe’s primary political imagination.”