Cult of the Supreme Being

   "To recall men to the pure cult of the Supreme Being is to strike a death-blow at fanaticism."
                                        --Robespierre (Rudé, George, ed. Robespierre. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1967)

       In May 1794, Robespierre's proposal for a new civic religion, based on Rousseau's teachings, occurred after he sent atheist Jacques-René Hébert to the guillotine.  Hébert closed the Catholic churches and started to worship the goddess of Reason.  Thus, Robespierre's introduction to the Cult of the Supreme Being was intended to appeal to all religious minded revolutionaries, whether professedly Christian or not.  Robespierre stated, "The real priest of the Supreme Being is Nature..." (Gough, Hugh. The Terror in the French Revolution. New York: St. Martin's Press, Inc., 1998). He denounces priests who look towards a God and he wants to celebrate nature and all its virtues under the auspices of the Supreme Being.  Nature creates in all men the ability to obtain happiness by way of virtue.  Robespierre felt in accordance with the Decrees of the Supreme Being that those that disrupt nature's endowment should die.  In the theory of the Supreme Being, evil is possessed by men who oppress his fellow man.  Robespierre preached that the duties of man, according to obeying the Supreme Being, were to help the less fortunate, punish tyrants and traitors, and behave with justice towards all men.
           "The more richly a man is endowed with sensibility and genius, the more attached he is to the ideas which expand his being and elate his heart."
                                              --Robespierre  (Rudé, George. Robespierre: Portrait of a Revolutionary Democrat. New York: Viking Press, 1975).
        Robespierre also expressed that fighting to give the world an example of republican virtues was seen by the Supreme Being as a duty and an honorable act.  One must fight to protect the wisdom of the Republic, which brings prosperity and guarantees the rewards of a man's courage.  Robespierre believed that this wisdom was what the tyrants wanted to rid from the Republic.  Therefore, if man acted with virtue and was a defender of liberty and wisdom, he could freely give himself up to the Supreme Being.  Robespierre adamantly felt that the Supreme Being acknowledged man's sacrifice and a reward would be bestowed upon him.
        After Robespierre expressed these views, his enemies broadened among the "de-christianizers" and Voltarian deists.  Yet Robespierre was not hindered by their disapproval and headed the inaugural festival of the Supreme Being, which he believed was to remind men of the deity and dignity of their state.
 

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