New approaches to religion and the enlightenment

The Enlightenment, an 18th-century philosophical and cultural movement that swept through Western Europe, has often been characterized as a mostly secular phenomenon that ultimately undermined religious authority and belief, and eventually gave way to the secularization of Western society and to modernity.

To whatever extent the Enlightenment can be credited with giving birth to modern Western culture, historians in more recent years have aptly demonstrated that the Enlightenment hardly singled the death knell of religion.

Not only did religion continue to occupy a central pace in political, social, and private life throughout the 18th century, but it shaped the Enlightenment project itself in significant and meaningful ways.