Reformed Popular Religion: A Supervised State Church and Religious Fictionalism

The final chapter focuses on Hume’s sporadic but substantial positive remarks on institutional religion, mainly in The History of England. Moreover, the chapter gives a fresh look at the discussion on the public role of philosophy and the social role of religion in Section XI of the first Enquiry. The chapter reconstructs Hume’s case for a reformed or moderated popular religion. Although he rejects the view that morality needs religious doctrines as a theoretical foundation, his stance on religion as a social institution is rather pragmatic. According to Hume, the government should control institutional religion. To reduce the power of church authorities and retain some positive effects of religion for the common people, the government should institute a state church. From a philosophical perspective, such a reform of popular religion includes the fictionalism of religion and a pragmatist stance. For Hume, an achievable optimum would be that religion’s negative effects should be moderated as much as possible, while preserving its benefits. This vision is linked to his ideal of religious tolerance and the fictional-conformist attitude in ancient polytheism. The chapter concludes with a comparison of Hume’s views with early modern positions on religion and society. Hume’s approach is surprisingly non-liberal and closer to the ideas of Hobbes’s Leviathan than the classical liberalism of John Locke or Adam Smith. Hume’s position is different from both liberals, who defend religious freedom and the separation between state and church, and the radical secularists, who wanted to abolish religion altogether. The result of this reconstruction is a novel, comprehensive and nuanced picture of Hume’s interrelated ideas on religion, philosophy, morality and society.