Political Rupture and the Origins of Secularization: Evidence from the French Revolution

Can a political rupture permanently alter a society's religious trajectory? We exploit variation in the intensity of French Revolutionary conflict across departments between 1787 and 1793 linking it to Catholic attachment over the following century — including La Croix readership and church attendance in 1940–1950 that is before postwar migration reshuffled France's population. More exposed departments became durably less religious: a one-standard-deviation increase in unrest lowers Catholic newspaper readership by 0.3–0.4 points on a four-point scale. A global panel of revolutions since 1900 corroborates this: violent revolutions predict secularization, not a backlash-driven religious revival.