The Birth of Religious History from the Spirit of Liberal Protestantism: The Case of France

This paper deals with the emergence of the history of religion in France. The prehistory of this process took place in Benjamin Constant's philosophy of religion of the 1810-20s, in which the local and diachronic adaptations of general human religious feeling were understood as a key to understand the history of religions. The topic of religious feeling was after reintroduced in Albert R & eacute;ville's liberal theological project. Starting from Schleiermacher's basic premises, R & eacute;ville the father hoped to modernise apologetics paving the way for theological inclusivism. Together with his son Jean, theologian, also a New Testament scholar and sentimentalist, he worked to institutionalise the history of religions in France as a branch of research and education. R & eacute;ville, the father, headed the fifth (religious studies) section of the & Eacute;cole Pratique des Hautes & Eacute;tudes from 1886 until his death in 1906; R & eacute;ville, the son, was the editor of the journal Revue de l'histoire des religions from 1884 until his death in 1908. Their common theoretical standpoint was criticised after 1898 by & Eacute;. Durkheim and his colleagues H. Hubert and M. Mauss, who promoted further ideological secularisation. These objections bring to light the gap between the methodology of the Protestant-influenced history of religion and Durkheim's project of sociology of religion.