True and false religion

It might sound oddly dissonant to hear the name ‘Hume’ uttered alongside the term ‘civil religion’. A great deal of ink has been spilled in favour of the view that the man once upbraided as ‘the fattest hog of Epicurus's stye’ and ‘the see-saw sceptic of the remotest North’ looked forward to the end of religious belief and, in particular, Christianity. It has even been argued that Hume denied the possibility of a civil religion altogether. These interpretations rely entirely on Hume's attacks on religion in general and conclude that he believed all religion could prove only deleterious to human happiness and society. They are also concerned primarily with Hume's religious identity and whether he qualified as a modern pagan, deist, atheist, agnostic, sceptic, or irreligionist in general. However, to focus purely on Hume's inward religion, or lack thereof, is to miss much of the point. Hume wagged his pen against all the negative features of religion as he understood them: priestcraft, superstition, enthusiasm, intolerance, hypocrisy, bigotry, and civil strife. By analysing what Hume perceived to be wrong with religion, it becomes possible to demonstrate his positive vision for it. He rendered the Churches of England and Scotland as civil religions in their respective contexts against powerful Anglican priests and jure divino Presbyterianism. Their ministers were to preach the civil faith of their states.

A substantial strand of scholarship has noted Hume's willingness to adjust himself to established religion. It is common to point to Hume's interest in the civil religions of the ancient pagan world in which religion had a worldly orientation and was governed by priests who were tolerant and content to allow philosophers their intellectual freedom. Nevertheless, nobody has yet argued that Hume developed a civil religion. A useful point of departure is to borrow the insight of students of the philosophy of religion that Hume distinguished between ‘true religion’ and ‘false religion’ and that he did so for more than just tactical reasons. A note of caution is necessary, since much of this scholarship is concerned with whether Hume meant true religion in a normative sense and how it might relate to his own religious identity. Instead, the analysis below focuses on the role played by Hume's distinction between true and false religion in his conception of civil religion.