WI: American Revolution as anti-religion as French one

[lerk]

Could it had achieved the same success? How many more British loyalists would this create? How would this change the US?

 

[Marc]

While the idea of American radicalism ever being very influential is intriguing, the reality is that from their founding, the colonies en masse were quite steadfastly religious and after the Great Awakening in the 1730's - 40's, even more so.
(Yes, acknowledging that there was an Enlightenment era Deism mildly popular among some of the colonial ruling elites).
And keep in mind, the French experience was far more anti-clerical than anti-faith. The Anglican church, the closest parallel, didn't have anywhere near the role that the Gallic Church played in France.
So, the prospect of an anti-religion element taking control during the rebellion - well, that gets into the high fantasy side of alternate history stories.

 

[RightHoJeeves]

The American colonies and France have two very different religious backgrounds. France is very Catholic and the church is formally entrenched into the fabric of the Ancien Regime. The colonies are religiously diverse with no one faction dominating the others due to their geographic distribution. Additionally religious tolerance is built into many of the colonial charters given the circumstances that caused their founders to emigrate across the Atlantic in the first place.

So while your more radical agitators like Thomas Paine may not like religion there's simply no reason for the colonists to violently hate it since religion isn't associated with the oppressive British authority they're fighting against.

 

[Mark E.]

Many American colonies were founded by Puritans and sepratists who already supported separation from the Church of England. Their belief was in individual congregations, not a hierarchal church.

 

[9 Fanged Hummingbird]

IIRC there was a major sectarian element to the war, loyalists and Brits at the time seemed to have characterized it as a Presbyterian rebellion against the Crown (and the Anglican Church), and to some extent they had a point although they certainly exaggerated just to what degree the rebels were motivated by religion. Certainly many people took up arms against the king because of religious differences and not only would a lot of these people not join up in an explicitly and generally anti-religious rebellion but nor would several major historical figures like George Washington.