Enlightenment reason politics drove attacks on Christianity as irrational

Evidence

The Enlightenment was a cultural and intellectual movement that arose toward the end of the seventeenth century and reached its apex in the eighteenth century.Enlightenment: a cultural and intellectual movement of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in the West that emphasized reason. The movement stressed the primacy of reason in the human quest to acquire knowledge and discover truth. The Enlightenment’s emphasis on reason contributed to a climate in which philosophers and intellectuals increasingly attacked traditional Christianity, in both its Protestant and Catholic varieties, as irrational and superstitious. — Green, Todd H, The Fear of Islam_ An Introduction to…, 158

Categorization

• DEFINE: Working definition of the Enlightenment as stressing reason’s primacy.
• XREF: connects to: Enlightenment rationalism generated new monsters instead of eradicating them — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 352; Enlightenment reason is used as a stick against Muslims in multicultural states; Voltaire attacked Christian stereotypes of Islam as projections of Christian idolatry — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 366 (+7 more)

Broader Connections

• Encyclopedists used Islam as a disguised symbol for criticizing Christianity #exemplifies (0.75)
• Voltaire attacked Christian stereotypes of Islam as projections of Christian idolatry #exemplifies (0.70) — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 366
• Enlightenment rationalism generated new monsters instead of eradicating them #expands (0.60) — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 352
• Enlightenment reason is used as a stick against Muslims in multicultural states #exemplifies (0.55)
• Islamophobia is political rather than religious and must be fought politically #complicates (0.50) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 576
• The Protestant Reformation led to the Enlightenment #corroborates (0.45) — Neil MacGregor, A History of the World in 100 Objects, 1313