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Enlightenment: Religion and Ritual
Enlightenment: Religion and Ritual
Europeans had always been aware of the gods of ancient Greece
and Rome, but their attitudes towards the non-Christian religions
of other lands were mostly negative and ill-informed.
During the Enlightenment, encounters with the rest of the world
led to an increase in knowledge and curiosity about other
religions. At the same time, some intellectuals developed more
openly critical views of Christianity and the church. The
credibility of religion itself, including Christianity, became a
subject of heated debate.
Religious objects were collected as comparative evidence for
beliefs and practices the world over. To many eighteenth-century
British eyes, they demonstrated the superstitious nature of what
they described as pagan idol-worship, though sceptics regarded
Christianity as no different. Others studied them as surviving
evidence of ancient religions or used similarities between objects
from different cultures to chart the spread of religious ideas, and
to reconstruct the history of religion.
This is one of a series of tours exploring the themes of the
British Museum gallery, Enlightenment: Discovering the
World in the Eighteenth Century.
Supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund