Page 13 - Communism in Ambush

HOW COMMUNISM BEGAN

I n order to understand Communism's birth, we must examine
European culture in the 18th and 19th centuries. Beginning in
the second century A.D. under the Emperor Constantine,
Europe gradually accepted Christianity. Christian culture
held sway until the Enlightenment of the 18th century, when
a number of artists and thinkers began embracing the influence of pagan
Greek and Roman culture and consequently, rejecting the dictates of re-
ligion. The Enlightenment's most important political result was the
French Revolution, which was not only an uprising against the ancient
regime, but at the same time, a revolt against religion.
The foundation of the French Revolution was established by the in-
fluence of such anti-religious thinkers as Voltaire, Diderot and
Montesquieu. From 1789 on, the Enlightenment's pagan, anti-religious
tendencies of became obvious. After an intense propaganda campaign,
the Jacobins came to lead the revolution, established a movement
against orthodox Catholicism, and even managed to create a new reli-
gion. Revolutionary worship, seen first during the national Feast of the
Federation on July 14, 1790, spread quickly. Robespierre, one of the lead-
ers of the bloody revolution, explained its rules and principles in a re-
port, wherein he called it "The Worship of Supreme Being." Paris's fa-
mous Nôtre Dame cathedral was changed into what he called the
"Temple of Reason." Statues of Christian saints were removed from the
cathedral walls, replaced by the statue of an allegorical woman called