discloses that the overdeveloped critical frameworks of radical Enlightenment thinkers were unable to support the generative elements of their thought. Further, Donald Livingston argues that Hume valued the silent wisdom that inhered in customs and the tacit knowledge of common life.5 To fairly consider Hume’s suggestion for religion then, we must pay attention to what is explicit in his work as well as that which he states indirectly, all the while being responsible to his overall concerns.
In a preface to the second volume of his History of England (which he later excised) Hume stated that true religion was a “rare form” of religion that “regulates men’s hearts” and “humanizes their conduct” and that its “proper office” was to “reform Men’s lives, to purify their hearts, to inforce all moral duties, and to secure obedience to the laws and civil magistrate.”6 His historical investigations led him to conclude that the disposition for religion in general permeated humankind. In eighteenth-century Scotland most people practiced what Hume thought of as vulgar or false religion (mostly Presbyterian Calvinism). He acknowledged the importance of local customs and recorded the practical results of believers in his historical work. We might think of his approach as melioristic: he paid attention to the outcomes of religious beliefs and aimed to reduce barbaric ones. Accordingly, Hume quietly held that the best way for humans to be religious was through a rare true religion. Our quest to assign Humean content to this idea might begin by rehearsing the distinction between his notions of ‘true’ and ‘false’ religion, a bifurcation rooted in, as I mentioned earlier, the constitutive difference between his notions of true and false philosophy and the fact of his historical positioning between the Latin and modern notions of religion. On the first, constitutive point, for Hume, true religion parallels true philosophy. The word “true” here is not a reference to epistemic status, for the “truth” is well beyond the reach of the human mind. Hume had more of a pragmatic notion of the true: he believed the true was that which affirmed common traditions over abstruse reason and suggested a commitment to the moderation of our beliefs and behaviors for the effective functioning of the individual and society. False religion, implicit in false philosophy, was built on abstract metaphysics, contained superstition and enthusiasm, and posited a supernatural deity worthy of worship. It led to social division and political disharmony. These two religious worldviews, the true and the false, represent distinct approaches to balancing the role of custom with autonomous reason in relation to a deity, invest differently in the project of moderation of the passions, and forge distinct concerns in the regulation of our moral behavior. In other words, true religion and false religion differ in their attitudes toward reason, the passions, and morality.7
On the second historical point, in Hume’s time the modern notion of religion as a system of beliefs seeking epistemic confirmation through speculative reason stood against the fading classical idea of religio as a set of public, ritualized ceremonies that enhanced excellence of character in service of (the artificial virtue) justice. These two notions give a historical dimension to Hume’s repeated distinctions between false religion (also referred to as popular religion or vulgar religion) and the rare true religion. Cicero powerfully affirmed the social utility and the public customs of religio, the authority of the ancestors, and the interests of the state in religious matters. He took religio to be a virtue for civic society and its opposite, superstitio, to be a vice. In many ways, Hume extended this classical way of thinking about religion. Hume’s Ciceronian influence, combined with the few observations he made about religion’s proper office, allow us to postulate that the development of character and the stability of the social order would have been central for his true religion had he developed it further. His modern sensibilities endorsed a new philosophical approach and thus a more skeptical theism, deeper individual and protopsychological investment and thus calmer passions, and a morality that was functional for not just preservation of the state but the stability of conventions of everyday common life. Still, Hume neither lauded any conception of religion to the masses nor endorsed his idea ‘true religion’ as a mode of personal religious practice. True religion was a rare, quiet convention that, at its best, silently contributed to social harmony.
To foreground the distinction between true and false religion in Hume and to prioritize his self-described debt to Cicero is not to radically reread him; rather, it is to locate the foundations of the proper office of religion and reemphasize parts of his work that are often overlooked. This type of constructive interpretation extends Hume’s thought in ways that he may not have anticipated. Nevertheless, the fecundity of his work in religion should not be disregarded. If nothing else, Hume’s distinctive handling of religion makes it clear that religion is neither reducible to a set of propositional claims about the supernatural nor limited to a set of external practices that elevate a worship-worthy deity. His acceptance of the possibility that general providence (a basic sense of purposiveness in nature) is intelligible exemplifies an approach to theism that takes a middle path between militant atheists and evangelical theists of our day. This approach can be a constructive resource, along with his insights regarding sympathy and his moderate passions, for current debates in religious studies.
For Hume, history confirmed that the general sentiment for religion was an ever-present feature of the human social being (though it was secondary, and monotheism was not universal).8 From this it follows that we are, as far as Hume was concerned, generally religious in some form or another. The matter of human religiousness, then, was actually settled for Hume. He was not at all skeptical about the presence of religion in most human societies: he affirmed that religion was naturally derived from human passions. His critical work challenged the content of the beliefs of popular religion. It asked the question, how should religion function? In other words, Hume’s dilemma regarding religion was about the role religion should play so that we derive more benefit than harm from it. False or popular religion was the set of beliefs and practices legitimated by philosophy that reflected enthusiastic reverence for a deity and celebrated miracles. True religion might be understood, then, as an ensemble of natural beliefs that allows us to moderate our passions and develop our character. This rare form of religion makes us more Humean, that is, better able to take life as it comes, aware of our inextricable connection to our neighbors and our society, and appreciative of the mystery of nature. On my account, these are religious issues, not moral ones, and Hume’s use of the terms “true religion” and “true piety,” as well as his many mentions of a deity, religious attributes, beliefs, and so on, suggests that he wanted to be an interlocutor in the conversation on religion and not simply in the one on morality.
Hume took historical manifestations of religion to be mainly destructive. Yet religion in general—that is, the idea of religion—was neither simply good nor bad but always an admixture of both. It is quite evident that he firmly rejected revealed religion and its dramatic transformations, the myths and miracles of vulgar religion, faith narratives that supported popular piety, particular worship practices of churches, and the commandments of the Torah. His true religion, then, cannot be taken as religious in the conventional sense. His historical work, however, suggests that a worldview that “reforms” and “purifies” has religious value: it strengthens our feelings of connectedness to all, helps virtuous character development, and assists in the moderation of our passions. To be clear: I have no interest in discussing Hume’s personal struggles with Presbyterianism, nor am I interested in reading his work through the lens of Christianity. I aim, instead, to give his suggestion for religion’s proper office more use-value for debates in religious studies by foregrounding what I take to be its (potentially) generative insights.
Writers that view Hume’s positive claims about religion as insincere or ironic challenge the view that his true religion has any religious merit. They contend that he is at best inconsistent on the design argument and that his theories of the passions and morality are ethical positions, not religious ones. These readings are valid. Hume’s project does not demand to be taken on religious terms. This, however, does not foreclose the possibility that taking it on its religious merits and building from them is both warranted by his use of the term “true religion” and potentially useful for contemporary scholars in religious studies. Nor does it exclude us from raising questions about what constitutes the notion “religious
