The Enlightenment was heralded as a sunrise of civilization

The Enlightenment was the philosophical and literary counterpart to the rise of natural science. It sought to apply methods of rational inquiry to religion, ethics, politics, and psychology. Most forms of religious authority--creeds, miracles, sacraments Scriptures, clergy, and ecstatic or mystical experience--were challenged by the Enlightenment, which claimed to accept only the authority of reason. The Enlightenment went through many phases, presenting varied stances toward Christianity. The Enlightenment was anti-Christian in the Jesuit reductions, the French Revolution, and in Deism's critique of Christianity. On the positive side, the United States' constitutional settlement which guaranteed religious freedom drew significantly from the ideas of John Locke and other Enlightenment thinkers.