Anti-clerical parades are held, and the Archbishop of Paris, Jean-Baptiste-Joseph Gobel, is forced to resign his duties and made to replace his miter with the red "Cap of Liberty."

Gobel was born in the town of Thann in Alsace to a lawyer to the Sovereign Council of Alsace and tax collector for the Seigneury of Thann.

After outstanding success in his early schooling in Porrentruy, he studied at the Jesuit college in Colmar, then theology in the German College in Rome, from which he graduated in 1743.
 
Ordained a Catholic priest in 1750, Gobel then became a member of the cathedral chapter of the Prince-Bishop of Basel, Simon Nikolaus Euseb von Montjoye-Hirsingen, based in Porrentruy.

In 1771 he was appointed the auxiliary bishop of the diocese for the section that was situated in French territory, being named by the Holy See as a titular bishop in partibus of Lydda.

He consecrated the next Prince-Bishop, Friedrich Ludwig Franz von Wangen zu Geroldseck, on March 3, 1776.

Found to have been living beyond his means, he was relieved of his duties by Wangen zu Geroldseck's successor, Franz Joseph Sigismund von Roggenbach, in 1782.

After this he began to espouse "reformist" ideas.

His political life began when he was elected deputy to the Estates-General of 1789 by the clergy of the Bailiwick of Huningue.

The turning-point of his life was Gobel's action in taking the oath of the Civil Constitution of the Clergy (January 3, 1791), in favor of which he had declared himself since May 5, 1790.

The document gives the appointment of priests to the electoral assemblies, and, after taking the oath, Gobel had become so popular that he was elected constitutional bishop in several dioceses.

He chose the Archbishopric of Paris, and in spite of the difficulties which he had to encounter before he could enter into possession, he took up office on March 17, 1791 and was consecrated on March 27 by eight bishops, including Charles Maurice de Talleyrand.

This action had been rejected by the Holy See, which has never recognized him as a legitimate holder of the office, and continues to hold the canonical archbishop, Antoine-Eléonore-Léon Le Clerc de Juigné, as the legitimate Archbishop of Paris during this period.

On November 8, 1792, Gobel had been appointed administrator of Paris.

His public display of anti-clericalism is most likely a careful tactic to ensure the sympathy of politicians: among other things, he has declared himself opposed to clerical celibacy.

On the 17th Brumaire in the year II (November 7, 1793), he comes before the bar of the National Convention for his activities as civil commissioner in Porrentruy, and, in a famous scene, resigns his episcopal functions, proclaiming that he does so for love of the people, and through respect for their wishes.

The previous night, a delegation from the Commune led by Jacques Hébert, Chaumette and Anarchis Cloots had demanded that he publicly renounce his faith or be put to death by the people.

The followers of Hébert, who are pursuing their anti-Christian policy, claim Gobel as their representative.

At the same time, Hébert's rival Maximilien Robespierre views Gobel as an atheist—although he is not accused of apostasy, and never publicly professes atheism.

The official nationwide Fête de la Raison, supervised by Hébert and Antoine-François Momoro on 20 Brumaire, Year II (November 10, 1793) will come to epitomize the new republican way of religion.

In ceremonies devised and organized by Chaumette, churches across France were transformed into modern Temples of Reason.

The largest ceremony of all is at the cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris.

The Christian altar is dismantled and an altar to Liberty is installed and the inscription "To Philosophy" is carved in stone over the cathedral's doors.

Festive girls in white Roman dress and tricolor sashes mill around a costumed Goddess of Reason who "impersonated Liberty".

A flame burns on the altar, which is symbolic of truth.

To avoid statuary and idolatry, the Goddess figures are portrayed by living women, and in Paris the role is played by Momoro's own wife Sophie, who is said to have dressed "provocatively" and, according to Thomas Carlyle, "made one of the best Goddesses of Reason; though her teeth were a little defective."

Before his retirement, Georges Danton had warned against dechristianizers and their "rhetorical excesses", but support for the Cult will only increase in the zealous early years of the First Republic.

By late 1793, it us conceivable that the Convention might accept the invitation to attend the Paris festival en masse, but the unshakeable opposition of Maximilien Robespierre and others like him prevent it from becoming an official affair.

Undeterred, Chaumette and Hébert proudly lead a sizable delegation of deputies to Notre Dame.

It is here that Fouché gives “the most famous example of its [dechristianization] early phase."

Ironically enough, it was only a year previous that Fouché had been "an advocate of the role of the clergy in education," yet he is now "abandoning the role of religion in society altogether in favour of 'the revolutionary and clearly philosophical spirit' he had first wanted for education."

Overall, the dechristianization movement "reflected the wholesale transformation that Jacobin and radical leaders were beginning to see as necessary for the survival of the Republic, and the creation of a republican citizenry." (David Andress, The Terror: The Merciless War for Freedom in Revolutionary France (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005), 239.)