Greg Gangelhoff on the Relationship between Religion and Politics in France

By: Greg Gangelhoff

April 18, 2008

Religion no longer plays as prominent a role as it once did in France, a country that was the "Eldest Daughter" of the Catholic Church not too long ago. Most of the time, religion appears in public as an exception to the secularized environment created by the famous law of 1905 establishing laïcité, or enforced secularism, as the guiding principle of the relationship between religion and politics. In my immigrant, working-class neighborhood in Paris, Orthodox Jews and African Muslims seem to outnumber practicing French Catholics. However, there is one Catholic vestige that has not been scrubbed from the map of France: the numerous churches that populate Paris and, for that matter, any city in France.
To better understand the current relationship between religion and politics in France, we need only explore the fact that the government now maintains all of France's glorious churches that were built before 1905. That includes Notre Dame, but excludes the pearly white Basilica of Sacré-Coeur, which sits atop Montmartre and regards Paris. This also includes the Church of Saint Sulpice, where parts of The Da Vinci code take place and which is currently being renovated by the Mayor of Paris' office. Far from the arcane and the abstract, France's omnipresent and mundane churches provide us an important insight into the country’s efforts to protect history while navigating the pluralistic present.

Since government policy forbids any favoritism towards one sect, the state also withholds money from any Muslim community seeking to build a mosque. The only mosque built with government aid is the Paris Mosque, built after World War I with government aid as a show of appreciation by the government for the African Muslims who fought for France in the Great War (these men are known as the tiraelleurs, and they also fought for France in World War II). The all-inclusive government policy of non-intervention in the realm of church construction serves to entrench a sort of status quo, in which Catholic churches dot the landscape, while mosques can only be built by private initiative and outside the public sphere. President Nicolas Sarkozy has advocated that the state aid the construction of Muslim prayer rooms, but the specter of laïcité hovers over the discussion, and this kind of direct intervention by a public actor into the private realm of religion is hotly contested.

The feeling of marginalization on the part of the French Muslim community can be seen as an outgrowth of France's approach to the sticky thicket of church-state relations. While religious organizations in France may claim tax-exempt status and receive government subsidies for specific purposes, it is in the public expression of religion that substantive differences emerge between France and countries such as the United States, where religious penetration of the public sphere is more tolerated. In 2004, the French government adopted a law banning the ostentatious display of religious symbols in schools; this was in response to the controversy surrounding a Muslim student who would not remove her headscarf, or hijab, when attending French public school. It seems that the most important exceptions to the policy of laïcité involve France's colonies. The Paris Mosque was built to thank the colonized tiralleurs, and in some of France's last tiny colonies, Muslims are allowed more freedom of public religious expression than in France itself. While Islam was never the majority religion in France, and it probably never will be, the French government’s inability to satisfy this minority reveals that religion does not easily leave the public square.

The government's policy regarding the construction and maintenance of churches illuminates an important truth regarding the intersection of religion and politics in France: the government functions as the caretaker of a history that includes religion, while trying fastidiously to keep religion out of politics whenever possible. When President Sarkozy divorced his wife and married a model only a few months later (some reports have concluded that Sarkozy’s courtship of Carla Bruni did not last much longer than three months), there was public disapproval only because the episode fit the image of Sarkozy as reckless and feckless, not because of the religious implications of such a turnaround. The government maintains all of the old Catholic churches because religion, at least when it comes to Catholicism, has become more of a cultural-historic phenomenon than a spiritual one; churches are on the decline as places of worship, even as they remain important historical and tourist sites. It is also strange that the government is unable to satisfy a vibrant Muslim community while the formerly dominant religion is on the decline. I saw plenty of packed churches on Easter Sunday here, but during most weekends, it seems that government subsidies are one of the only props supporting the religious tradition of this former "Eldest Daughter."
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