I knew coming in that France was hardly a country that agrees with Georgetown on the idea of Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam; that is to say, it is an overwhelmingly secular country, so much so that since the passage of the 1905 secularism law, this laïcité has become a sort of unofficial fourth value of the republic after liberté, égalité, and fraternité. The greater glory of God has no place here, nor does any other religious belief, as I was reminded by the debacle over the ban on the burkini swimsuit this summer—while Muslim women were just trying to dress modestly at the beach, the state targeted them as Islamic extremists.
What is complicating matters is the French idea that public and private spheres are completely separate. Here, one’s private life should not overlap with one’s public presentation, and vice versa. It is why the biggest scandal surrounding President Hollande’s love affair was that it was published without his permission, not that he had done anything wrong, and why General De Gaulle, a devout Catholic, wouldn’t go to Mass in his army uniform and didn’t even go while he was president. Religion, grounded in the private sphere, is kept separate from the public, secular state; while religious dress isn’t banned in public, visible religious articles, like Islamic veils, Jewish kippahs, and large Christian crosses, are banned in public schools. There’s a sentiment here that standing out, that looking different from the traditional Gaulish ideal, puts you in opposition to the values of the republic. Unsurprisingly, the French fear what they do not understand, and Muslims make for easy targets in a society grappling with terrorist attacks and religious extremism.
Despite the tensions, I assumed things would be different here in Strasbourg. Located on the northeastern border with Germany, the Alsace-Moselle region changed hands five times between France and Germany after Louis XIV invaded in 1681. A hotbed of Protestantism during the Reformation, with Catholic elements brought back by the French, the city served as a far-flung melting pot of faiths safe from most state-sponsored discrimination.
After the radically anti-religious French Revolution in 1789, Napoleon Bonaparte signed a concordat with the Vatican in 1801, making peace with the faithful and allowing for the practice of Catholicism, Lutheranism, Reformed Protestantism, and Judaism. The church burning of the revolution was over. The state now approved religious leaders and paid the salaries of clergymen. However, when France replaced the concordat with its secularism law 104 years later, the country had changed in both attitude and size. Alsace-Moselle, a region containing the city of Strasbourg, had been retaken by Germany in 1871, but the Germans left the concordat untouched, allowing for the practice of Christian and Jewish religions. After the region was returned after World War I, laïcité was never instituted, as the messy mix of German and French law codes were left unchanged (to “respect provincial traditions”).
With no state-enforced secularism and a rich history, how does Strasbourg handle religion? For the first time, I drove down a street named for Martin Luther rather than Martin Luther King, Jr. Local schools teach opt-out religious culture classes, and my state-funded university has two seminaries. From the Orthodox Jews walking their children to school, to the Christian fish on a back of a van, to the religious graffiti in a bathroom stall, religion may not permeate public life, like it does in my native Georgia, but it is still quietly and openly present.
But are people in Alsace more religious and more religiously tolerant? In its commitment to secularism, France bars state-funded researchers from collecting data on religion, but my French friends say that the region is no more religious than the rest of the country. What I have seen only appears to be a freer practice of religion because I came in expecting neutrality bordering on hostility. Although the region discourages public religion, practicing it is not flat-out banned. Strasbourg is nothing unusual.
In reality, the once-liberating concordat does nothing for the religious equality of Alsace. By continuing to approve clergymen, the state privileges some religions above others in a supposedly neutral sphere while, oddly, infringing on their freedom to confirm their own leadership. Public schools ban religious garb yet offer religion classes that exclude non-concordat faiths, as do public Catholic and Protestant seminaries. In funding specific Western religions, even in just one region, France betrays its secular ideals. Though the country has tried to institute laïcité here as recently as last year, it has yet to succeed. While Strasbourg may not have banned the burkini, it still fails its faithful by clinging to tradition in a rapidly diversifying country.
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