a politico-religious system which entailed an obligatory faith and practice for everyone. This phenomenon is generally understood by historians to have begun with the French Revolution in 1789, not merely as a single event, but as a decade of Revolution which forever altered the course of French history.9
French History and Laïcité
The relation of French history to the concept of laïcité is complex. The contributing events span centuries of interminable crises between the dominant Church and its rivals for power or with those seeking reform. In modern times, this panorama of events extends from the Protestant Reformation and Wars of Religion in the sixteenth century to the ideological battles in present-day France. At stake today is the meaning and relevance of laïcité in a pluralistic, democratic society. According to Bowen, “In the dominant narratives of laïcité, history has moved toward the removal of religion from the public sphere. . . . The law of 1905, celebrated as having proclaimed the separation of church and state, was but the outcome of a long period of struggle, with its Revolutionary thesis and Restoration antithesis.”10 In present discussions and debates on the place of laïcité, the invocation of the law of December 1905 on the separation of Churches and State figures prominently. One hundred years after the law was enacted, proponents and opponents of laïcité have recourse to varied interpretations and applications of the law of 1905. One incident in 2014 involved the mayor of La Garenne-Colombes who was criticized for allowing a Christmas manger scene on public property purportedly in violation of the law of 1905. His response was to remind his attackers that France has an ancient Christian culture. He criticized the ignorance of those who ignore that fact or who misunderstand the law of 1905, who wave the laïque flag but do a disservice to laïcité.11
From a historical perspective, one of the distinguishing factors of French laïcité is that it resulted from a break with the past and with religious power structures. Jean-Claude Monod explains that laïcité was introduced by the Reformation, prepared intellectually by the Renaissance, initiated by the French Revolution, and was founded largely on autonomous reason devoid of religious assumptions.12 Patrick Cabanel advances what he considers a global hypothesis in his understanding of French history. He asserts that every century over the last five hundred years France has changed the solution for dealing with the religious question which was opened by the definitive implantation of the Protestant Reformation with the Edict of Nantes in 1598 as the starting point. According to him, the Reformation forever changed the religious equation in France. He estimates that by 1560 one out of ten French people was won over by the Reformation and converted to Protestantism. That number fell to one out of fifty by the end of the eighteenth century. These figures are considered by Cabanel as measures of a double failure—the failure of Protestantism to take root in France and the failure of the monarchy to effectively treat the Protestant question. He does not consider the Edict of Nantes tolerant, pluralistic, or laïque. He argues that Protestantism was temporarily authorized and protected, yet still trapped as a minority until France once again found its unity in the Catholic religion in what he calls a coexistence in intolerance.13 The Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685 was followed by a new edict of toleration in 1787 when it became evident that Protestantism was not going to disappear. To this edict was added state recognition of three other religious confessions alongside the Catholic Church with the Concordat of 1801. A hundred years of relative peace followed until the events of the nineteenth century which would lead to the unraveling of the Concordat and the enactment of the Law of Separation in 1905.14
Cabanel looks at two major thresholds of laicization. He sees the first threshold with several characteristics established during the revolutionary and Napoleonic periods. The first characteristic was institutional fragmentation. Although religion was no longer coextensive with French society, religion remained an institution structured by the State under the Concordat. The second characteristic was State recognition of the religious needs of its citizens and the provision of salaries for ministers of different religious expressions. Religion was maintained as the moral foundation of society and the practice of catechism was continued in public schools. The third characteristic was an incomplete religious pluralism in State recognition of four religious confessions—Catholic, Reformed, Lutheran, Judaism. Established laïcité was the second threshold which covered most of the twentieth century and appears to most people today as the definitive framework in defining relations between the State (public domain) and churches (confined to private spaces). In this threshold, religion was no longer considered an integral part of societal structure and was banished to the private sphere where it experienced a loss of legitimacy and where religious needs were no longer socially recognized. The State withdrew recognition of the religious confessions included in the Concordat, the Catholic Church lost its privileged place, minority religions became juridical equals, and the State, at least in principle, observed a benevolent neutrality.15
The importance of these two thresholds will be seen later in the challenges to laïcité in the early period of the twenty-first century to determine whether a third threshold has now appeared. The arrival of this third threshold might have been signaled by the writings of Nicholas Sarkozy (b. 1955), president of France from 2007 to 2012. As Minister of the Interior from 2002 to 2004, he also had conferred on him the position of Minister of Religions. During this earlier period, he wrote a book entitled La République, les religions, l’espérance. In the form of an interview, he presented laïcité in service to liberty and religion in service to society. A major chapter was given to Islam and the Republic in which he describes two variations of Islam: one official and reassuring represented by the Grand Mosque in Paris; one unofficial and worrisome in which a militant extremism was developing.16 It is significant that he wrote this book during the time when two French citizens were held hostage by Islamic militants. In his preface he declared that the kidnappers were fanatics who claimed the Islamic faith which professes the opposite of what they became and had nothing to do with God.17 Further, he distanced himself from his predecessors and their apparent indifference toward religions and considered that in past years sociological questions had been overestimated and religious reality largely underestimated.18 He spoke with an uncommon frankness in stating that religion occupied a central place in France at the beginning of the third millennium. He further clarified that the place of religion is not “at the exterior of the Republic; it is not a place in competition with the Republic. It is a place in [dans] the Republic.”19 The landscape of France has changed several times in the past and is once again undergoing change and challenges in the present.
Christian France
As we now turn to examining the place of Christianity in French history and the emergence of laïcité, important questions and distinctions must first be raised concerning the nature of French Christianity and Christendom. In posing questions on the re-evangelization of Europe, Wessels asked, “How Christian was Europe really? To what extent has it been de-Christianized today?” He initially responded that Europe was largely Christianized by AD 750 if one uses the marks of baptism and other religious rituals. However, he questions “how deeply this Christianization had really penetrated in the so-called Christianized areas” and agrees with Dutch historian Jan Romein that “mediaeval Christianity was only a thin veneer.”20 French philosopher Luc Ferry adds that many associated with the Christian faith were attached to the religious form as such, but the content, the message of love, was hardly evident in the reality of human relations.21
French historian Jean Delumeau goes further in declaring that one cannot even speak in terms of medieval Christianity and that the Christianization of Europe in that period was unsuccessful. He questions what was really accomplished in seven or eight centuries of evangelization and notes that both Protestant Reformers and their Catholic adversaries viewed the peasantry, which constituted the vast majority of Europeans, as ignorant of Christianity, given to pagan superstitions and to vices.22 With this assessment Newbigin concurs:
When we speak of a time when public truth as it was understood and accepted in Europe was shaped by Christianity, we do not—of course—mean that every person’s behavior was in accordance with Christ’s teaching. In that sense there has never been and there can never be a Christian society. But Europe was a Christian society in the sense that its public truth was shaped by the biblical story with its center in the incarnation
