The World of Religions, May-June 2008 —
The past few months have been fertile in controversy over the highly sensitive issue of the Republic and religion in France. As we know, the French nation was built on a painful emancipation of politics from religion. From the French Revolution to the 1905 law of separation, the violence of the struggles between Catholics and Republicans left deep scars. Whereas, in other countries, religion played an important role in the construction of modern politics and where the separation of powers was never conflictual, French secularism was a combative secularism.
Fundamentally, I agree with Nicolas Sarkozy's idea of moving from a combative secularism to a peaceful secularism. But isn't that already the case? The President of the Republic is right to recall the importance of the Christian heritage and to insist on the positive role that religions can play, both in the private and public spheres. The problem is that his remarks went too far, which rightly provoked virulent reactions. In Rome (December 20), he pitted the priest against the teacher, an emblematic figure of the secular Republic, by asserting that the former is superior to the latter in transmitting values. The declaration in Riyadh (January 14) is even more problematic. Certainly, Nicolas Sarkozy rightly points out that "it is not religious sentiment that is dangerous, but its use for political ends." However, he makes a very surprising profession of faith: "The transcendent God who is in the thought and in the heart of every man." God who does not enslave man but liberates him." The Pope could not have said it better. Coming from the president of a secular nation, these words are surprising. Not that the man, Nicolas Sarkozy, does not have the right to think them. But spoken in an official context, they commit the nation and can only shock, even scandalize, all French people who do not share Mr. Sarkozy's spiritual opinions. In the exercise of his function, the President of the Republic must maintain neutrality with regard to religions: neither denigration nor apology. It will be retorted that American presidents do not hesitate to refer to God in their speeches, even though the American constitution separates political and religious powers as formally as ours. Certainly, but faith in God and in the messianic role of the American nation is part of the self-evident truths shared by the majority, and forms the basis of a sort of civil religion. In France, religion does not unite, it divides.
As we know, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. With the noble intention of reconciling the Republic and religion, Nicolas Sarkozy risks, through clumsiness and overzealousness, producing the exact opposite result of the one he was seeking. His colleague Emmanuelle Mignon made the same mistake with the equally sensitive issue of sects. Intending to break with a sometimes too blind policy of stigmatizing minority religious groups, a policy condemned by many jurists and academics—I myself strongly criticized the 1995 parliamentary report and the aberrant list that accompanied it at the time—she goes too far in asserting that sects constitute "a non-problem." As a result, those she rightly criticizes have every right to point out, with just as much reason, that there are serious sectarian excesses that can in no way be considered a non-problem! For once, when the religious question is being addressed at the highest levels of government in a new and uninhibited manner, it is regrettable that overly strong or inappropriate positions make this language so inaudible and counterproductive.