gracchusdixit

The separation of church and state is enshrined as a founding principle not only in the Constitution of the United States but also in the Constitution of France.   This is no accident.  The American and French republics both came into being as the result of revolutions against an oppressive “old order” in which religion played a major role.  Indeed, the men who created the two republics deeply influenced one another.  The leaders of our revolution were students of the Enlightenment who admired great French thinkers like Voltaire, Montesquieu, Rousseau, and Diderot.  The leaders of the French Revolution, for their part, were inspired by the example of our Founding Fathers, particularly by the personal risks they were prepared to take to champion the cause of liberty.  These great men, American and French, believed in the same ideals, because they revered the same ideas.

One of those ideas was a determination to keep religion out of the public life of their respective nations.  John Adams voiced this determination in no uncertain terms: “The Government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion.”  James Madison went even further: “Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise.”  And Thomas  Jefferson was positively withering:  “There is not one redeeming feature in our superstition of Christianity.  It has made one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites.”

Given these views, it is no surprise that, when the Founders declared our independence from Great Britain and its king, they also declared our freedom from Britain’s official and established religion, the Anglican Church.  When the French toppled, and eventually executed, their own king, they likewise ended the domination of the Roman Catholic Church, with its centuries-old ties to the monarchy and the ruling aristocracy.  Having done away with the “old order,” both nations embarked upon a new path—the same path—guaranteeing personal religious liberty to their citizens while insisting that religion and public life be severed forever.

It wasn’t long, however, before the paths of the two nations began to diverge and to do so dramatically.

Here, in the United States, religion has crept inexorably back into our public life.  Despite the separation of church and state decreed by our Constitution, sessions of Congress open with a prayer.  Despite the Constitution’s ban against the consideration of religion in the election of public officials, our Presidents feel obliged to attend annual “prayer breakfasts”.  Political candidates feel compelled to proclaim their faith loudly and often, as long as that faith is some version of Christianity.  And all across the land, evangelicals are now imposing their agenda on everyone: no equal rights for homosexuals,  no access to abortion or contraception for women, no requirement for those with “religious scruples” to obey the law or abide by the Constitution.  Here, religious freedom has come to mean freedom for the religious and for no one else.

The French, on the other hand, stayed the course, holding true to their founding principles.  In France, the public life of the nation and the private world of religion remain utterly separate.  Religious institutions are not allowed to interfere in politics, and overt displays of religious practice are not permitted in public places.  French politicians rarely speak of their religious beliefs, nor do they invoke religious convictions as arguments for, or against, political decisions.  French citizens are left free to believe whatever they wish, but those beliefs are a personal matter, not to be imposed upon others who may believe otherwise or believe in nothing at all.

The French word for all this laïcité.  This word is often translated as “secularism,” implying a complete rejection of religion and religious sentiments.  But that is not the case.  Its origins are ancient, going all the way to the epic poems of Homer, where the Greek word “laos” was the most inclusive term for an entire people or nation.  Some of that original sense still clings to laïcité.

Laïcité asserts that public and political institutions belong to the French people as a whole, not to any particular religious or ethnic group.   Laïcité means that a citizen of France is “French,” no matter where he or his ancestors were born, no matter what language he speaks, no matter what god he worships.  Laïcité  requires that a citizen’s obligations to the ideals of the French Republic—liberté, egalité, fraternité—supersede narrower, more parochial loyalties.

When the French refused to collaborate with the Bush administration’s invasion of Iraq, right-wing members of Congress thundered their outrage, accused them of cowardice, and demanded that the phrase “french fries” be changed to “freedom fries” on the menus of the three restaurants serving our oh-so-well-fed House of Representatives.  Without intending to, that silly gesture revealed an embarrassing truth: the people who gave us “french fries” seem to know more about “freedom” than we do.  If we truly want to protect and preserve our freedom, a little more French laïcité  wouldn’t be a bad place to start.