History Of Laicization Research Paper

When the process of secularization is predominant, the relative decline of religion’s influence takes place in parallel to other evolutions, with no major tensions between religious and political or other social forces. Certainly, religious changes, as well as economic, political, etc. changes, may produce internal tensions. But, when all is said and done, the triumphant forces participate in the same social dynamic. Therefore, there is no important clash between the changes within the religious sphere and other social changes. For that matter, Scandinavian countries are a typical example of secularization. The switch to Lutheran Protestantism, particularly linked to the Bible’s translation, has favored the development of a national culture. Theological arguments (‘theology of the two reigns,’ absence of essential differences between clerics and laymen, rejection of the papacy, etc.) have allowed the autonomy of the nation-state towards religion not to provoke important conflicts. Moreover, a joint and progressive democratization of State and Church has taken place. In the end, for example, a national Danish church emerged (Folkekirken)—this continues to be the symbol of the identity of nations that have been largely secularized.

The process of laicization differs: the tensions between various social forces take on the aspect of an open conflict where the religious becomes a politicocultural stake. The symbolization of the national culture, among others, is controversial. Either the State imposes religion to society (clericalism) or refuses that religion to continue to be the symbol of national identity (laicization). The French case is the main example of such a process.

1. Revolution In France And After: The First Threshold Of Laicization

In France, the roots of this conflict are one of the results of the Wars of Religion (sixteenth century) as well as the persecution of Protestants and dissenting Catholics (Jansenists) (end of the seventeenth century and eighteenth century). As a reaction to this, a certain anti-religious dimension appears in the French philosophy of Enlightenment that had permeated a part of the nobility and bourgeoisie. This spirit differed from the English Enlightenment (or the German Aufklarung). The latter appeared as a confrontation within a diversified Protestantism, wanting an ‘enlightened religion,’ the former directly attacked the Roman Catholic Church, ‘l’infame’ as wrote Voltaire, who was a deist.

In 1789, religion pervaded French society. The monolith Roman Catholic faith was made compulsory for the French people. Communion at Easter and confession to a priest were required from everyone. The clergy was the first of the three ‘Orders’ of the kingdom. The Catholic Church was an inclusive institution exercising power over other institutions, which often only existed in embryonic states. Registration of births, deaths, and marriages, medical and social welfare and education were in the hands of or controlled by the clergy. The monarchy had a religious justification with the theory of the divine right of kings. The king possessed a politico-religious power and the defense of Roman Catholicism was one of the monarchy’s basic duties. But gradually the monarchy also established a large autonomous political and administrative structure. A Gallican movement developed the idea of a French Catholic Church, which would be autonomous from the Pope and protected but also partly controlled by the State.

The first collapse came with Article X of the Declaration of Human Rights. It proclaimed the principle of religious freedom (August 1789), which was progressively applied to minorities. The Constitution divested the monarchy from its religious character, which was considered as a contract and entered into the nation. The fact that the King did not respect this contract led to the conflicting establishment of the Republic (August–September 1792). The state no longer had religious foundations.

As early as 1789, the Revolution celebrated the new order. First, Roman Catholicism lent a religious foundation to these celebrations. But progressively, a breach between the Catholic Church and the Revolution appeared. There were three reasons for this: the proclamation of religious freedom, the bill of the Civil Constitution of the Clergy (1790)—which accentuated gallicanism and decided that priests and bishops should be elected as political deputies—and the establishment of civil registers for births, marriages, and deaths. The ‘religion of the fathers’ would not be more capable of celebrating the new society, and the antirevolutionary propaganda became more and more associated with Roman Catholicism. By the year II (autumn of 1793), the institution of revolutionary cults went with a violent struggle (period of the Terror) directed against revealed religions.

Napoleon Bonaparte inherited a chaotic situation. He thought it would be possible to restore a Roman Catholic Church and maintain some of the Revolution’s great achievements. After delicate negotiations with the Pope, a Concordat was signed (July 1801). The Roman Catholic Church was proclaimed ‘religion of the great majority of the French’ but did not have the status of a state religion; the ‘organic Articles’ recognized two Protestant Churches (Lutheran and Reformed) (1802) and the Jewish religion (1807). In 1804, the Civil Code made no reference to religion.

It is possible to evaluate this situation, using the abstract notion of the first threshold of laicization (constructed on the basis of Weber’s ideal-type), which was the permanent result of revolutionary upsets and is marked by three characteristics.

(a) Institutional fragmentation: Roman Catholicism was no longer an inclusive institution. Religious activities were clearly distinguished from ‘profane’ activities. Educational and health needs assumed gradual autonomy, related to religious needs, and were provided for by specific institutions that were going to develop progressively.

(b) Recognition of legitimacy. Revolution did not destroy religious needs that continued to exist objectively. The service provided by religion was a public service and the state paid ministers of recognized religions. Religions were socially recognized as a foundation of social morality.

(c) Religious pluralism. The state recognized four religions, it protected and controlled them for they could satisfy the religious needs of their followers and develop moral values. Other religions were more or less tolerated. Relative freedom was even given to those who decided to do without ‘the help of religion.’

The French Revolution did not succeed in establishing a durable system of separation of Church and State, whereas the American Revolution did.

In the United States, the Declaration of Independence stipulates that all human beings are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, which is not the case in the French Declaration of Rights. Why? Because in the United States, religious pluralism allows the dissociation of God from every church.

In France, religious monopoly would let the Roman Catholic Church become the owner of human rights, being the mediator between God and humans. This creates a structural difference in the long run. The American situation may have specific characteristics linked to the master function of religion: social space for cultural pluralism. Stephen Warner (1993) indicates the main differences:

(a) Religion is constitutive for some American subcultures.

(b) Religion in America has historically promoted the formation of associations among mobile people.

(c) Religion in America serves as a refuge of free association and autonomous identity, a ‘free social space.’

(d) The second generation of immigrants often transmutes ethnicity into religion because it allows immigrants to assimilate and conserve their identity.

2. From The First Threshold To The Second Threshold Of Laicization

In France, the compromise of the first threshold of laicization delineates a logic that dominated for almost a century. But the situation that it describes was not static. At first, this was due to the fact that at the beginning of the nineteenth century, a number of aspects of the first threshold were not entirely realized: other institutions were not sufficiently developed to become totally autonomous. Then, especially during the second half of the nineteenth century, there was a growing conflict between the partisans of revolutionary values and those who thought of France mainly as a Roman Catholic nation.

The first conception won. During the 1880s, the Republicans introduced a religiously neutral educational system, which included a morale laique. At the end of the century, a new crisis arose from the Dreyfus case. The impression prevailed that the Republic was threatened by the clerical peril. The important law of July 1901 on voluntary societies excluded religious congregations from the right to free associations. A new law voted in July 1904 prohibited members of religious orders from teaching. The separation of Church and State appeared to be inevitable and took place in a climate of violent confrontation.

But two models of separation were possible. One model was antireligious and combative. Such was the bill of Emile Combes (Prime Minister). However, it was refused, especially by Jean Jaures, the socialist leader, who hoped to achieve a law that would bring peace and eventually make it possible to fight social problems. A liberal model prevailed and ensured the freedom of conscience, guaranteed the free exercise of religion, and respected the self-organization of each church (art. 1 and 4) even though it neither ‘recognized’ nor paid subsidies to any religion (art. 2). This marks the end of the system of ‘recognized cults.’

Even in liberal dominance, this model of separation completed a religiously neutral educational system and found a new logic. This can be seen as the second threshold of laicization. As for the first threshold, there are three characteristics:

(a) Institutional dissociation: religion was entirely optional because it was no longer considered as the institutional structure of society but rather as a mode of free association.

(b) Social neutral about religious legitimacy: religious needs having become a private matter and morality officially laique. The question as to the usefulness of religion for society was no longer publicly relevant. (In a logic of the conflict, the opponents to Roman Catholicism asserted that religion and religious morality were dangerous for the Republic and its ideals. This point was a compromise.)

(c) Freedom of religion: various religious societies belonged to the sphere of public liberties. The state guaranteed each citizen freedom of conscience and allowed each one to meet with religious societies or associations.

The separation of 1905 was marked by a twofold aspect: the victory of the laique camp in the hard and long conflict of the two Frances but also the result of a conflict within the Republican party. An implicit covenant with opponents was searched for in order to reach peace in the long run so that complete victory in the short term would predominate. The conflict did not die immediately: it vanished progressively because religion ceased to be a political problem.

The Resistance had united unbelievers and believers in a common struggle. By 1945, the bishops held that there could be a positive meaning to the term laicity and, in the next year, laicity was officially proclaimed by the Constitution. It was a tripartite government—communist, socialist, and MRP (a political party that is close to Christian Democracy)—that included laicity in the Constitution.

3. Laicization In Various Countries

Other countries also show cases of the process of laicization which comprise analogies with the French case as well as specificities. Here are three examples. First, Belgium became an independent state in 1831, in a ‘unionist’ atmosphere, which gathered Catholics and Liberals rather than anticlerics. The outcome was a regime of separation–recognition, accompanied by ‘recognized cults’ (but no Concordat) which tended to resemble the first threshold of laicization in France—this was possible because the situation was more democratic than that of Napoleon Bonaparte. In 1879, the Liberals attempted to create a Laique school but the Catholic Party, victorious at the 1884 elections, progressively abolished these measures. Therefore, Belgium was never situated in a similar logic to the French second threshold but slowly integrated laicity and laique morals in its system of ‘recognized cults’: ‘nonconfessional’ morals, school-classes, laique advisers in hospitals or prisons, laique youth fetes that were similar to the first communion, etc.

For a very long time, Spain lived through a refusal of laicization of any sort. The 1912 Constitution declared that ‘the Nation’s religion is (…) the apostolic and Roman Catholic religion, the only real one.’ But in the 1931 Constitution, the Spanish republic imposed both elements of the first French threshold (abolition of the religious Catholic monopoly, institution of the civil marriage) and the second French threshold (separation, laique schools, suppression of religious symbols on public buildings), and even a few measures that go beyond the second threshold in France (for example, chaplaincies were suppressed). During the Civil War, this laicization resembled the situation of the French Revolution rather than that of the Third Republic. The issue lay in Franco’s national Catholicism, which re-affirmed Roman Catholicism as ‘the only real’ religion. Nevertheless, since 1978 there has been no State religion but ‘relations based on cooperation with the Catholic Church and other confessions.’

The Italian situation of the mid-twentieth century was more ambivalent than the Spanish one but was not laique either. The 1948 national reconciliation respected the agreements of Latran (1929) which was a compromise between the Fascist regime and the Catholic Church. On the other hand, during the same time, it affirmed the mutual independence of the State and Catholicism (State religion). This lasted until 1971, when the constitutional court affirmed the priorities of constitutional norms on the agreements with the Catholic Church. After that, Catholicism ceased to be the State religion, divorce was authorized, and in 1984, the Concordat was re-negotiated and an official pluralism began to exist.

Today’s Spanish and Italian systems tend to resemble a laicity that corresponds to the first French threshold of laicization. On the other hand, England possesses an established Church that coexists with a maintained Catholicism as well as nonconformist Churches. This constitutes an original variation of the process of secularization. By the end of the seventeenth century, politico-religious conflicts no longer took place. In Germany, after the Thirty Years’ War, the main process was that of secularization but it also integrated elements of laicization (Kulturkampf, in particular).

We then could think that the French situation is the most laique but this is not the case. The separation between State and Church in Mexico (1917) was very polemical towards religion. The Constitution shows, for example, that State education ‘should remain absolutely away from any religious doctrine’ and should fight ‘fanaticism and prejudices.’ It forbids monastic orders, makes sure that religious ceremonies only take place in Churches, which ‘will always be under the authority’s supervision,’ refuses the right to vote to the ministers of cults, etc. Some measures were recently made less strict, but Mexican laicity was historically harsher than French laicity.

The Turkish laicity also stands in a polemical logic when it comes to religion, which explains why it is backed up by the army. Some liberal personalities have tried to render it more liberal and make it come closer to the French laicity but today’s situation does not favor such an evolution.

4. New Problems And European Construction

Nowadays, whatever the degree of laicization, various societies must face new problems. For example, culturally speaking, the dynamic element in laicity had been the development of a morality independent of any religious authority. But this morality was frequently going to be based on science. Now science and morality tend to be more or less dissociated in many respects. Science was increasingly understood as a techno-science, the functional efficiency of which was undeniable but which, far from helping to resolve moral questions, created new ones, more difficult to resolve because of their intrinsic power. The development of genetics is significant, and in bio-ethical committees, representatives with a religious outlook are often asked to give their point of view. In today’s society, there are various debates on morals: questions concerning sexuality, marriage, the representation of violence on television, etc. are brought up. Religious opinions participate in these debates but their solutions are not necessarily imposed on the whole of society.

In several countries, debates concern laicity and Islam directly: for some immigrants’ children, this opposes the culture that is taught at school and the culture that is transmitted within the family, which rather finds its roots in tradition. In France the headscarves affair is a typical example. But this affair finds significance by showing how difficult it can be for the immigrant populations of Muslim belief or origin—who often settle in the outskirts of a city; areas that are prone to break up and directly subject to increased unemployment and the crisis of the Welfare State—to integrate. On the other hand, Buddhism has integrated without difficulty.

Moreover, the relations between the State and religion in most of the countries of the European Union tend to become a specific case of a larger European model. Italian Professor Silvio Ferrari defines it with the following co-ordinates (Ferrari 1998):

(a) The State is impartial towards the various individual religious subjects.

(b) A religious subsector is singled out within the public sector. This may be understood as a playing or protected area field. (…). (This is the area in which lay most of the differences between France and the other European countries because in France this area is not institutional.)

(c) The State has the right to intervene in this area only to see that the players respect the rules of the game and the boundaries of the playing field.

This model is now deeply rooted in the political and legal culture of contemporary Western Europe. The model is ingrained to such an extent that it has become the basis for the very formulation of the laws in force concerning religious liberties and church–state relationships. This may be seen both in internal conventions and in the constitutional laws of the main European nations. These conventions and laws are formulated to ensure the impartiality of the public powers, which are legally bound to respect the freedom to profess any religious faith (besides art. 9 of the European Convention of Human Rights) and to avoid any discrimination based on religion (art. 14 ECHR). In this entirety, secularization can be put side by side with some elements of laicity by diminishing the differences linked to the existence of an official religion.

To conclude, the ideal type of laicity can first be characterized as a twofold refusal: the refusal of an official religion, the standards and prescriptions of which would be imposed on all by means of civil law with the state’s affirmation of religious neutrality, and the refusal of an official atheism which would limit religious freedom. More positively, laicity can be seen as a close relation between the freedom of conscience and the freedom of thought. The freedom of conscience implies that every individual has the right to believe or not to believe, to retain or to change his beliefs. Therefore, the freedom of conscience leads to the pluralism of beliefs and philosophies within society. The freedom of thought implies that none of these beliefs or philosophies are privileged or imposed by the State to the detriment of other convictions. The State is to respect them all and is to make sure that they can all be expressed freely.

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