The cultural turn in the sociology of religion in France

Sociology of Religion, Winter, 2004 by Jean-Paul Willaime

The decline in "transcendence" in the political sphere permits new types of relationships between public and private institutions. In the domains of sport, culture, and social welfare, for example, there are numerous partnerships with the private sector, including, in the two last of these, with confessional groups. "Why demonize potential partnerships with the private sector?" (13) asks Jean-Jacques Aillagon, the Minister of Culture and Communication, with respect to public television channels. (14) There is nothing to prevent a secular state working with religious groups to advance specified public objectives. This is done elsewhere, for example in the educational field, where there are contracts which allow (mostly) Catholic schools to participate in national education while retaining their "own character." Unless religious groups are ostracized precisely because they are religious, it is hard to see why this type of arrangement could not be developed in areas other than education.

Even if this would create resistance and difficulties, France is fundamentally committed to a new regime of public action in which the role of the State is less important. Inspired by the analyses of Jacques Commaille and Bruno Jobert regarding the contemporary metamorphoses in political regulation, Philippe Portier underlines that, in this new scheme, the central government "is no longer anything but a co-worker of the law, in a process in which all the institutions of civil society are, by different means, more and more closely associated" (2003:10-1). (15) If public authorities give financial support to social, cultural and sporting activities (traditionally the concern of private initiative), and if occupations, unions and associations accept public subsidy and control, it is hard to see why, following Portier, communities of belief remain outside this general tendency. The more that the state abandons its control over civil society, the more it will recognize the contribution of religious groups to public life. In so doing, it will in turn become more laique.

If French laicite is reluctant to effect an aggiornamento with respect to religion, it is because this requires a rejection of an enduring philosophical prejudice: i.e. that to be religious is to not be free and that access to citizenship can only occur when individuals escape from religious tutelage. Historically, French experience has nourished this image of religion; hence the desire to "uproot man from the darkness of religion rather than simply manage the boundary of church and state" (Bouretz 2000:31). (16) Comparing the United States to France, Pierre Bouretz points out that Americans reject the philosophical and political conception of laicite which has led to such attitudes. The opposition between the two countries resides in the fact that on one side of the Atlantic it is religious liberty which comes first, followed in a sense by separation, while on the other the primary aim is one of emancipation from belief itself (Bouretz 2000:58). The difference between France and America does not lie, therefore, in the degree of autonomy of the state, but the existence of two quite different models regarding the relationship between modern society and religion.