‘Without flexible secularism, tensions would be greater in France’ – Technologist

The historian and sociologist Jean Baubérot recently published the final volume of his wide-ranging investigation into the law of December 9, 1905, separating church and state (La Loi de 1905 n’Aura pas Lieu. Tome III, L’Eglise Catholique “Légale Malgré Elle,” The 1905 Law Will Not Happen. Volume 3: The ‘Unintentionally Legal’ catholic church”).

In this book, the expert on French secularism shows that, far from “the Republican Golden Legend and the Catholic Black Legend,” this text was not meant to bring religion to heel but was primarily a response to the need to consolidate a fractured French society, particularly in the face of new geopolitical perils. A situation that is reminiscent of today’s.

It’s been 20 years since the law banning the wearing of conspicuous religious symbols in schools was enacted. Back in 1849, the first known occurrence of the word ‘laïcité’ in French (in a report by the Var General Council) was used during the debates on religion’s place in education. Why is the issue of secularism in schools so sensitive?

The importance attached to schools is one of the key features of French secularism. In the April 30, 1905, edition of the newspaper La Dépêche, a few months before the vote on the December 9 law, Jean Jaurès [1859-1914] advocated “the secular education of successive generations” to instill in believers “the mores of freedom.”

Even in the 19^th century, there was already this idea that school was where people learned critical thinking and intellectual autonomy to train voting citizens. It was at the heart of secular morality, which replaced moral and religious education in 1882. Its central values were the dignity of the human person and solidarity. The goal was to avoid both a return to imperial authoritarianism and an insurrection like the Commune. However, schools’ secularization was carried out in a somewhat “conciliatory” way toward religions.

How so?

Jules Ferry, the minister of public education and father of the 1882 law on secular public schools introduced a day without school in the week – first on Thursday, then on Wednesday – to make it easier to attend catechism classes. According to his critics, this would allow parish priests to destroy what the teacher had taught during the rest of the week.

In addition, Ferry defended freedom of education – in other words, the possibility of opening private, faith-based schools – against attempts to impose a monopoly on secular schooling. We often hear people say that schools are secular, free and compulsory. But when you put it this way, it’s not true. Secular schooling is not compulsory since you can enroll your child in a denominational private school – and the 1959 Debré Law made private education official and subsidized it.

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