The Four Pillars of French Nationality

Good overview on French nationality by Victoria Ferauge summarizing a talk by Patrick Weil, one of the leading academics on citizenship and related issues. Well worth reading, including for my Quebec readers, on laicité:

Weil made the very good point that the idea of the separation of Church and state has been wrongly extended from its original purpose – the strict neutrality of the state in matters of religion.  What we can see today is another conception of it which views the state’s role as an accelerator of the decline of religious belief (a pre-requisite, some argue, to creating a truly “modern” society),  To that end there is an attempt to eject religious expression from public life. (See José Casanova for a discussion about these very different views of secularization.)

He contends, and I agree wholeheartedly, that this was never the intention behind la laïcité.  The state is not there to hobble religious expression public or private – on the contrary the state is prevented from favoring any religion over another and is not permitted to do anything to restrict an individual’s freedom of conscience and the expression of his or her beliefs.  Here I would say that this attempt on the part of some in the Hexagon to do that is just as much a problem for me as a Roman Catholic as it is for the members of minority religions here.

The Franco-American Flophouse: The Four Pillars of French Nationality.