Abstract: According to the religious historian Jean-Paul Willaime, one of the forgotten and ironic consequences of the laïcisation of religion in France has been the sacralisation of the political where the State has now been invested with the role of individual regeneration and the reform of society. For Willaime, the real heritage of the French Revolution has been the creation of a civic theocracy in France which has replaced traditional forms of religious belief. In other words, in republican France today, the State has become the new foyer of moral and collective unity, with traditional religious expression banished to the margins of communitarianism. However, as Willaime also maintains, this republican status quo has been threatened in recent times by a more radical politics, underpinned and reinforced by global demands for individual, ethnic, sexual and religious rights of expression. In response to this global agenda, the French State has adopted what he calls a 'reasoned accommodation' of individual rights. He states: 'This reasoned accommodation serves first and foremost the State. It is a question of limiting individual rights in the interests of republican citizenship and the State. Hence, the political has more power than the judicial, even if the judicial is absent.'1 What is meant by the political is of course the politics of republicanism, its symbolic universalism and the mantra that everyone is equal regardless of difference.
Publication Year: 2009
Publication Date: 2009-01-01
Language: en
Type: book-chapter
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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Cited By Count: 4
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