However, it is often forgotten that its elaboration was not the product of a consensus within the republican political family: while republican parliamentarians were united by a common project, that of promoting freedom of conscience against political clericalism, they were fiercely divided on the practical modalities of its implementation. They can be divided into two main camps.
This group had long wished to reinforce the supervision of religions set by the Concordat, the agreement Napoleon had reached with the Pope in The second group prevailed [1]. The law of enshrined what the American political scientist Alfred Stepan called a twin tolerance : on the one hand, by excluding religions from the public sphere of the State, it ensured the sovereignty of politics; on the other, by protecting the religious sphere from any political interference, it preserved the independence of religions.
Where are we a century later? Under the aegis of the liberal Third Republic it was a system for the preservation of liberties; under the supervision of a State acting like a headmaster since the s it has become a system attempting to unify behaviors. It resurfaced in the early s.
The formula is probably exaggerated. Indeed, France still persists in the process of secularization accentuated by the revolution of the s. Surveys of European values clearly highlight this evolution. This quantitative decrease in the number of religious citizens has not led to their social disappearance. All these currents, in spite of their differences, form an alliance to counter the progression of cultural liberalism. But religious resilience is found above all among Muslims.
It also stems from a change in behavior: the discretion of the s was replaced by a clearer display of their religious belonging. Private observance has intensified: Muslims, especially in the younger generations, pray, do Ramadan and attend mosques more than in the past.
