Introduction
I would like to talk to you about atheism, secularisation, anticlericalism and laïcité in France (2026)
The decline of Christianity, the visibility of Islam and the use of laïcité as a civil religion to neutralise opposition
First of all, on behalf of the National Federation of Freethinkers (La Libre Pensée), I would like to thank you warmly for your fraternal invitation. It is a pleasure and a wonderful opportunity to forge links between our movements and our actions, as well as an excellent opportunity to better understand one another and to gain a better understanding of what is happening in our respective countries.
1. The state of religions and atheism in France: a highly secularised society
France is, of course, not in the same situation as Poland. Surveys indicate that more than half of the French population identify as having no religion. However, we must exercise caution here: ‘no religion’ does not mean the absence of vague beliefs in the afterlife, nor the absence of superstition. Among those who identify with a religion, most do not actively practise it.
As for Catholicism, Guillaume Cuchet has shown that it has been in sharp decline since the 1960s. We are now hearing that this decline is supposedly coming to a halt, or even that the trend is reversing. Caution is called for. The number of young adults requesting baptism appears to be rising (slightly), but families are less and less likely to have their children baptised shortly after birth. Practising Catholics account for only 1.5 per cent of the French population. (This is a very small proportion.)
The vitality of Catholicism, although it remains the largest religion in France, is not comparable to that of the evangelical churches, which are multiplying across the country. Apparently, around one new evangelical church or community emerges every week (see the work of Sébastien Fath and Philippe Gonzalez). These churches offer women, in particular, a more prominent role in worship, as well as forms of solidarity and collective fellowship that the Catholic Church provides less frequently.
Islam is also growing. (And this is a major difference compared with Poland. There are around 4 million Muslims in France out of a population of seventy million. This is due to colonisation, specifically the French colonies in North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa, as well as on a Pacific island such as Mayotte. Until 1962, Algeria consisted of three French departments. As a general rule, people from formerly colonised territories tend to settle in the coloniser’s country.) However, one must be cautious when referring to ‘Islam’ in the singular: there are different forms of Islam and Muslims, whose beliefs and practices vary considerably. The report commissioned in 2024 (two thousand and twenty-four) by Gérald Darmanin (Home Secretary) on the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood in France objectively shows that this influence remains marginal and that both its membership and financial resources have been declining for around twenty years. Contrary to the narratives promoted by some sections of the right-wing media, sociological and demographic research shows that the majority of Muslims practise Islam in a more individualistic rather than traditionalist manner. In a sense, after two or three generations, Muslims of immigrant origin are French like everyone else. 63 per cent of third-generation immigrants from North Africa enter into mixed or intercultural interfaith marriages. This is not the case for Muslims of Turkish origin, for example. They remain segregated. But as a general rule, there is no multiculturalism in France; that is to say, different ethnic or religious communities live segregated from one another or from the rest of society. The right wing wants not only integration but also assimilation. Assimilation means that immigrants or people living in France who come from a different culture must renounce their culture entirely. But that is impossible. The result is that immigrants would never be as French as they are expected to be, and this provides reasons – or pretexts – for the far right or extremists to discriminate against these people.
France is a democratic republic. This means that France is not an ethnic nation but a civic nation. You do not need to be Catholic, nor do you need to enjoy eating pork sausages, nor do you need to adore Napoleon or anyone else, to be a citizen with the same rights as other citizens. This is already a form of secularism. The separation of religious, cultural and political rights and obligations. The State or public officials must not take into account what people think or believe, or matters such as prostitution.
That is not their concern. What matters is respect for civil law. Civil law is a matter of public concern; religious law is a private matter.
The gradual decline in the number of practising Catholics, combined with the rise in the number of more religiously committed Muslims, is having significant political effects. When a religious community accounts for only 10 per cent of the population, its mobilisation has a far smaller direct impact on the country.
The book by Charles Mercier and Philippe Portier, *Les jeunes et leur laïcité* (2025), also shows that people aged between 18 and 30 (from eighteen to thirty) have a more liberal approach to secularism than their elders. These young people may believe more firmly in an afterlife whilst maintaining a non- institutionalised relationship with religion. As they do not necessarily attend places of worship and no longer refer to traditional dogmas, they may view beliefs as elements of connection rather than separation. We thus encounter people who describe themselves as Catholic without possessing any real religious knowledge: they do not know what a sacrament is or have never heard of the Trinity. Emmanuel Todd, a French sociologist, uses the concept of ‘zombie Catholics’ as opposed to ‘active Catholicism’. (For example, if you visit a museum with paintings on display, you might hear a child or a young pupil ask: ‘Excuse me, who is that man on the cross?’)
This decline in religious practice corresponds to a marked and rapid secularisation of French society: religion is playing an increasingly minor role in the lives of the French, both symbolically and in practical terms. This entails a loss of religious culture without automatically fostering scientific culture. The removal of mathematics from the core curriculum of upper secondary education as part of the Blanquer reform – even though mathematics has since been reintroduced in a reduced form – has certainly not helped to improve the population’s scientific and epistemological literacy or competence.
2. The persistence of clericalism
Although French society has become highly secularised since the 1960s and Catholicism has lost much of its influence, one should not conclude that clericalism, or even religion itself, is a thing of the past.
The Catholic Church continues to exert influence on politics. The Pope’s visit to France at the end of September will be a clear example of this. Although a law on end-of-life care was passed by the Parliament on 15 July, authorising, under certain specific conditions, assisted suicide and euthanasia for certain people suffering from incurable illnesses, Pope Leo XIV will oppose this law during his visit. This relates to secularism as it concerns freedom of conscience. Like all major secular laws, it is a law of freedom. It allows those who do not wish to endure unnecessary suffering to pass away sooner. But it does not take away any freedom from Catholics who reject assisted suicide or euthanasia. The same principle applied to the law on abortion. This law grants women freedoms, but it does not take away any freedom from practising women, except the freedom to impose their religious beliefs on society as a whole. The meaning one attaches to one’s life, and the meaning one attaches to one’s death, is a personal matter.
In a secular country, the Church obviously has the right to call on its faithful to comply with its religious precepts. On the other hand, it does not have the right to demand the repeal of a law or to exert political pressure. The issue is all the more sensitive given that the Pope’s reception and security will be provided by state services, and therefore partly funded by all taxpayers.
The everyday clericalism of the Fifth Republic, however, takes the form, above all, of the use and exploitation of religions by politicians. The right and the far right, but also parts of the centre and the left, may use Islamism – and even Islam itself – as a source of fear in order to justify new forms of control and repression, whilst mobilising Christianity as an element of French identity through which an ‘us’ is pitted against foreigners or those deemed to threaten our national cohesion.
As you know, in 2015 (two thousand and fifteen), France suffered major terrorist attacks claimed by Islamists or by Islamic State. Highly popular figures who defended the freedom to publish cartoons and freedom of expression, and who worked for the newspaper Charlie Hebdo, were brutally murdered.
The problem is that the government of the time, in particular Prime Minister Manuel Valls, used secularism to combat Islamist terrorism. However, Islamist terrorism or the phenomena of religious radicalisation cannot be combated through secularism. If we do this, we turn secularism into an instrument of repression, a police tool, a tool for surveillance and control. Terrorism or incitement to hatred and murder, just like sectarian abuses, are already prohibited by law.
Furthermore, the 1905 (195) law on secularism includes legal provisions that oblige the State to protect individuals against all forms of religious pressure or religious discrimination.
At this very moment, in France, the draft bill against Islamist infiltration, tabled by Bruno Retailleau and passed at first reading by the Senate, is a distorted version of representative secularism. It targets Islamist separatism, which is presented as a threat to republican values – in particular gender equality – without always taking into account that certain forms of Christian fundamentalism could be subject to the same criteria.
For example, this year, the right wing called for a parliamentary committee of inquiry to determine whether Islamist political parties exist or whether certain political parties adopt a clientelist policy towards certain Muslims.
The inquiry showed that there had been no Islamist or Muslim infiltration of political parties. There is no such thing as a ‘Muslim vote’. Muslims are more conservative than atheists and should therefore vote for the right. But because they face discrimination from the right, they vote for left-wing parties, as these parties do not pursue identity-based, nationalist and discriminatory policies.
Vincent Tiberj, a political sociologist, drawing on survey data, shows, on the contrary, that Catholics are more intransigent than Muslims; that is to say, they are more likely to consider that religious law takes precedence over civil law.
One could therefore argue that many political leaders, from the Socialist Party to the far right, claim to be combating Islamist separatism whilst simultaneously Christianising the state and society, and implicitly presenting Christian separatism as the norm, on the grounds that France, from a historical and cultural perspective, is a Christian country. This normalisation of a particular form of clericalism is accompanied by a reversal of the meaning of the principle of secularism.
3. “Falsified secularism”
Historically, secularism, established under the Third Republic, guarantees freedom of conscience and puts an end to public funding of religious organisations.
When the Act of 9 December 1905 (nineteen and five) was being drafted, several conflicting views were at play. Free thought itself was divided between a liberal tendency, represented notably by Aristide Briand, and an uncompromising tendency embodied by Maurice Allard. The latter sought not only the separation of Church and State, but also the weakening, or even the abolition, of the Churches by the State. They therefore advocated a form of secularism based on prohibition, which could lead to state atheism.
Briand, although an atheist himself, regarded this strategy as politically counterproductive. It would have allowed Catholics, who at the time constituted a large majority, to present themselves as martyrs or victims. The law was therefore intended to guarantee freedom of conscience and freedom of worship whilst ensuring the neutrality of the state. Rather than banning, for example, the wearing of clerical attire in public spaces, he preferred to regard such garments as clothing that anyone could wear freely.
The National Federation of Freethinkers (La Libre Pensée) remains committed to this approach. Philosophically, it advocates atheism, free inquiry, the scientific method and rationalism, whilst defending freedom of conscience, an essential prerequisite for freedom of research and thought.
Free thought, or La Libre Pensée, is not in favour of banning religions from society or the public sphere, even though it opposes or combats religions.
However, this historical and liberal conception of secularism, associated with Briand and Jean Jaurès, has been subject to numerous distortions for over thirty years — particularly since 1989 (the Creil Islamic affair, or the headscarf affair). Some political leaders act as if secularism meant confining religion to the private sphere. Yet, whilst it imposes a separation between the State and religious authorities, it in no way prohibits religions from expressing themselves publicly through processions, gatherings, posters or acts of proselytising. Secularism concerns the state, its representatives and its civil servants; it does not concern society as a whole.
The ‘new secularism’, theorised in particular by François Baroin in 2003, breaks with this conception. It tends to replace freedom of conscience with a duty of religious discretion and has thus paved the way for the 2004 (two thousand and four) law on visible religious symbols in schools, which specifically targets the Islamic headscarf.
This development must be understood in its context: the Creil affair/headscarf affair, the end of the Cold War, the attacks of 11 September 2001 (two thousand and one), the spread of the ‘clash of civilisations’ thesis’, the growing difficulties in integrating populations of post-colonial immigrant origin, the far right reaching the second round of the presidential election in 2002, and, finally, the repercussions of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in France.
The new secularism thus takes on a repressive, identity-based and nationalist dimension. It tends to transform a democratic principle guaranteeing pluralism into a quasi-religious national value, or even a form of civil religion. In a France undergoing rapid de-Christianisation whilst Muslim visibility is growing, certain political leaders are turning secularism into an instrument of repression: either one adheres to the ‘values of the Republic’, or one is suspected of separatism. These values, which are rarely defined, are thus implicitly presented as being closer to Christianity than to Islam.
It is therefore essential to distinguish between principles and values, for secularism is a political framework.
A principle is a rule that is discussed and established rationally, and which must be respected. A value is something one must believe in, something one must hold dear. Secularism is a political principle that guarantees freedom of conscience through the separation of state and church, the state’s neutrality in religious matters, and the non-funding of churches or religious denominations. But secularism is not a civil religion, nor is it a value, nor is it an object of worship.
In the name of the fight against Islamism, a suspicion of separatism is thus fostered in order to demand allegiance to the Republic, or even to the government in power. Secularism has therefore taken on an ethnic dimension: it primarily targets Muslims and has become a means of discrediting certain political opposition movements, dissolving associations or banning protests. Whilst it should remain a fundamental democratic principle, it is being exploited to silence, ban and create a depoliticising national consensus.
The new secularism is therefore, in several key respects, the opposite of historical secularism, even though its supporters claim to be following in the tradition of Briand and Jaurès.
Amidst this confusion, Libre Pensée (Free Thought) may give the impression of defending religions, and Islam in particular. However, it is important to be clear: philosophically and politically, Libre Pensée (or free-thinkers) opposes Islam just as much as Catholicism and combats all forms of monotheism. But its activist work must take the political context into account. Its atheism must not lead it to make statements about Islam that could strengthen the nationalist right and the far right, who use religion to divide popular movements against neoliberal policies. (And I know that this is a problem for some of you, or that it is a major issue to fight resolutely against Islam – and even more so against Islamism – to protect society from Islamism, and not to belong to a far-right party, or to end up adopting the same rhetoric and agenda as a far- right movement.)
In France, the suspicion of Islamist infiltration has become a potential tool for repressing the left-wing opposition.
The Palestinian question is a particularly telling example of this situation. Criticism of the Israeli government’s policy towards the Palestinian people is frequently equated – from the far right to the Socialist Party – with anti-Semitism or support for terrorism. The Yadan bill, which was ultimately abandoned or adopted in a heavily watered-down form as the Berger-Lecornu bill, aimed in particular to equate criticism of Zionism – as an ideology and political project – with an anti-Semitic act; that is to say, with a criminal offence. The proposals to combat Islamist infiltration and the Yadan Bill are thus part of the same logic of restricting political debate.
Libre Pensée is secular because it regards secularism as the best protection against the resurgence of religious, identity-based or nationalist conflicts for the purposes of domination and exploitation.
IN CONCLUSION:
This is the first time my partner Émilie and I have visited Poland, and we are surprised by the extent of this religious presence. There are crosses everywhere. Everywhere you look, there are churches, religious crosses by the roadside, religious hymns and religious ceremonies. Religion still permeates everyday life.
Furthermore, yesterday I heard that the Polish state allocates 70 (seventy) billion zlotys to the Catholic Church every year. Polish taxpayers’ money is used to pay the salaries and allowances of priests who take advantage of people’s credulity.
For a long time, French republicans were unwilling to separate Church and State or to abolish the Concordat, because he who pays the piper calls the tune, and the State wants to control the Churches and individuals.
But when secularism was established, the decisive factor was Article 2 of the law on funding: it stipulates that the State must neither pay the salaries of nor subsidise any religion.
If believers want churches, they must organise themselves to fund them.
When the Church no longer receives money from the State, there are always wealthy individuals willing to fund it, but its visibility diminishes and its decline begins.
Since the law establishing secularism came into force, it has no longer been possible to erect a cross or any other religious symbol on public property. And almost every month, Libre Pensée takes legal action to ensure compliance with the law and to have religious symbols removed from public spaces.
This is the path France has followed, and Libre Pensée is trying to keep it on that course. Poland must find its own way.
Because it promotes atheism and the liberation of the individual, Libre Pensée (Libre Pensée) wants neither God nor master. It proclaims: ‘Down with the clergy, and long live Socialism!’
Secularisation is a process that must be pursued continuously, and you can count on Libre Pensée (Libre Pensée) not to stop halfway.
Thank you for your attention, and I wish you all very productive meetings.