A View from France on the Internal Complexity of National Models

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

In this paper, I argue that explicit national models of religious governance inevitably conceal tensions and ambiguities, and are not suitable bases for socio-political analysis of religious governance. I take the French notion of ‘laïcité’ as an example, pointing out the diversity of definitions and uses of the term. A stronger foundation for analysis is the long-term tradition of the state controlling and supporting recognised religions, a tradition that dates from the early modern Gallican Church and continues through Napoleon's Concordat, the state's assumption of responsibility for maintaining church buildings and paying religious school teachers' salaries in the twentieth century, and the recent creation of a national Islamic body, the Conseil Français du Culte Musulman (CFCM). I draw on this idea to examine the preceding papers in this special issue.