Ce texte porte sur les usages sociologiques des concepts de sécularisation, de sécularisme et de laïcité. Il rappelle que les sociologues de la religion ont construit le paradigme de la sécularisation, puis l’ont mis en question (voir notamment José Casanova). Une des critiques faite fut le peu d’attention portée par les théories de la sécularisation au champ sociopolitique. Le concept de sécularisme a été utilisé conjointement à celui de sécularisation et des politologues et des juristes ont donné trois caractéristiques idéal-typiques au secular State : la liberté de conscience, la citoyenneté sans fondement religieux et la séparation de l’État et de la religion. Micheline Milot et l’auteur ont ajouté une quatrième caractéristique : la neutralité de la puissance publique. En tant que concept analytique, la notion de laïcité est utilisée comme équivalent du sécularisme. Elle ne se réduit pas à la laïcité française qui comporte une histoire spécifique : le conflit des « deux France » qui a opposé catholicisme intransigeant et libres-penseurs. Cependant, plusieurs modèles de laïcité se sont affrontés lors des débats qui ont abouti à la loi de séparation de 1905. Le premier n’incluait pas la liberté de religion dans la liberté de conscience, le second, gallican, voulait que l’État contrôle et épure la religion, le troisième défendait la liberté de conscience individuelle qui se prolongeait par l’existence d’associations cultuelles, le quatrième admettait que la liberté de conscience pouvait avoir une dimension collective. Ces modèles existent toujours aujourd’hui, et nous trouvons, de plus, un modèle particulier, en Alsace-Moselle, où la loi de 1905 n’est pas appliquée.
This paper is about the sociological use of different concepts: secularization, secularism and laicity and, in particular, French laicity.Some decades ago, sociologists of religions used the word “secularization” as a core of a paradigmatic theory. But, at the end of the 20th century, many of them criticized its nonoperational multidimensional usage. In particular, J. Casanova identified three different propositions: secularization as religious decline, secularization as privatization of religion and secularization as religious differentiation. For him, only the latter case is relevant. Moreover, he reminds us of the two etymological meaning of secularization. At first, the canonical process whereby a religious person left the cloister to return to the “world”, becoming a “secular” person. Secondly, the term was used to signify the appropriation by the state of the ecclesiastic properties, especially after the “religious wars”. The first meaning is linked to a sociocultural field and the second to a sociopolitical field.The all-encompassing theory of secularization fails to take into account a sociopolitical perspective. The concept of secularism is used in that context. Political analysts and professors of Law constructed the concept of secular State (equivalent to secularism) to examine the relationship that exists between the State and religion in a democratic tradition. This concept is not only linked to the West, but it also refers to Asian countries such as India. The ideal-type concept of secular State can be visualized as a triangle, in which the three angles are religion, the State and the individual. The sides of the triangle represent three sets of sociopolitical relationship:—religion and the individual (freedom of religion and freedom from religion);—the State and the individual (non-religious citizenship);—the State and religion (separation of State and religion).Historically, the first secular state was founded by pastor Roger Williams, in the middle of the 17th century. Williams was an evangelical, opposed to secularized ideal, but his religious dogmatism was not inconsistent with the freedom of conscience but rather the “chief fount” of it (T. Hall).According to the Canadian sociologist M. Milot and to me, the three criterion of a secular state must be completed by a fourth criterion: the neutrality of the State towards religion. All the criteria always are conflicting or negotiated issues. The issues concern both the hierarchy and the interpretation of the criterion.Laicity is not a French exception. The first formal definition of laicity was developed, in 1881, by philosopher and politician F. Buisson. According to him, laicity results from an historical process in which the public sphere freed itself from the power of religion. It results “the laical state, neutral towards all religion, free towards all priests” to achieve “the equality of the citizens to the law” with “rights without religious conditions” and “freedom of all religions”. So, it is possible to consider secularism and laicity as equivalent notions.A. Kuru considers French laicity as an “assertive secularism”, like Turkey (and in opposite of US “passive secularism”). But it is more complicated. According to W. Brugger, French laicity could be classed with two different models: at first as a “moderate variant of a ”hostility between state and church”, secondly, as a variant of an other model: “strict separation in theory, accommodation in practice”. From my point of view, there are several differing models of French laicity. They result from a laicization process, with a long conflict of the “two France” which opposed an intransigent Catholicism and free-thinkers.In 1905, a law separated Churches from the State. At that time, four differing models connected, in different ways, the separation and the freedom of conscience:—the first model does not include religious liberty in the freedom of conscience, because religion would be the “oppression of consciences”;—the second model wants to maintain the State supervision of religion (Gallicanism);—for the third model, freedom of conscience is, above all, an individual liberty. But citizens can be associate in different Churches;—for the fourth model, freedom of conscience has an individual and also a collective dimension.With the 1905 law, the fourth model was juridical established, “ensured freedom of conscience, guaranteed the free exercise of religion” and respected the self-organization of each religion (Article 1 and 4), even if no religion was “recognized” and “subsided” (Article 2). But, in fact, the four different models remain today:—the first reduce the freedom of conscience into the private sphere;—the second considers a “principle of laicity” is different to and, sometimes, higher than the principle of freedom of conscience;—the third fights for freedom of conscience and, also, for strictly neutral public sphere of the State;—for the fourth, in some cases, freedom of conscience is a principle which exceptionally justify giving to religion some public fund.An other model exists in the three departments of Alsace-Moselle, lost after the 1871 War and return to France in 1919: neither the religious neutrality of the State schools nor the 1905 law is implemented.These models are ideals of secularism in Durkheim’s meaning of the notion of ideal society.
