1905 French law on the separation of Church and State

The 1905 French law on the Separation of the Churches and State was passed by the Chamber of Deputies on 9 December 1905. Enacted during the Third Republic

French Third Republic

The French Third Republic was the republican government of France from 1870, when the Second French Empire collapsed due to the French defeat in the Franco-Prussian War, to 1940, when France was overrun by Nazi Germany during World War II, resulting in the German and Italian occupations of France...

, it established state secularism in France

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

. France was then governed by the Bloc des gauches
Bloc des gauches
The Bloc des gauches , aka Bloc républicain was a coalition of Republican political forces created during the French Third Republic in 1899 to contest the 1902 legislative elections...

(Left Coalition) led by Emile Combes

Émile Combes

Émile Combes was a French statesman who led the Bloc des gauches's cabinet from June 1902 – January 1905.-Biography:Émile Combes was born in Roquecourbe, Tarn. He studied for the priesthood, but abandoned the idea before ordination. His anti-clericalism would later lead him into becoming a...

.

The law

Law

Law is a system of rules and guidelines which are enforced through social institutions to govern behavior, wherever possible. It shapes politics, economics and society in numerous ways and serves as a social mediator of relations between people. Contract law regulates everything from buying a bus...

was based on three principles: the neutrality of the state, the freedom of religious exercise

Freedom of religion

Freedom of religion is a principle that supports the freedom of an individual or community, in public or private, to manifest religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship, and observance; the concept is generally recognized also to include the freedom to change religion or not to follow any...

, and public powers related to the church. This law is seen as the backbone of the French principle of laïcité
Laïcité
French secularism, in French, laïcité is a concept denoting the absence of religious involvement in government affairs as well as absence of government involvement in religious affairs. French secularism has a long history but the current regime is based on the 1905 French law on the Separation of...

. The law famously states "The Republic neither recognizes, nor salaries, nor subsidizes any religion".

History

Although officially established through the 1905 law, the concept of state secularism in France is often traced to the French Revolution

French Revolution

The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...

beginning in 1789. Before that time, Roman Catholicism

Roman Catholicism in France

The Roman Catholic Church of France, sometimes called the "eldest daughter of the Church" owing to its early and unbroken communion with the bishop of Rome, is part of the worldwide Catholic Church...

had been the state religion of France, and the Catholic hierarchy was firmly entwined with the ancien regime. However, the revolution led to various policy changes, including a brief separation of church and state in 1795, ended by Napoleon's establishment of the Church of France with the Concordat of 1801

Concordat of 1801

The Concordat of 1801 was an agreement between Napoleon and Pope Pius VII, signed on 15 July 1801. It solidified the Roman Catholic Church as the majority church of France and brought back most of its civil status....

. An important document in the evolution toward religious liberty was article ten of the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, stating that...
Nevertheless, the French state continued to fund four official religions into the 20th century: Roman Catholicism, Calvinist and Lutheran Protestantism

Protestantism in France

-Waldensians:The first extant Protestant tradition is often identified as the Waldensians, who originated through the teachings of Peter Waldo, a wealthy merchant of Lyon who lived in the 12th century...

, and Judaism. It built churches, temples, synagogues and other religious buildings from taxes levied on the whole population (not just those affiliated with those religions).

The 1871 Paris Commune

Paris Commune

The Paris Commune was a government that briefly ruled Paris from March 18 to May 28, 1871. It existed before the split between anarchists and Marxists had taken place, and it is hailed by both groups as the first assumption of power by the working class during the Industrial Revolution...

had proclaimed state secularism on 3 April 1871, but it had been cancelled following its defeat.

After the 16 May 1877 crisis

16 May 1877 crisis

The 16 May 1877 crisis was a constitutional crisis in the French Third Republic concerning the distribution of power between the President and the legislature. When the Royalist President Patrice MacMahon dismissed the Opportunist Republican Prime Minister Jules Simon, parliament on 16 May 1877...

and the victory of the Republicans at the following elections, various draft laws requesting the suppression of the Concordat of 1801 were deposed, starting with Charles Boysset's 31 July 1879 proposition. Thereafter, the Third Republic established secular education

Secular education

Secular education is the system of public education in countries with a secular government or separation between religion and state.An example of a highly secular educational system would be the French public educational system, going as far as to ban conspicuous religious symbols in schools.In...

with the Jules Ferry laws

Jules Ferry laws

The Jules Ferry Laws are a set of French Laws which established free education , then mandatory and laic education . Jules Ferry, a lawyer holding the office of Minister of Public Instruction in the 1880s, is widely credited for creating the modern Republican School...

in 1881–82, which were one of the first base of the firm establishment of the Republican regime in France. In 1886, another law insured secularisation of the teaching staff of the National Education

Education in France

The French educational system is highly centralized, organized, and ramified. It is divided into three different stages:* the primary education ;* secondary education ;...

. On 30 July 1904, the Chamber of Deputies voted, against Emile Combes

Émile Combes

's wish, the rupture of diplomatic relations with the Vatican, following the sanction, by the Holy See, of two French bishops (Albert-Léon-Marie Le Nordez‎ and Pierre-Joseph Geay) who had declared themselves Republicans and in favour of conciliation with the Republic — they would be re-established only in 1921, after the Senate

French Senate

The Senate is the upper house of the Parliament of France, presided over by a president.The Senate enjoys less prominence than the lower house, the directly elected National Assembly; debates in the Senate tend to be less tense and generally enjoy less media coverage.-History:France's first...

accepted to vote Aristide Briand

Aristide Briand

Aristide Briand was a French statesman who served eleven terms as Prime Minister of France during the French Third Republic and received the 1926 Nobel Peace Prize.- Early life :...

's proposition.

Effects

The 1905 law put an end to the funding of religious groups by the state. (The state agreed to such funding in the Concordat of 1801 as compensation for the Revolution's confiscation of Church properties—properties from which the Church would have been able to fund itself.) At the same time, it declared that all religious buildings were property of the state and local governments; the government puts such buildings at the disposal of religious organisation at no expense to these, provided that they continue to use the buildings for worship purposes. Other articles of the law included prohibiting affixing religious signs on public buildings, and laying down that the Republic no longer names French archbishops or bishops (although this was modified in practise from 1926).

Because Alsace-Lorraine

Alsace-Lorraine

The Imperial Territory of Alsace-Lorraine was a territory created by the German Empire in 1871 after it annexed most of Alsace and the Moselle region of Lorraine following its victory in the Franco-Prussian War. The Alsatian part lay in the Rhine Valley on the west bank of the Rhine River and east...

was at the time a part of the German Empire

German Empire

The German Empire refers to Germany during the "Second Reich" period from the unification of Germany and proclamation of Wilhelm I as German Emperor on 18 January 1871, to 1918, when it became a federal republic after defeat in World War I and the abdication of the Emperor, Wilhelm II.The German...

, the 1905 law, as well as some other pieces of legislation, did not — and still does not — apply there (see local law in Alsace-Moselle). Similarly, the 1905 law did not extend to French Guiana

French Guiana

French Guiana is an overseas region of France, consisting of a single overseas department located on the northern Atlantic coast of South America. It has borders with two nations, Brazil to the east and south, and Suriname to the west...

, at the time a colony

French colonial empire

The French colonial empire was the set of territories outside Europe that were under French rule primarily from the 17th century to the late 1960s. In the 19th and 20th centuries, the colonial empire of France was the second-largest in the world behind the British Empire. The French colonial empire...

, and to this day the local government of French Guiana continues to fund Roman Catholicism.

Another modification occurred when Aristide Briand

Aristide Briand

Aristide Briand was a French statesman who served eleven terms as Prime Minister of France during the French Third Republic and received the 1926 Nobel Peace Prize.- Early life :...

subsequently negotiated the Briand-Ceretti Agreement

Briand-Ceretti Agreement

The Briand-Ceretti Agreement is a 1926 agreement whereby French diocesan bishops are nominated by the Vatican after a process involving the French Ministries of the Interior and of Foreign Affairs....

with the Vatican

Holy See

The Holy See is the episcopal jurisdiction of the Catholic Church in Rome, in which its Bishop is commonly known as the Pope. It is the preeminent episcopal see of the Catholic Church, forming the central government of the Church. As such, diplomatically, and in other spheres the Holy See acts and...

whereby the state has a role in the process of choosing diocesan bishops.

While the 1905 law’s explicit intention was to deny any state-sanctioned religion, its effectual end was the crippling of the Catholic religion as an institutional force in public life by denying it, or any other religion, government funding.

Politics

The leading figures in the creation of the law were Aristide Briand

Aristide Briand

Aristide Briand was a French statesman who served eleven terms as Prime Minister of France during the French Third Republic and received the 1926 Nobel Peace Prize.- Early life :...

, Émile Combes

Émile Combes

, Jean Jaurès

Jean Jaurès

Jean Léon Jaurès was a French Socialist leader. Initially an Opportunist Republican, he evolved into one of the first social democrats, becoming the leader, in 1902, of the French Socialist Party, which opposed Jules Guesde's revolutionary Socialist Party of France. Both parties merged in 1905 in...

and Francis de Pressensé.

Initially, Catholics were seriously affected, as the law declared churches to be the property of the state and local governments. A point of friction was that public authorities had to hand over the buildings to religious organisations (associations cultuelles) representing laymen, instead of putting them directly under the supervision of the church hierarchy. This spurred civil disobedience

Civil disobedience

Civil disobedience is the active, professed refusal to obey certain laws, demands, and commands of a government, or of an occupying international power. Civil disobedience is commonly, though not always, defined as being nonviolent resistance. It is one form of civil resistance...

and even riots by Catholics. The Holy See urged priests to fight peacefully in the name of Catholicism. Pope Pius X

Pope Pius X

Pope Saint Pius X , born Giuseppe Melchiorre Sarto, was the 257th Pope of the Catholic Church, serving from 1903 to 1914. He was the first pope since Pope Pius V to be canonized. Pius X rejected modernist interpretations of Catholic doctrine, promoting traditional devotional practices and orthodox...

issued the Vehementer Nos
Vehementer Nos
Vehementer Nos was a papal encyclical promulgated by Pope Pius X on February 11, 1906. Occasioned by the French law of 1905 providing for the separation of church and state, it denounced the proposition that the state should be separated from the Church as "a thesis absolutely false, a most...

encyclical

Encyclical

An encyclical was originally a circular letter sent to all the churches of a particular area in the ancient Catholic Church. At that time, the word could be used for a letter sent out by any bishop...

denouncing the law as contrary to the constitution of the church. At the same time, the law did free the church from state control as well, since it could raise more funds than the modest amounts the state provided and it could choose its own bishops, as was the case for Catholics in the United States, Poland, and Ireland.

The law and its early implementation was controversial, mainly because of the anti-clericalism

Anti-clericalism

Anti-clericalism is a historical movement that opposes religious institutional power and influence, real or alleged, in all aspects of public and political life, and the involvement of religion in the everyday life of the citizen...

found among much of the French political left

History of the Left in France

The Left in France at the beginning of the 20th century was represented by two main political parties, the Republican, Radical and Radical-Socialist Party and the French Section of the Workers' International , created in 1905 as a merger of various Marxist parties...

at the time. The law angered many Catholics, who had recently begun to rally to the cause of the Republic, supported by Leo XIII's Inter innumeras sollicitudines 1892 encyclical (Au Milieu des sollicitudes) and the Cardinal Lavigerie's toast in 1890 favour of the Republic. However, the law progressively became almost universally accepted among French citizens, including members of the Catholic Church, who saw in it a possibility of greater freedom from state interference in cultural matters.

Recently, however, a few politicians and communities have put the law into question, arguing that the law, despite its explicit stance in favour of state secularism, allegedly favours de facto traditional French religions, in particular Roman Catholicism, at the expense of more recently established religions, such as Islam

Islam in France

Islam is the second most widely practiced religion in France by number of worshippers, with an estimated total of 5 to 10 percent of the national population.-Statistics:...

; while most Catholic churches in the country were built before 1905, and thus are maintained largely at public expense, followers of Islam and other religions more recently implanted in France have to pay the full price of founding and maintaining religious facilities. This was one of the arguments noted by Nicolas Sarkozy

Nicolas Sarkozy

Nicolas Sarkozy is the 23rd and current President of the French Republic and ex officio Co-Prince of Andorra. He assumed the office on 16 May 2007 after defeating the Socialist Party candidate Ségolène Royal 10 days earlier....

, when he was Minister of Interior, to controversially argue in favour of funding other cultural centres than those of Catholicism, Protestantism and Judaism.

The 1905 law, however, is often considered politically untouchable. Rivals of Sarkozy, such as Jacques Chirac

Jacques Chirac

Jacques René Chirac is a French politician who served as President of France from 1995 to 2007. He previously served as Prime Minister of France from 1974 to 1976 and from 1986 to 1988 , and as Mayor of Paris from 1977 to 1995.After completing his studies of the DEA's degree at the...

and Dominique de Villepin

Dominique de Villepin

Dominique Marie François René Galouzeau de Villepin is a French politician who served as the Prime Minister of France from 31 May 2005 to 17 May 2007....

, made it a point that no amendments were made to the law.

External links

The deep roots of French secularism, article by Henri Astier on BBC News online, Sept 1st, 2004
One Hundred Years of French Secularism by Mélina Gazsi Dossier from the French National Assembly
French National Assembly
The French National Assembly is the lower house of the bicameral Parliament of France under the Fifth Republic. The upper house is the Senate ....
100th Anniversary of Secularism in France, Pew Forum on Religion in Public Life.
updated official version from Légifrance
Légifrance
Légifrance is the official website of the French government for the publication of legislation, regulations, and legal information. Access to the site is free....
Délibérations sur le projet de loi et les propositions de loi concernant la séparation des Eglises et de l'Etat by the retired journalist Claude Ovtcharenko (including all parliamentary sessions, Emile Combes' 1904 speech, chronology, etc.)

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.

History

Effects

Politics

See also

External links