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(2010) Comparative secularisms in a global age, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan.

The evolution of secularism in France

between two civil religions

Jean Baubérot

pp. 57-68

In 2005, an International Declaration of 250 academics from 30 countries affirmed that the reality encompassed by the term secularism does not belong to "any culture, nation or continent." Moreover, they declared that secularism can "exist in situations where the term has not been traditionally used." The authors of the declaration define secularism as the outcome of three parameters: first, the freedom of conscience and the collective practice of this freedom; second, the nondomination of religion the principle of equality and nondiscrimination for religious reasons. Nowhere does such a secularism that would correspond completely to these parameters exist. On the other hand, in certain countries we find some concrete and relative forms of secularism that differ according to historical and social contexts and give more importance to one or the other of these three aspects.

Publication details

DOI: 10.1057/9780230106703_4

Full citation:

Baubérot, J. (2010)., The evolution of secularism in France: between two civil religions, in L. E. Cady & E. Shakman Hurd (eds.), Comparative secularisms in a global age, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 57-68.

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