Religion in the Public Sphere: Challenges and Opportunities

Since I have been given the honor of opening this session, give permission to me thank the organizers for allowing me to tender a rather general reflection upon the place of religion in the public sphere in the couple Europe and the United States.

I. INTRODUCTION

Beginning in 1989 female Muslim scholars in France were disciplined in seminarys for refusing to remove their headscarves.1 At the petition of the French Education Ministry, France's Conseil d'Etat (State Council) affirmed the right of religious expression inside the public schools2 The Conseil rul forty-one times (on forty-nine cases) between 1991 and 1999 against place of educations who disciplined Muslim girls for wearing headscarves.3 Despite these rulings, the disputes continued and became extremely contentious during 2003 when the issue received national attention and incited public affirms as well as legislative and executive debate. In March 2004 with broad public support on the contrary amid public protests by members of the Muslim community and others, the Assembl?©e Nationale passed a law banning learners from wearing conspicuous religious clothing in public schools4 Although the law also forbids Jewish yarmulkes and Christian crosse the refusal of Muslim girls to transfer their headscarves in school was undoubtedly the catalyst for the law, and debate in the legislature focused almost exclusively upon the headscarf cases.

The dispute revolv around a fundamental ideal of the French republic: la??cit?©. Although the conception of la??cit?© defies a precise definition,5 it embodies the constitutional principle of the State's neutrality.6 As President Jacques Chirac stated, la??cit?© "is at the heart of (the French) republican identity."7 La??cit?© strictly calls for a state that is at liberty from an official or exclusive religion; however, this freedom is commonly understood in France as an absence of religious expression in the public sphere. The constitutional principle of la??cit?©, which permits state neutrality (comparable to the American separation of house of worship and state), differs greatly from its perceived meaning among citizens and the management officials who use the idea to instinctively strive against one's right to manifest religious conviction in the public sphere. It is ofttimes said by Frenchmen that la??cit?© allows religion single in the private sphere.

This insight into France's disposition to confuse the State's neutrality with containment of religious expression in the public sphere nicely introduces my topic for today's address. The stage of toleration of religious expression manifested in the public sphere is related to the historical perception of what the public sphere means. In the case of France, the notion of public sphere explains on what account in many ways, the self understanding of the manifestation of public neutrality is more important than the manifestation of collective or individual religious expression.

For this reason, I first discuss in Part I the differences between in what manner Europe, especially France, and the United States define the public sphere. I then describe the place of religion in the public sphere in Europe-focusing primarily upon France-and in the United States. In Part II, I vie that both countries' perceptions of the place of religion in the public sphere are endangering freedom of religion. For instance, an unacknowledged on the other hand healthy civil religion in the United States limits religious freedom in the public sphere just as infallibly as strict adherence to la??cit?© limits religious freedom in France.8 In Part III, I present insights into how both Europe and the United States should adapt more [i]or[/i] less of their practices to guarantee freedom of religion more to the full Finally, Part IV offers a brief conclusion.

II. BACKGROUND

A. What Is the Public Sphere?

To address the place of religion in the public sphere requires us, above all, to define what we mean through the phrase "public sphere." Unfortunately, there is no legal definition of public sphere in any of our democratic constitutions.9 The public sphere is a rather broad and vague conception that political and juridical theorists use in order to mirror upon and to build a for the use of all societal organization.10 However, this universal does not convey the same meaning upon both sides of the Atlantic. For convenience, I will limit my comparison to the different understandings of the public sphere in Europe focusing primarily upon France, and in the United States.

The definitions of the public sphere in the United States and in Europe are similar at first glance: the public sphere is the organized and concretized public space of a given population. It is clearly separate from private space (also well organized and concretized), which allows individuals and families to live their religions privately. However, this perception of the belonging to all space is not exactly the same in Europe and in the United States, since the couple political entities have very different perceptions of religion and its particular place in society.

In the United States, sum of two units interconnected theories of the public sphere are particularly relevant. In the liberal tradition of democratic theorists, ranging from Alexis de Tocqueville11 to Harvard doctoral pupil Evan Charney,12 the public sphere has been viewed as the space for the use of all for all, where citizens can freely discuss and deliberate ideas, commit themselves to voluntary associative forms, and improve and direction the various levels of their for the use of all life. The second theory, espoused through more recent theorists like Hannah Arendt,13 Robert D Putnam,14 Jurgen Habermas,15 and Seyla Benhabib,16 locates the public sphere not with equal reason much in the legal and material organization of this space, as did the hellenic polis, but in civil society itself, mov by dint of a continuing deliberative and critical process17 While of that kind theories may resonate among the American citizenry, to Europeans these meditations reflect on a very high, conceptual horizontal the deeply liberal conscience of American society, whose citizens think of themselves naturally as actors in the for the use of all space.18