Secularism is an Illusory Defense against the Islamist Will to Conquer

This essay appeared in Le Figaro on December 8, 2020, and this translation by Russell A. Berman is published with permission of the author.^[1] Hyperlinks are from the original, while footnotes have been added by the translator. Translator’s comments are here.

In the face of a very real Islamist threat that has led to violence and which the proposed law on “separatism” attempts to address, it is interesting to try to raise the level of the debate. It is necessary to inquire calmly into a question that worries those thinkers least inclined to emotional reactions. In contrast to a Christianity drained of its former ambitions, why is it that Islam has not given up its virulent proselytism and instead appears to pose a threat for the future?

This is a threat that de Gaulle already recognized in one of his extraordinary communications to Alain Peyrefitte, when he declared: “We are after all a European people of the white race, Greco-Latin culture, and the Christian religion.” And he considered Algerian independence necessary to prevent his village from being one day renamed “Colombey-the-two-Mosques”—which does not at all mean that he intended to exclude other “races” or religions.^[2] He understood France too well to endorse a narrow or xenophobic vision of it.

To clarify our situation: it is useful to review the course of our history and that of the religious beliefs that have made us what we are. In his works on Virgil and Ovid, Xavier Darcos^[3] shows us the conditions in which Christianity was born: the vacuum, the lassitude, and the spiritual exhaustion that allowed it to enter Roman consciousness gradually. It spread by taking advantage of the Romans’ slow disaffection from their heaven, their Olympus, populated by cruel, fantastic, and poetic gods, a mythology in which that great people had once found its historical legitimacy, its raison d’être, as well as its aspiration for the supernatural. Undermined by disbelief, this religious terrain was ripe for being abandoned and exchanged for a different belief that would respond to different aspirations. No society, no matter how advanced, can do without the sacred for very long. Only religions can give an answer to the question of the finality of life.

In the course of three centuries, Christianity would conquer the Roman world. Even if our civilization has hardly any points in common with that ancient Rome subjugated by Christianity, this example demonstrates the strange process by which one religion insidiously replaces another. For one must admit that contemporary Christianity, and Catholicism in particular, is under stress, not only in its practice but in its very existence. It is not an accident if, in the wake of Renan who lamented that for Christianity, once triumphal, nothing is left except the perfume of an empty vase, René Rémond^[4] and Jean Delumeau^[5] have written books expressing their fear: “Will Christianity die out?”

These two Catholics inquired with foresight into the dechristianization underway in the modern world, the unraveling of what had been the foundation of political power for nearly twenty centuries, its principles of public morality, and its unequalled model of culture. And it is true that, whether we like it or not, whether we are believers or not, we have all been shaped by this model, so highly valued by many, but so detestable for others. Voltaire and Nietzsche were its highest detractors, Hitler and Stalin the lowest. Other authors, such as Marcel Gauchet,^[6] have enumerated the concurrent factors leading to disbelief, including Protestantism, considered as “a religion of the exit from religion.”

The result is a distraught world, less and less guided by Christianity, which is showing signs of fatigue and even uncontrolled deviations, as G. K .Chesterton worried, facing “so many formerly Christian virtues that have become foolish.” A world turned upside down by technological and genetic change: a new global scientism brings advantages but also a destabilization with anarchist tendencies inherited from Rousseauism and bizarrely resurrected by the 68ers. All this leads to churches where the faithful, fewer in numbers, haunt the vaults that no longer resonate with the cantatas of Bach and Handel, where priests, despite the many real exceptions, seem to have become weary and fatalistic. Sometimes with jeans underneath their surplice, they spread the divine word with commentaries inspired less by Bossuet,^[7] Massillon,^[8] or Lamennais^[9] than by the televised news, which, they believe, is more in line with the concerns of their flock.

All this produces gloomy ceremonies, poor masses, and sermons that are spiritually weak. Given these conditions of liturgical impoverishment, can the mass still make one believe in a Christianity infused with miracles? What of Christ’s injunction: “I am the truth, the way and the life”—can it still be heard? For instead of strengthening itself spiritually through the timelessness and universality of the Gospel and instead of maintaining its liturgy through the masterworks of the arts, music, and song, Catholicism—under the influence of a Jansenist progressivism—has abandoned all its traditional pomp, while gaining nothing in return.

Lost in a busy world, the clergy—like the rest of us—seems even to have abandoned its great examples of visible charity, from Saint Vincent de Paul^[10] to Abbot Pierre,^[11] glowing with a beautiful light, but instead now leave the care for the poor to Coluche and his Restos of the Heart.^[12] So it is not without great sadness that one watches this slow disaffection in France from the Church, which was once the spine of our society, even more, of our civilization for twenty centuries, that inspired our sensibilities and still rules in so many hearts, desolated and anxious about its decline. Many faithful are asking how to reconcile their still ardent faith, their exemplary dedication, and their compassion for their brethren in the East with a Church gripped by doubt.

The party of secularism, which has fought against clericalism and religious superstition, would like to replace this crisis-ridden structure of Catholicism, which it blames for so many evils. In the midst of its battle against the sectarian waves of fanatic Islamism, it would like to rid us of these puerile beliefs which it views as religious, replacing superstition with reason, faith with atheism, and the belief in the beyond with the plenitude of pleasure here below. On the level of the individual, such a choice is fully respectable. However a longer discussion is necessary if one wants to unify a society in need of a solid metaphysical reference and an aspiration for transcendence.

Napoleon understood this when he restored Catholicism, even though he himself was agnostic. The Concordat remains alive in the departments of the Alsace and Moselle, without a problem for anyone.^[13] Secularism—or rather the struggle for secularism, to be more precise—no matter how worthy its proponents, and as rigid as ever in their efforts to expose Islamism, will never have the ability to replace religion: secularism is a dogma as cold as an administrative ruling, as reasonable as medical advice that only speaks to the intellect and not to the heart, as unattractive as a room at the city hall or the speech of a minor bureaucrat.

In those tragedies and misfortunes that all men and women undergo, when hearts bleed and despair abounds, what kind of comfort does secularism provide? And at the moment of death, what hope? Or ultimately, at the final limit, do these dogmatic adherents, who have participated with many others in the erosion of Catholicism, truly believe that they alone will be able to block the spread of Islam? How can they not be aware of their own spiritual weakness? Holy Communion is not easily applicable to the grand figures of republicanism. What forgiveness or metaphysical comfort can be expected from the ghosts of little Father Combes^[14] or Berthelot?^[15] And in great festivities, no cult of the republican icons in their cradles, no matter how graceful, even in a manger between an ox and a donkey, will help us recreate the magic of Christmas.

More seriously: how do the proponents of a secularism, pure and hard, with all their pride as freethinkers believe for an instant that they alone, with their panegyrics to Jules Ferry^[16] and Jaures,^[17] will be able to dam the Islamist tsunami that, by way of both persuasion and violence, is threatening to win out? For beyond the horrible images of fanaticism and barbaric violence provided by the Islamist crimes, and the social principles so unappealing to our European eyes, spoiled as we have been by humanistic and democratic principles, there is also a discrete spiritual seduction of Islam, especially in Sufism that has appealed to souls as tormented and taken by the absolute as Isabelle Eberhardt,^[18] Louis Massignon,^[19] his friend Father de Foucauld,^[20] and more recently the singer Barbara^[21] or Gérard Depardieu,^[22] to only cite the most famous cases. This appeal is echoed in the testament of Christian de Chergé, the prior of the martyrs of Tibéhirine,^[23] which points to a spiritual convergence by way of Sufism.

That is where we can return to our concern about a great religious inversion. To be sure, this is not a matter of a few years, but perhaps in thirty or forty years, when the demographics of the Muslim world in France will have grown exponentially, and when we will have gradually been trapped in a world without horizon, ultramaterialistic, shaped by the multinationals and nourished by consumption, trivia, and pornography. In addition, as history teaches, periods of extreme liberty bordering on anarchy can often lead to a desire for submission. For these reasons, Islam may appear as a moral issue and an opportunity for a spiritual life for all those disappointed with Christianity or no longer convinced by it, even without themselves adhering to secularist tenets. That will be a different revolution, a complete restructuring of our values and our institutions.

Echoing this new debate on the consequences of secularism, one cannot help thinking of the famous exchange when René Viviani,^[24] in 1905, exclaimed in the Palais Bourbon: “We have ripped human consciousness away from belief . . . , with a magnificent gesture we have extinguished lights in the sky that will never be rekindled.” The Deputy Paul Lerolle^[25] responded: “And those stars that you are boasting of having extinguished, are you sure that by destroying them you have not added to the number of the unfortunate to whom you have denied consolation and hope?”

These stars, the legacy of a Judeo-Christianity not at all incompatible with secularism—do we not have an interest in making them shine rather than insisting on snuffing them out, not only for the sake of belief, which is a matter for the individual conscience, but in defense of the cultural and spiritual architecture that they support? Otherwise we run the risk of seeing Islam rekindle them, to its advantage.

Notes

1. Jean-Marie Rouart, “Le laïcisme est un rempart illusoire face à la volonté de conquête de l’islamisme,” Le Figaro, December 8, 2020.

2. Colombey-les-deux-Eglises (Colombey-the-two-churches) was the home of Charles de Gaulle.

3. Xavier Darcos (1947–), former Minister of Labor, scholar, and since 2013 member of the French Academy.

4. René Remond (1918–2007), French historian and political scientist, elected to the French Academy in 1998. Works include Le nouvel anti-christianisme (2005).

5. Jean Delumeau (1923–2020), French historian whose works include Le Christianisme va-t-il mourir? (1977)

6. Marcel Gauchet (1946–), French historian whose works include (in English) The Disenchantment of the World: A Political History of Religion (1997).

7. Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet (1627-1704), French theologian.

8. Jean Baptiste Massillon (1663–1742), French bishop and preacher.

9. Hugues Felicité Robert de Lamennais (1782–1854), French priest and philosopher.

10. Vincent de Paul (1581–1660), French Catholic priest renowned for his dedication to helping the poor.

11. Abbé Pierre (1912–2007), born Henri Grues, French priest, member of the Resistance during the Occupation, founded the Emmaus Movement in 1948 to aid the poor and refugees.

12. The Restos du Coeur is a secular non-profit, founded in 1985 by the actor Coluche, to support the needy.

13. In the Concordat of 1801, Napoleonic France recognized the role of the Roman Catholic Church, effectively ending the antagonism between state and church that had prevailed since the Revolution. The Concordat was terminated by the Law of 1905, which formally separated church and state, establishing the principle of secularism or laicité. At that historical moment, however, Alsace had been incorporated into the German Empire, so the Concordat remained in force there, and its validity was reaffirmed by a decision of the French Constitutional Council in 2013.

14. Emile Combes (1835–1921), a French politician who became minister of public education in 1895, promoting a strongly anti-clerical policy, paving the way to the Law of 1905.

15. Marcellin Berthelot (1827–1907), a French organic chemist and an adamant critic of religion, especially in his Science et Morale (1897) and Science et Libre Pensée (1905).

16. Jules Ferry (1832–1893), French politician and prime minister during the 1880s, promoted laicism as well as colonialism.

17. Jean Jaures (1859–1914), leading French socialist politician, assassinated on the eve of the First World War.

18. Isabelle Eberhardt (1877–1904), a Swiss author and traveler who moved to Algeria in 1897 and converted to Islam.

19. Louis Massignon (1883-1962), Catholic scholar of Islam and proponent of Catholic–Muslim relations.

20. Charles de Foucauld (1858–1916), French army officer, later Catholic priest living among the Tuareg of Algeria where he was assassinated in 1916. He is viewed as a martyr by the Church and is in the process of canonization.

21. Monique Andrée Serf (1930–1997), with the stage name “Barbara,” a French singer and convert to Islam.

22. Gérard Depardieu (1948–). French actor.

23. Charles-Marie Christian de Chergé (1937–1996), a French Cistercian monk and an advocate for Christian–Muslim understanding, served at the Abbey of Our Lady of Atlas at Tibherine, Algeria, where he and six other monks were kidnapped on March 26, 1996, and subsequently beheaded. He was beatified in 2018.

24. René Viviani (1863–1925), French socialist politician of the Third Republic, eventually prime minister in the first year of the First World War. Born in French Algeria, he avowed anti-Semitism as “the best form of social struggle.”

25. Paul Lerolle (1846–1912), French lawyer and politician, a leader of the Liberal Popular Alliance.