Is France Really Secular? Thoughts on Macron Attending Mass

Notre Dame de la Garde, Marseille

Americans will show surprise, and maybe distain before the French policy known as laïcité, literally “lay-ness”. It is not quite the same as secularization, which is “the process whereby religious thinking, practices and institutions lose social significance.”[1] As in America it is any official or government-sponsored establishment of religion that is prohibited (the First Amendment to the Constitution). Unlike the U.S., the lay-ness doctrine has been interpreted to proscribe extensively any appearance of an official endorsement of a particular religion. In 1962 the U. S. Supreme Court issued a decision which forbade state officials to compose an official school prayer or encourage reciting one in that place of learning. “Composing” and “reciting” are not quite as stringent as in France, which prohibits almost any sign of religion, including Muslim veils and even Roman Catholic earrings, in schools or in any public venue.

President Macron’s decision to attend a mass in Marseille has been met with considerable hostility from those who are most sensitive to lay-ness. But things are not crystal-clear. Macron is trying to raise money to restore church buildings (we all remember the dreadful fire in Notre Dame de Paris). His argument is not that he is establishing a particular religion but that he is respecting France’s “religious heritage”, which includes historic buildings. The state regularly subventions religious entities such as singing groups, pipe organs and Christian conscientious objectors.

We do not know exactly what are Macron’s personal convictions. We do know that he is heavily influenced by France’s leading Protestant philosopher, Paul Ricœur. Macron has taken pains to say he will not be at the mass as a Catholic nor will he be “practicing” religion. Most Americans do not balk at a chaplain to the Congress, a President who regularly attends mass, a Senator who is a practicing Mormon, the occasional Scripture quote on the courtroom wall, or a speech which ends “… may God bless America”. They do not consider this to be a state-establishment of religion.

There are important historical reasons for the development of laïcité. The Huguenots often argued for it, based on their view of Romans 13 which states that government exists to establish justice, not to endorse a particular religion (be it the author Paul’s Jewish heritage or his Christian faith). It should be said that one of their principal intentions was to keep Roman Catholicism at bay. Unfortunately, they went too far, especially by proclaiming government to be neutral. As one (Protestant) sociologist has argued, the claim to neutrality is not neutral! Laïcité is in fact a kind of religion.

It would appear that Macron’s decision fits within a reasonable view of lay-ness. But it would also appear that the pretense of neutrality must be exposed for what it is. Our seminary in Aix-en-Provence will help future ministers navigate these troubled waters. They will do so by careful biblical interpretation and by seeking the promised divine wisdom (James 1:5).

William Edgar
Professeur Associé Faculté Jean Calvin

[1] B. R. Wilson, Religion in Secular Society (1966).

Jazz in France

Louis Armstrong ~ Photo by Jean-Pierre Leloir

In his latest book, A Love Supreme: The Music of Jazz and the Hope of the Gospel, theologian and jazz pianist William Edgar argues that the music of jazz cannot be properly understood apart from the Christian gospel, which like jazz moves from deep lament to inextinguishable joy. Jazz deeply resonates with the hope that is ultimately found in the good news of Jesus Christ. Below he reflects on the special affinity for jazz in France, which provides a unique opportunity and context in which to share the Good News.

Philip Barackman
Trustee of The Huguenot Fellowship

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Aimer le ‘Swingue’ 

For reasons not always easy to identify French people, most of them, love jazz music. When we lived there, jazz clubs and jazz festivals were the rage. Gospel choirs would guaranty large audiences. When “Sister Act” came out, featuring Oh Happy Day, hundreds of church choirs embraced the song. When Monty Alexander comes to France the concert halls are full and often wonderfully boisterous.

The history of jazz in France goes way back. During World War II an American military band headed by James Reese Europe, became wildly popular throughout France. Jim Europe would take local folk songs and turn them into “ragtime” the earliest name for jazz. The larger-than-life Hugues Panassié founded Le Hot Club de France which is still going today. Its purpose is to foster jazz music and welcome American musicians. He and the club were among the first to identify the great Louis Armstrong and invite him to France to give concerts.

The Hot Club became entrenched in its conservative views, opposing New Orleans style to modern jazz and bebop. Somewhat typically of Gallic certainty, a mini war ensued over the virtues or deficits of modern jazz. The pro side broke away and founded their own movement. Why such strong feelings? Personalities were involved. But so were convictions about how jazz works. The accusation formulated against modern jazz was that it doesn’t swing!

Despite this tempest in a teapot, jazz continued to flourish in France. Several prominent musicians, the most prominent of which was Sidney Bechet, the soprano saxophonist who composed the classic Petite Fleur. Musicians such as Duke Ellington, Lester Young and Miles Davis found a warm welcome in Paris. Rightly or wrongly, black artists sensed the absence of racism and degradation they experienced in America. France has always boasted of a more tolerant attitude toward racial minorities, though their attitude toward North Africans might belie that.

Somewhat less tangibly, jazz carried with it a certain exotic aura, which appealed to the French spirit. It also represented freedom, which they yearned for in the dark inter war years. To get a good idea of how jazz fits into French culture one should consult the photography of Jean-Pierre Leloir. His album, Jazz Images sensitively depicts the French love affair with this music. Leloir delicately illustrates the tragedies as well as the triumphs of jazz in France. For example, Leloir shot the heart-breaking singer Billie Holiday in November, 1958, when she was forbidden to sing in New York clubs because of drug charges. She died in July, 1959.

There are significant French jazz musicians and orchestras. Perhaps the best-known is Michel Legrand, who wrote the popular Summer of ’42. When we lived there, I had the joy of playing with some marvelous musicians. Many of them were trained academically, which meant they were quite competent if at times lacking in the earthiness typical of real jazz. No doubt it is impossible to develop as a jazz artist if you have not somehow worked in the trenches.

Our little trio, Renewal developed a program which presented the gospel using jazz music as an illustration. Our matchless vocalist, Ruth Naomi Floyd, never failed to move audiences with her magnificent voice. In a day when French people are not likely to respond to typical evangelistic outreach, they respond to jazz.

William Edgar
Professeur Associé FJC

This Time It Was Different

Lt.-Col. Arnaud Beltrame

The news from France, this time Trèbes, was depressingly familiar. A jihadist terror attack, again. A radicalized Muslim man known to police on a rampage, again. Civilians about their daily business under siege, again. It happens a few times a year, and the president of France, and the French security services, and the friends of France abroad issued their customary statements, again. 

Except that this time it was not the same. Something different happened amid the terrorist routine in Trèbes. Lt.-Col. Arnaud Beltrame of the French Gendarmerie nationale was on the scene at the supermarket in Trèbes. The terrorist had already killed two people, and was holding hostages inside. Beltrame was the right man. Second-in-command of the region’s police, he was a decorated veteran of the French special forces and esteemed by all as the best of the Gendarmerie.

The lieutenant-colonel then offered to take the place of a female hostage. It was an act of both outstanding courage and tactical brilliance. The jihadi agreed to the swap, and so Beltrame was able to draw close, leaving his mobile phone on so that the police outside could hear what was going on. When they stormed the supermarket, Beltrame was stabbed and shot by the jihadi, and died of his wounds the next day.

His widow noted that he died the day before Palm Sunday, when Holy Week begins. In these holiest of all days for Christians, the passion, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ is recalled, made present again. All that was somehow made present in the death of Arnaud Beltrame.

His widow insisted that his sacrifice could not be understood apart from his Christian faith, nourished by the monks at the nearby Abbey of Lagrasse. It was one of those monks who attended to Beltrame in hospital, administering the last sacraments before he died.

We have not heard the account of the woman whose life was spared when Beltrame took her place. When her Friday morning began, she did not think that she would need a saviour that day. She was going to buy groceries. But she found herself held hostage by a murderous terrorist. And she needed to be saved.

We might imagine that she desperately thought about how that might happen. Might the jihadi get distracted so that she could make a run for it? Might the police outside manage to take him out with a sniper’s bullet? Might the other shoppers somehow subdue him? Did she imagine that deliverance would come from a member of the Gendarmerie offering to take her place? That her mortal peril would be relieved by Arnaud Beltrame himself assuming that same peril? That she would not go to an early grave because he was willing to do so?

Did she think, even for a moment, that the man who was ready to kill her would let her go, because Lt.-Col. Beltrame had come? What did the jihadi say to her? Perhaps: “You may go; he has come.”

You can see why Arnaud Beltrame’s wife, mourning her husband, was thinking about Holy Week. Is that not what happened then, long ago in Jerusalem?

That is what Christians mark on Good Friday. A terrible estrangement between God and man had been wrought by sin, and the wages of sin are death, as St. Paul teaches. And so because of sin we die.

Can that estrangement be overcome? Can the debt of our transgression be repaid? Can all that sin has destroyed be restored? After the fall of man, Christian theology considers the human race to be held hostage as it were, in mortal peril because the reality of death cannot be overcome.

Then comes the One who can overcome. Jesus is man, the faithful believe, but also God. And the hostages are freed, not freed by overwhelming power, but because there is One to take their place.

On Good Friday, Christians look to the Cross and hear just that: “You may go, He has come.”

The good news of a Saviour is only good news to those who know they need saving. On that Friday morning in Trèbes, the people did not think they needed a saviour until they needed one. On that Friday morning in Jerusalem, the people did not think they needed a Saviour, even though one was at hand.

Christians celebrate the passion, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ because it means that a Saviour has come. Holy Week — whether in Jerusalem or France or Canada — is a reminder that the world needs one.

From Canada's National Post

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For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die— but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. ~ Romans 5:7-8

While Europe Slept

"Europe cannot remember who she is unless she remembers that she is the child not only of the ancient Greek and Roman worlds and the Enlightenment but also of Judaism and Christianity—the child, therefore, of Catholicism and the Reformation. If Europe abandons her religious heritage, the idea of Europe dies. And Europe has abandoned, or forgotten, her religious heritage. Europe is now “post-Christian.” What does this mean? What does it portend?" ~ Jean Bethke Elshtain, the late American ethicist and political philosopher

Although Elshtain "...speak(s) here not of faith but of sustaining cultural memory...", her 2009 essay While Europe Slept is a thoughtful analysis of Europe's floundering self-identify and cultural malaise.

The Faculté Jean Calvin (Aix-en-Provence, France) is one of a few points of light in Europe that not only help to retain its fading memory of the Reformation; but most importantly, trains and prepares those who minister in calling Europe back to the Faith of the Reformation.

The Huguenot Fellowship's primary mission is to support the Faculté in order to keep its light shining brightly in the spiritual twilight of France. 

Please share this post with friends who may have a burden for the spiritual renewal of France and Europe.

Click here to read Elshtain's entire essay While Europe Slept.