Religion in France
The majority of the religious population in France identifies as Christian. Catholicism is the most prominent denomination in France, but has long lost the state religion status it held prior to the 1789 French Revolution and during various non-republican regimes of the 19th century, including the Restoration, the July Monarchy and the Second French Empire.
Religion in France is diverse, which could be attributed to the country's adherence to
The major religions practiced in
Demographics
Chronological statistics
Note that these are from different sources and likely have different methodologies.
Religious group |
Population % 1986[4] |
Population % 1987[5] |
Population % 1994[4] |
Population % 2001[5] |
Population % 2004[6] |
Population % 2006[7] |
Population % 2010[5] |
Population % 2012[8] |
Population % 2016[9] |
ages 18-59 % 2019-2020[10] |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Christianity | 82% | 76% | 69% | 71% | 66.2% | 66.1% | 67% | 59% | 51.1% | - |
–Catholicism | 81% | 75% | 67% | 69% | 64.3% | 64.0% | 64% | 56% | - | 29% |
–Protestantism | 1% | 1% | 2% | 2% | 1.9% | 2.1% | 3% | 3% | - | - |
–Other and unaffiliated Christians | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - |
Islam | - | - | - | - | 4.3% | 3.0% | - | - | 5.6% | 10% |
Judaism | - | - | - | - | 0.6% | 0.6% | - | - | 0.8% | |
Other religions | 2.5% | 3% | 8% | 6% | 1.9% | 2.3% | 5% | 8% | 2.5% | 10% |
Not religious | 15.5% | 21% | 23% | 23% | 27.0% | 27.6% | 28% | 32% | 39.6% | 51% |
Survey data
In 2015, the Eurobarometer, a survey funded by the European Union, found that Christianity was the religion of 54.3% of the respondents, with Catholicism being the main denomination with 47.8%, followed by other Christians with 4.1% (Protestants with 1.8% and the Eastern Orthodox with 0.6%). Muslims were found to comprise 3.3%, Jews were 0.4%, and members of the other religions were 1.6%. Unaffiliated people were 40.4%; 22.8% declared to be atheists, and 17.6% declared to be agnostics.[11]
In 2017, the Pew Research Center found in their Global Attitudes Survey that 54.2% of the French regarded themselves as Christians, with 47.4% belonging to the Catholic Church, 3.6% being unaffiliated Christians, 2.2% being Protestants, and 1.0% being Eastern Orthodox. The 37.8% of unaffiliated people were divided into 24.8% atheists, 8.2% of nothing in particular, and 4.8% of agnostics. Muslims made up 5.0% of the population, Jews made up 0.4%, and members of other religions made up 1.4%. 1.1% were either undecided or didn't answer the question.[12]
In May 2019, the Eurobarometer conducted a survey in France. It was published in September 2019 within Special Eurobarometer 493, showing the following outcome: Christians made up 47% of the population, with Catholics making up 41%, Orthodox Christians making up 2%, Protestants making up 2%, and other Christians making up 2% each. Muslims were found to be 5%, Jews 1%, and Buddhists 1%. Atheists (21%) and nonbelievers (or agnostics) (19%) made up 40% of unaffiliated people. People of other religions made up 5% of the population, while those who refused to answer made up 1%.[13]
Source
(year) |
Christianity | Christian denominations | No religion | Other religions | Unanswered | ||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Catholicism | Protestants | Orthodox | Other denominations | Islam | Judaism | Buddhism | Other religions | ||||
Eurobarometer (2019)[14] | 47% | 41% | 2% | 2% | 2% | 40% | 5% | 1% | 1% | 5% | 1% |
Observatoire de la laïcité (2018)[15] | 52% | 48% | 3% | 1% | 34% | 3% | 1% | 2% | 1% | 7% | |
Eurobarometer (2018)[16] | 54.9% | 49.9% | 2.0% | 0.8% | 2.2% | 37.9% | 4.9% | 0.7% | 0.7% | 0.9% | |
Ofre, Institut Randstad (2018) [17] | 51.5% | 49.5% | 2% | 37.5% | 8.5% | 2% | 1% | ||||
Ipsos survey (2017) [18] | 61.0% | 57.5% | 3.1% | 0.4% | 35.0% | 3.0% | 1.0% | ||||
Pew Research Center Western Europe survey (2017)[19] | 63.6% | 59.4% | 2.3% | 1.9% | 28.3% | 7.5% | 0.2% | ||||
Pew Research Center Global Attitudes (2017)[12] | 54.2% | 47.4% | 2.2% | 1.0% | 3.6% | 37.8% | 5.0% | 0.4% | 1.4% | 1.1% | |
IFOP, Institut Montaigne (2016)[9]
|
51.1% | 51.1% | 39.6% | 5.6% | 0.8% | 2.5% | 0.4% | ||||
Eurobarometer (2015)[11] | 54.3% | 47.8% | 1.8% | 0.6% | 4.1% | 40.4% | 3.3% | 0.4% | 0.7% | 0.9% |
Religion among the youth
Religion by country |
---|
Religion portal |
According to the European Value Survey, between 2010 and 2012, 47% of French youth declared themselves Christians, while according to an
A 2010 Pew Research Center survey found that 60% of French people (7 million) between the ages of 15 and 29 identified themselves as Christians.[22]
In 2018, a study by the French polling agency OpinionWay, which was paid for by three Catholic institutions, found that 41% of French adults between the ages of 18 and 30 said they were Catholics, 3% said they were Protestants, 8% said they were Muslims, 1% said they were Buddhists, 1% said they were Jews, and 3% said they were part of other religions.
52 percent of those who believed in God thought that his existence was either certain or likely, 28% thought it was unlikely, and 19% thought it was impossible.[23]
In the same year, a study was done by the Benedict XVI Centre for Religion and Society at
The information came from two questions: "Do you think of yourself as a member of any particular religion or denomination?" was asked to the whole sample, and "Which one?" was asked to the sample that said "Yes."[25]
Pew Research says that the average number of children born to non-Muslims in Europe (but not specifically in France) is 1.6, while the average number of children born to Muslims is 2.6. This is why there are so many more young Muslims than other groups.[26]
History
France guarantees freedom of religion as a constitutional right, and the government generally respects this right in practice. Because of a long history of anticlericalism, the state cut ties with the Catholic Church in 1905 and made a strong promise to keep the public sector free of religion.[27]
Catholicism as a state religion
Catholicism is the largest religion in France. During the pre-1789
French Wars of Religion (1562–1598)
A strong Protestant population resided in France, primarily of
For the first time, the state considered
Post–Edict of Nantes (1598–1789)
The 1598 Edict also granted the Protestants places of safety (places de sûreté), military strongholds such as La Rochelle (for which the king paid 180,000 écus a year), along with a further 150 emergency forts (places de refuge), to be maintained at the Huguenots' own expense. Such an innovative act of toleration stood virtually alone in a Europe (except for the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth) where standard practice forced the subjects of a ruler to follow whatever religion that the ruler formally adopted – the application of the principle of cuius regio, eius religio.
Religious conflicts resumed at the end of the 17th century, when
The revocation returned France to a state of affairs similar to that of virtually every other European country of the period, in which only the state religion was tolerated. Europe's experiment with religious tolerance was effectively over for the time being. In practice, the revocation caused France to suffer a
French Revolution
The French Revolution stripped the Catholic Church of most of its wealth, power, and influence.
The
In 1793, the government established a secular
Religious minorities—Protestants and Jews—were granted full civil and political rights, which represented a shift towards a more secular government to some, and an attack on the Catholic Church to others.[33] New religions and philosophies were allowed to compete with Catholicism. The introduction of the prominent cults during the revolutionary period – the Cult of Reason and the Cult of the Supreme Being – responded to the belief that religion and politics should be seamlessly fused together. This is a shift from the original Enlightenment ideals of the Revolution that advocated for a secular government with tolerance for various religious beliefs.[38] While Maximilien Robespierre favored a religious foundation to the Republic, he maintained a hard stance against Catholicism because of its association with corruption and the counterrevolution.[33]
The cults sought to erase the old ways of religion by closing churches, confiscating church bells, and implementing a new Republican Calendar that excluded any days for religious practice. Many churches were converted into Temples of Reason. The Cult of Reason was first to de-emphasize the existence of God, and instead focus on deism, featuring not the sacred, divine, nor eternal, but the natural, earthy, and temporal existence.[38] To tie the church and the state together, the cults transformed traditional religious ideology into politics. The Cult of the Supreme Being used religion as political leverage. Robespierre accused political opponents of hiding behind God and using religion to justify their oppositional stance against the Revolution. It was a shift in ideology that allowed for the cult to use the new deistic beliefs for political momentum.[38]
Following the Thermidorian Reaction the persecutions of Catholic clergy ceased and the role of new cults practically ended.
Napoleon and concordat with the Vatican
The Catholic Church was badly hurt by the Revolution.[31] By 1800 it was poor, dilapidated and disorganized, with a depleted and aging clergy. The younger generation had received little religious instruction, and was unfamiliar with traditional worship. However, in response to the external pressures of foreign wars, religious fervor was strong, especially among women.[39]
Bourbon Restoration (1814-1830)
With the Bourbon Restoration the Catholic Church again became the state religion of France. Other religions were tolerated, but Catholicism was favored financially and politically. Its lands and financial endowments were not returned, but the government now paid salaries and maintenance costs for church activities. The bishops had regained control of Catholic affairs and of education. While the aristocracy before the Revolution did not place a high priority on religious doctrine or practice, the decades of exile created an alliance of throne and altar. The royalists who returned were much more devout, and much more aware of their need for a close alliance with the Church. They had discarded skepticism and now promoted the wave of Catholic religiosity that was sweeping Europe, with a new regard to the Virgin Mary, the Saints, and popular religious rituals such as saying the rosary. Devotionalism was far stronger in rural areas, and much less noticeable in Paris and the other cities. The population of 32 million included about 680,000 Protestants, and 60,000 Jews. They were tolerated. Anti-clericalism of the sort promoted by the Enlightenment and writers such as Voltaire had not disappeared, but it was in recession and repressed by the ultra-conservative Bourbon government.[41]
At the elite level, the intellectual climate changed dramatically from the intellectually oriented classicism to emotionally based romanticism. A book by François-René de Chateaubriand entitled Génie du christianisme ("The Genius of Christianity") (1802) had an enormous influence in reshaping French literature and intellectual life. It emphasized the power of religion in creating European high culture. Chateaubriand's book did more than any other single work to restore the credibility and prestige of Christianity in intellectual circles and launched a fashionable rediscovery of the Middle Ages and their Christian civilisation. The revival was by no means confined to an intellectual elite, however, but was evident in the real, if uneven, rechristianisation of the French countryside.[42]
Napoleon III (1848-1870)
Napoleon III strongly supported Catholic interests, financing the church and supporting Catholic missionaries in the emerging French Empire. His primary goal was the conciliation of religious and anti-religious interests in France to avoid the conflicts that took place during the revolution and that reappeared after he lost power.[43][44]
In terms of foreign policy, the French army stopped the anti-clerical Kingdom of Italy from taking full control of Rome after it was formed in 1860 and took over parts of the papal states. In Paris, the conservative Gallican bishops helped the Emperor control the French people, while liberal Catholic intellectuals wanted to use the Church as an instrument of reform. A problem arose with Pope
Third Republic (1870–1940)
Throughout the lifetime of the Third Republic (1870–1940), there were battles over the status of the
Republicans feared that religious orders in control of schools—especially the
The early anti-Catholic laws were largely the work of republican Jules Ferry in 1882. Religious instruction was pushed out of all schools, and religious orders were forbidden to teach in them. Funds were appropriated from religious schools to build more state schools. Later in the century, other laws passed by Ferry's successors further weakened the Church's position in French society. Civil marriage became the only legal one, divorce was introduced, and chaplains were removed from the army.[47]
When
1905: Separation of Church and State
Radicals (as they called themselves) achieved their main goals in 1905: they repealed Napoleon's
A
For historical reasons, this situation is still current in
Religious buildings built prior to 1905 at taxpayers' expense are retained by the local or national government, and may be used at no expense by religious organisations. As a consequence, most Catholic churches, Protestant temples, and Jewish synagogues are owned and maintained by the government but are assigned by the government to their respective religious communities for "legal, exclusive, free, perpetual use."[53] The government, since 1905, has been prohibited from funding any post-1905 religious edifice, and thus religions must build and support all new religious buildings at their own expense. Some local governments de facto subsidise prayer rooms as part of greater "cultural associations".
Recent tensions
An ongoing topic of controversy is whether the separation of Church and State should be weakened so that the government would be able to subsidise Muslim prayer rooms and the training of imams. Advocates of such measures, such as Nicolas Sarkozy at times, declare that they would encourage the Muslim population to better integrate into the fabric of French society. Opponents contend that the state should not fund religions.[citation needed] Furthermore, the state ban on wearing conspicuous religious symbols, such as the Islamic female headscarf, in public schools has alienated some French Muslims, provoked minor street protests and drawn some international criticism.[citation needed]
In the late 1950s after the end of the Algerian war, hundreds of thousands of Muslims, including some who had supported France (
American University professor C. Schneider says:
For the next three convulsive weeks, riots spread from suburb to suburb, affecting more than three hundred towns....Nine thousand vehicles were torched, hundreds of public and commercial buildings destroyed, four thousand rioters arrested, and 125 police officers wounded.[57]
Traditional interpretations say the riots were spurred by radical Muslims or unemployed youth. Another view states that the riots reflected broader problem of racism and police violence in France.[57]
In March 2012, a Muslim radical named Mohammed Merah shot three French soldiers and four Jewish citizens, including children in Toulouse and Montauban.
In January 2015, the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo, that had ridiculed Muhammad, and a Jewish grocery store came under attack from radicalized Muslims who had been born and raised in the Paris region. World leaders rallied to Paris to show their support for free speech. Analysts agree that the episode had a profound impact on France. The New York Times summarized the ongoing debate:
So as France grieves, it is also faced with profound questions about its future: How large is the radicalized part of the country's Muslim population, the largest in Europe? How deep is the rift between France's values of secularism, of individual, sexual and religious freedom, of freedom of the press and the freedom to shock, and a growing Muslim conservatism that rejects many of these values in the name of religion?[58]
Religions
Christianity
Christianity is the largest group of religions of France, but has recently stopped being a majority of the overall population. According to a survey held by Institut français d'opinion publique (Ifop) for the centre-right Institut Montaigne think-tank, 51.1% of the total population of France was Christian in 2016.[9] The following year, a survey by Ipsos focused on Protestants and based on 31,155 interviews found that 57.5% of the total population of France declared to be Catholic and 3.1% declared to be Protestant.[59]
In 2016, Ipsos Global Trends, a multi-nation survey held by Ipsos and based on approximately 1,000 interviews, found that Christianity is the religion of 45% of the working-age, internet connected population of France; 42% stated they were Catholic, 2% stated that they were Protestants, and 1% declared to belong to any Orthodox church.[60]
In 2019, the Eurobarometer, a survey funded by the European Union, found that Christianity was the religion of 47% of the French, with Catholicism being the main denomination with 41%, followed by Orthodox Christian, Protestants and other Christians with 2% each one.[13]
France is home to a number of Marian shrines, notably the Cathedrale Notre-Dame de Chartres in
Islam
A 2016 survey held by Institut Montaigne and Ifop found that 5.6% of the French population had an Islamic background, while 5.3% declared they were Muslims by faith. According to the same survey 84.9% of surveyed people who had at least one Muslim parent said were Muslims, 3.4% were Christians, 10.0% were not religious and 1.3% belonged to other religions.[9]
According to Pew Research, in 2050 France will be 12.7% Muslim in the zero migration scenario (no migration to or from Europe), 17.4% in the medium migration scenario (regular migration continues and refugee flows cease), or 18% in the high migration scenario (2014 to mid-2016 refugee inflow patterns continue as well as regular migration).[63]
Judaism
In 2016, 0.8% of the total population of France, or about 535,000 people, were religious Jews.[9] In the 21st century, France has the largest Jewish population in Europe and the third-largest Jewish population in the world (after Israel and the United States).[64]
Jewish presence in France is documented since the early Middle Ages. France was a center of Jewish learning in the Middle Ages, but persecution increased as the Middle Ages wore on, including multiple expulsions and returns. During the late 18th-century French Revolution, France was the first country in Europe to emancipate its Jewish population. Antisemitism nonetheless persisted despite legal equality, manifested for instance in the Dreyfus affair of the late 19th century.
During
but a much higher percentage of the foreign Jewish refugees who had more recently arrived to France were deported and killed.The majority of French Jews in the 21st century are
Buddhism
As of the 2000s, Buddhism in France was estimated to have between 1 million (Ministry of the Interior) strict adherents and 5 million people influenced by Buddhist doctrines,
In 2012, the European headquarters of the Fo Guang Shan monastic order opened in France, near Paris. It was the largest Buddhist temple in Europe at that time.[71] The Plum Village Tradition school of Buddhism was developed in France with the Plum Village Monastery located in the Dordogne.[72][73]
Hinduism
Though being in very small number, the
Paganism
The more identitary and reconstructionist Pagan movements are the majority and are represented by
All Pagan movements place great emphasis on the divinity of nature as a primary source of
Many Pagans hold that different lands (and/or
While the Pagan community has tremendous variety in political views spanning the whole of the political spectrum, environmentalism is often a common feature.[87]
Other religions
Groups such as
According to the French sociologist
Buddhists.According to the 2005 Association of Religion Data Archives data there were close to 4,400 Baháʼís in France.[90]
According to the 2007 edition of the Quid, other notable religious minorities included the New Apostolic Church (20,000), the Universal White Brotherhood (20,000), Sukyo Mahikari (15,000–20,000), the New Acropolis (10,000), the Universal Alliance (1,000), and the Grail Movement (950).[91]
-
Statue of aChinese goddess Shui Wei Sheng Niang during a procession for the Lunar New Yearin Paris.
-
Antoinist temple of Tours, Indre-et-Loire.
Controversies and incidents
Growth of Islam and conflict with laïcité
In Paris and the surrounding Île-de-France region, French Muslims tend to be more educated and religious, and the vast majority of them consider themselves loyal to France.[92][93] Among Muslims in Paris in the early 2010s, 77% disagreed when asked whether violence is an acceptable moral response for a noble cause or not; 73% said that they were loyal to France; and 18% believed homosexuality to be acceptable.[92]
In 2015, there were 2,500 mosques in France, up from 2,000 in 2011. In 2015, Dalil Boubakeur, rector of the Grand Mosque of Paris, said the number should be doubled to accommodate the large and growing population of French Muslims.[94]
Financing the construction of mosques was a problematic issue for a long time; French authorities were concerned that foreign capital could be used to acquire influence in France, and so in the late 1980s it was decided to favour the formation of a "French Islam", though the
Charlie Hebdo shooting
This section needs additional citations for verification. (May 2020) |
France came to an uproar in January 2015, when eight writers and cartoonists were shot dead by two terrorists who raided the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. For years, it had been threatened by Muslim fundamentalists for publishing cartoons criticizing Muhammad. While condemnation of this attack was unanimous in the West and among the internationally recognized governments of the Muslim world, some militants approved, stating that it was right to kill those who insulted Muhammad.[citation needed]
Freedom of religion
In 2023, the country was scored 3 out of 4 for religious freedom by Freedom House.[96]
See also
- 1905 French law on the Separation of the Churches and the State
- Anti-clericalism
- Dechristianisation of France during the French Revolution
- Freedom of religion in France
- Irreligion in France
- Jules Ferry laws
- Laïcité
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