9h00 : Accueil, Yann Raison du Cleuziou (IRM, Bordeaux)
9h15 : Ouverture, Pierre Baudry (GSRL), « Nationalisme et religion: analyse de l'apparente réconciliation entre nation, souveraineté et foi ».
9h30 : Séance 1 présidée par Yann Raison du Cleuziou (IRM, Bordeaux)
YANKAYA Dilek (Sciences Po Aix, Mesopolhis), « Conservatisme en temps de crise : redéploiement de référent religieux comme ‘‘culture nationale de problèmes publics’’ ».
FERRY Mathieu (OSC Sciences Po / Cres Ensae), « Une nation protectrice de la vache ? Incorporation hindoue, stigmatisation musulmane et structure agropécuaire ».
11h00 : Séance 2 présidée par Marie-Claire Willems (Sophiapol, Paris Lumière)
MINTOOGUE Fernand Idriss (EPHE-Imaf), « Avec et contre l’État. De la construction insidieuse d’une ‘‘nation prophétique’’ au sein d’une Église pentecôtiste. Une étude de cas à Yaoundé ».
NGOM Saliou (LAC, Ifan Dakar), « Place des confréries religieuses dans la construction des imaginaires de la nation en Afrique : le cas du Sénégal ».
12h20 : Pause déjeuner
13h30 : Séance 3 présidée par Alexis Artaud de La Ferrière (Portsmouth)
ZAWADZKI Paul (GSRL, Paris 1), « Religion, nationalisme et citoyenneté dans le conflit des paradigmes en Pologne aujourd’hui ».
SOULIER Pauline (Laces, Bordeaux), « La religion orthodoxe, un argument politique parfois contestable de l’affirmation de l’identité nationale serbe ».
15h00 : Conférence de clôture
BAYART, Jean-François (IHEID, Genève), « Des empires aux Etats-nations : le piège de la définition ethno-religieuse de la citoyenneté (19e-21e siècle) ».
16h00 : Assemblée générale de l’association (élections du nouveau bureau)
Au XIXe siècle, la fabrique du commun national, comme unité culturelle, fut une des conditions de la démocratisation des sociétés européennes. Comme l’a montré Anne-Marie Thiesse (2001), la mobilisation de la culture est un trait partagé de l’ensemble des constructions nationales. Suivant la formule d’Eric Hobsbawm (1983), la production des traditions fut au cœur de « la production des masses » homogénéisées par une identité héritée mythifiée. Pour Benedict Anderson (1983), l’imaginaire de la communauté nationale se forme autour d’un sentiment de camaraderie horizontale et exclusif, véhiculé par le développement du capitalisme d'imprimerie, et dont la croissance s’est manifestée autant dans les régions du monde colonisé que dans les métropoles européennes.
Si le nationalisme méthodologique est largement contesté en sciences sociales (Wimmer & Glick Schiller, 2002), la nation demeure néanmoins un outil mondialisé (Ory, 2020) du répertoire de l’action politique. La nation permet de donner sens à la revendication de souveraineté à l’issue du processus qui transmue un peuple en Peuple. Elle se cristallise quand une tradition s’objective dans une histoire et dans une géographie, et quand l’ethnos correspondant est construit en demos revendiquant sa souveraineté. La journée d’étude de l’AFSR vise à interroger la place des religions dans ce processus au XXIe siècle.
Pour l’analyse dominante de la trajectoire historique des constructions nationales, le phénomène religieux se voit souvent marginalisé. La nation, les institutions démocratiques et le système international des états sont largement conçus comme des espaces sécularisés, éclipsant par leur ascendance téléologique l’influence des religions dans l’exercice du politique (Van der Veer & Lehmann, 2020). Aujourd’hui, cette marginalisation de la variable religieuse est largement rediscutée (Cabanel, 2015).
À l’exception des pays occidentaux dans lesquels la Réforme s’est enracinée et a constitué la matrice de révoltes populaires, le christianisme fut souvent pensé comme un matériau trop ambigu pour devenir une fondation des identités nationales. En France, si l’historiographie républicaine promeut les Gaulois en ancêtres du peuple et fait d’Alesia une date fondatrice, c’est afin d’effacer le baptême de Clovis dont les usages permettent d’identifier la France à la « fille aînée de l’Église » et de rappeler aux Français la triste mémoire de la domination romaine (Venayre, 2013).
En Europe de l’Ouest, la seconde guerre mondiale marque la fin d’un long mouvement des nationalités qui s’enracine au XVIIIe siècle. Le libéralisme politique et les droits de l’homme donnent une inflexion plus individualiste à l’approfondissement du processus démocratique et relativise les identités collectives qui en avaient été le premier instrument. La place de la religion semble devenir plus centrale durant la seconde moitié du XXe siècle. La réflexion sur la construction nationale offre à ce titre un terrain privilégié pour mesurer les limites des paradigmes de la sécularisation ou nuancer leurs conclusions.
Le mouvement des nationalités se poursuit dans l’Europe de l’Est et la religion y est une ressource contre l’impérialisme soviétique (Simons & Westerlund, 2015). Il se poursuit également dans le Sud contre les puissances coloniales européennes. La religion trouve cette fois sa place dans la construction nationale parce qu’elle constitue l’un des premiers éléments d’identité collective mobilisable contre l’occident (Halliday, 2000). L’islam occupe ainsi une place de choix dans la lutte nationale algérienne ou dans le mouvement palestinien (Asad, 2020). En Israël, le positionnement non-confessionnel du sionisme laisse de plus en plus la place à une définition religieuse d’Israël (Dieckoff, 2015).
Au XXIe siècle, dans un contexte de mondialisation où les flux migratoires accroissent la diversification religieuse et culturelle des sociétés, on peut se demander si un nouveau mouvement des nationalités n’est pas en train de se former. C’est désormais davantage contre des minorités construites comme allogènes que contre une puissance étatique étrangère que l’identité nationale semble mobilisée par les populismes (Marzouki, McDonnell, Roy, 2016). Dès lors, quelle place prend la religion dans ce nouvel agencement ? Elle est capitale dans l’Inde de Modi ou la Turquie d’Erdogan. Même en Europe, en France, en Hongrie ou en Italie, la mobilisation des « racines chrétiennes » en politique est devenue un lieu commun de la revendication populiste d’une restauration de la souveraineté de la majorité culturelle (Roy, 2019). Outre-Atlantique, au Brésil ou aux États-Unis, des dynamiques similaires de reconstruction de l’identité nationale à partir d’un imaginaire religieux s’observent (Gagné, 2020). La religion est mobilisée comme frontière culturelle afin de réserver l’exercice légitime de la citoyenneté à une partie de la population et d’en exclure d’autres (Raison du Cleuziou, 2020). L’hybridation entre identités nationales et religieuses serait-elle un signe du devenir illibéral des démocraties (Zakaria, 1997) ? La journée d’étude de l’AFSR a pour objet d’apporter des éclairages sur ces dynamiques contemporaines.
En sciences sociales, la genèse des nations a souvent été analysée suivant deux versants : le State-building désigne le processus par lequel un peuple construit son autonomie politique en formant un État en mesure de défendre ses intérêts ; le Nation-building désigne plutôt les politiques à travers lesquels les gouvernements homogénéisent leur population en lui donnant une culture commune. La journée d’étude de l’AFSR interrogera la place de la religion en croisant ces deux perspectives : le State-building et les imaginaires de la nation et de la démocratie construits par les acteurs religieux ; le Nation-building et les politiques d’homogénéisation religieuse de la nation promues par les gouvernants.
Alexis Artaud de la Ferrière, Pierre Baudry, David Douyère, Yann Raison du Cleuziou, Marie-Claire Willems.
Contact : afsr.association@gmail.com
Site web : https://afsr.hypotheses.org/
On May 6th, I had the pleasure and honour of participating in an excelllent conference on Freedom of Religion in Europe Today: Under Critical Investigation organised by the Institute for the Study of Freedom of Religion or Belief at ETF Leuven. In addition to listening to some stellar papers, I was happy to meet with several interesting scholars and actors from faith-based NGO's. Here is my contribution to the proceeedings.
The issue of Freedom of Religion and Belief in the context of a sanitary crisis such as COVID-19 raises a central tension.
On the one hand, public acts of worship or communal gathering pose real health risks. This is because of the physical proximity in an enclosed space between those who participate in worship, and (in some cases) because certain rituals are inherently conducive to the transmission of infectious diseases (e.g., communion on the tongue, sharing a spoon, or physical contact with the remains of a deceased person).
On the other hand, the protection of public health should not discount the public’s right to religious freedom, and restrictive sanitary measures may be (indeed have been found by numerous courts to be) disproportionate with regards the objective of preserving public health.
As we begin to perceive the perennial nature of sanitary crises for our societies, it appears essential to establish a framework that can guarantee the continued respect of religious freedom whilst also safeguarding public health. Such a framework requires a commitment from public authorities, who must show restraint and proportionality in the application of restrictive measures affecting the exercise of religious freedom; and also a commitment from religious groups and individuals, who must recognize that the right to manifest one's religion is not absolute and that their religious practices may precipitate health consequences far beyond their own persons and their local communities.
In my presentation today, I would like to do two things. First, to briefly review the impact of COVID-19 restrictions on religious freedom in Europe over the past year. Second, to consider some of the key challenges which public health crises pose for religious freedom.
The thing I would like to do is to briefly review the state of play over the past year.
In response to the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in Spring 2020, most European governments imposed some form of restriction on public religious gatherings, communal religious practices, and access to religious spaces. However, the measures adopted, their degree of restrictiveness, and their duration varied widely between countries – and in some cases, varied between regions within countries.[1]
As a point of reference, in April 2020, we can identify four broad tiers of restrictiveness in Europe:
1. Certain public authorities (such as in the UK, Cyprus[2], and Denmark) initially imposed very high levels of restrictiveness, effectively curtailing public religious celebrations and prohibiting access to religious buildings.
2. A second, larger, group (including Austria, Belgium, and Croatia) suspended public celebrations but allowed, under certain conditions, for private prayer to be accommodated in places of worship.
3. A third group (including Czechia, the Netherlands, and Sweden) allowed public celebrations to take place so long as they did not exceed a maximum number of participants. (Still today: caps + track and trace)
4. Finally, Bulgaria and Hungary exempted religious activities from most restrictions, the Hungarian guidelines even stipulating that restrictions on movement should not hinder religious activities.
The two most common restrictive measures that affected religious freedom were limitations imposed on collective religious practices (usually with some exceptions and limitations for weddings and funerals) and limitations imposed on access to places of worship. In some cases, public authorities envisioned targeting specific religious acts; for example, in May 2020, Swiss federal health authorities recommended that communion should not be given in Christian assemblies, although this was later revised. However, the broader trend was to impose generic restrictions, rather than ones specific to particular ritual acts (an exception to note: the issue of banning singing raises particular issues for charismatic traditions).
There were also cases where social distancing measures curtailed religious liberty indirectly. Thus, for example, although places of worship were permitted to remain open in France, Italy, and Spain, confinement policies did not provide individuals with a legal means to leave their homes in order to visit these places.
However, following an initial restrictive impulse during the Spring-time lockdowns, many states have subsequently tended to provide greater accommodations for religious practices and communities, often under the influence/direction of the judiciary:
In April 2020, the German Constitutional court ruled that a general prohibition on collective religious worship was in breach of Article 4 of German Basic Law since the prohibition did not allow for exceptional approval to be granted for religious services on a case-by-case basis. (Appeal followed a petition lodged by an Islamic group in Lower Saxony).
In November 2020, the French Conseil d’Etat ruled against the government’s blanket cap allowing no more that 30 person to attend any site of worship, on the basis that it was not proportionate to the sanitary risk in each site.
In England, the government did not lose a religious liberty case, but this is probably only because restrictions were eased during judicial review (in the night of July 2nd).[3] Lord Justice Lewis therefore adjourned consideration of Article 9 for further submission.
Under the terms of the January 4th lockdown guidelines, places of worship are permitted to remain open for individual and communal worship.[4] This is both a result of Justice Lewis’s signalling that the court would consider Article 9 and pressure from within Boris Johnson’s Tory party - notably from former PM, Theresa May.
More recently, in March, Lord Braid of the Court of Session in Scotland ruled that Scottish government regulations, banning church services, “disproportionately interfered” with the freedom of religion secured under article 9.
These rulings are part of what Mark Hill describes as “a steady stream of cases from around the world, now developing into a torrent, where the constitutionality of emergency provisions is being challenged”.[5] However, we are still in the midst of the pandemic and it is too early to reach any definitive conclusions.
The case of Belgium is significant in this regard. Last December, the Conseil d’Etat found the Belgian government’s restrictions on collective worship to be disproportionate, notably recognising that the government’s position was unsuitable for the rites of the Jewish faith because it did not allow for the required presence of a minimum number of participants. However, since that date, the government and the court have been unwilling to further raise maximum number of attendees beyond 15, regardless of the size of the building. This situation has sparked protests from faith groups. Note: a raising of this cap is now planned.
So we can tentatively say that there appears to be a trend within European jurisdictions to limit the scope of COVID-19 restrictions against religious freedom, even where the courts have thrown out petitions pertaining to other social domains such as freedom of movement, the right of assembly, education, and commerce. But the situation remains variegated across jurisdictions.
Violations of individual moral autonomy and of group autonomy
The most obvious challenge posed by COVID-19 restrictions concerns their impact on individuals’ moral autonomy, conscience, and dignity, which are foundational to religious freedom. Indeed, many people believe that access to religious spaces and participation in communal religious practices constitutes a moral obligation. And whilst it is widely accepted that there exists a distinction between the freedom to a hold a belief and the freedom to manifest a belief, in practice, a limitation on an individual’s ability to practice their religion in a collective setting may oblige them to violate the beliefs which they subjectively hold.
Relatedly, collective religious practices have been shown to play a uniquely powerful role in individuals’ sense of self due to the compelling affective experiences and the moral authority associated with religious group membership.[6] This point is particularly salient in the present context because the pandemic has intensified many people’s phenomenological experience of needing to practice or express their religious convictions in the face of existential uncertainty. As Emmanuel Levinas writes, “‘Need becomes imperious only when it becomes suffering”.[7]
Further, COVID-19 restrictions may also violate the religious autonomy of the religious group as a whole.[8] Religious freedom is usually interpreted as an individual right rooted in individual conscience. But in practice, religion almost always has a communal dimension, which has led many jurisdiction to recognise that religious associations must have the autonomy to “decide upon and administer their own internal religious affairs without interference by the institutions of government”.[9] This is a principle which we even find in Article 4 of France’s 1905 French law of Separation, notwithstanding the overarching universalist principle that tends to refuses the recognition of mediating bodies between the state and the citizenry. Reaffirmed in 1924.
The hierarchization of the essential and challenges to religious authority
Faced with the impossibility of banning all social interactions, public authorities have responded by creating hierarchies of social activities, grouping these into essential (permitted) and non-essential (prohibited or severely restricted) categories. In this process, religious activities have often been relegated to less-favoured, non-essential, categories.
Beyond the practical restrictions which such categorisations impose on religious practices, in cases where such restrictions burden the fulfilment of religious obligations, they also risk undermining the social legitimacy of religious normative authority by subordinating it to the political authority of the state.
Part of the problem here is that COVID-19 restrictions have generally been premised on a skewed analysis of what is essential to different groups, notably religious groups.
Although such policies of grouping social activities into a hierarchy of essential and non-essential categories are invariably presented at being “guided by science”, this discourse fails to recognise the normative character of political decision-making. Whilst political action can (and arguably should) be informed by the objective analysis of empirical data and theoretical modelling, it is a category error to suggest that public policy can ever be a neutral transposition of scientific knowledge into political practice.
The definition of essential and non-essential activities is a political decision, which is necessarily value-laden and normative in scope, and therefor needs to consider values outside the scientific enterprise, including those of diverse religious communities.
Fair treatment for all religious traditions
Restrictions on public religious practices and access to sites of worship can be more detrimental to certain religious communities than to others. For example, Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Christians adhere to the centrality of the Eucharist in the liturgy and require physical access to the Eucharistic species to fulfil their religious obligations. Orthodox Jewish groups believe that an in-person gathering of 10 adult men (a minyan) is required for liturgical purposes of worship. In Islam, the ritual washing and shrouding of the body of a deceased person is widely considered a religious obligation.
In all these examples, religious authorities have proposed temporary solutions to conform to sanitary guidelines (although, not without opposition within their faith traditions). Yet, such cases raise the issue of whether policies requiring virtual worship or prohibiting physical contact have a disparate impact on, or constitute indirect discrimination against, certain religious groups and persons. In this context, there is a particular risk that minority religious groups may be unintentionally targeted in the absence of wide consultation and dialogue on behalf of public authorities.
Financial impact
Of course, international human rights law guarantees the freedom to worship or assemble in connection with a religion or belief. But it also guarantees the freedom to to establish and maintain places for these purposes, to establish and maintain appropriate charitable or humanitarian institutions, and the freedom to solicit and receive voluntary financial and other contributions from individuals and institutions.[i]
Attendance at places of worship and the activities that take place there constitute an important source of revenue for religious institutions and their members. Such financial resources may support the upkeep of religious buildings, fund the salary of the clergy and lay employees, and defray other routine costs incurred by religious institutions. Additionally, such resources also often are critical to funding of charitable activities run by religious actors such as food banks, homeless shelters, and educational establishments.
Just as many commercial establishments have suffered unprecedented financial losses as a result of social distancing and lockdown policies, many religious institutions are unable to recuperate lost revenue through total or partial reliance online sources of funding. As governments provide aid programs for many businesses and organisations, this raises a difficult question of whether religious institutions and programs should be supported on an equal basis with other entities. In many cases, such as in France, there exist legal limitations on public subsidies to religious groups. However, where religious entities have cooperated with public health guidelines, and sacrificed their operations and finances for the public good, we may question the appropriateness of such limitations.
In the preceding presentation, my intention has been to offer a brief overview of the manner in which COVID-19 restrictions have affected religious freedom in Europe and to identify 4 issues or points of vigilance which have come to the fore over the past year.
To conclude I would like to return to a notion that I mentioned at the opening of my talk: It has often been assumed over the past year that religious freedom and public health are necessarily at odds. And, in some respects it is true that these two imperatives pull in opposition directions.
Yet, we often fail to appreciate that, far from being irreconcilable, the protection of religious freedom can bolster the protection of public health. Indeed, when the state positions itself in opposition to religious tradition, these two spheres of authority can come into collision, raising the political risk of civic disaffection, disorder, and conflict. On the other hand, when public authorities demonstrate religious literacy and respect for religious groups, this can foster civic trust between religious persons and the state. Such civic trust can lead to greater levels of cooperation with public health guidelines and actions, such as vaccination campaigns.
Looking to the future, consultation and dialogue will be essential elements to any public policy response to sanitary crises in order to both better protect the freedom of Religion and Belief and to better ensure the corporation of religious groups in the protection of public health.
Alexis Artauad de La Ferrière, 6 May 2021
______________________________________________________________
[1] April 2020, the President of the Commission and the President of the European Council presented a Joint European roadmap towards lifting COVID-19 containment measures
[2] https://fra.europa.eu/sites/default/files/fra_uploads/cyprus-report-covid-19-april-2020_en.pdf
[3] https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/DolanJudgment-FINAL-003-1-1.pdf
[4] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/covid-19-guidance-for-the-safe-use-of-places-of-worship-during-the-pandemic-from-4-july/covid-19-guidance-for-the-safe-use-of-places-of-worship-from-2-december
[5] https://www.mdpi.com/2075-471X/9/4/27/htm
[6] Luhtanen, R., & Crocker, J. (1992). A collective self-esteem scale: Self-evaluation of one’s social identity. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 18, 302-318; Ysseldyk, R., Matheson, K., & Anisman, H. (2010). Religiosity as Identity: Toward an Understanding of Religion from a Social Identity Perspective. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 14(1), 60–71.
[7] Levinas, Emmanuel On Escape (2003) Translated by Bettina Bergo, Stanford, California: Stanford University Press. P. 58.
[8] Leigh, I. (2012). Balancing Religious Autonomy and Other Human Rights under the European Convention. Oxford Journal of Law and Religion, 1(1), 109-125.
[9] Chopko, Mark E., CHURCH AUTONOMY: A COMPARATIVE SURVEY (Gerhard Robbers, ed., Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2001). P. 96.
[i] See 1981 Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms of Intolerance and of Discrimination Based on Religion or Belief (UN Doc. A/RES/36/55, article 6 (a), (b) and (f)).
