HOW RELIGION WAS EXCLUDED FROM PUBLIC LIFE
France: the secular state
Secular values in public life are live issues in France almost a century after the law that separated church and state. President Jacques Chirac has just set up a committee to report on the matter, and parliament is considering a motion to ban symbols of religious identity in state schools.
by Alain Gresh
A REPUBLICAN majority was elected to govern France in 1879, after the fall of Napoleon III and the Second Empire in 1870, the crushing of the Paris Commune and the failure of various attempts to restore the monarchy. This paved the way for the adoption of measures to exclude religion from (...)
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