The United States Constitution governs the relationship between religion and the government in a single clause: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. . . .” This provision of the First Amendment is often assumed, in the words of Thomas Jefferson, to create a “wall of separation between church and state.” On its face, however, the Amendment does much less than that. It prohibits the legislature, one branch of our tripartite government, from making any laws that “respect” an establishment of religion–for example, declaring an official state religion–or prohibiting free religious exercise–for example, criminalizing the Catholic practice of praying to the saints. These provisions ensure a high degree of religious liberty and prevent formal or de facto grants of state power to non-state institutions, but they do not isolate government and religion from each other completely. They do not, in other words, seek to exclude religious belief from public life. The concept that the First Amendment builds a “wall” between church and state is intriguing, and I intend to address its historical development in a later essay. For the present, it is enough to observe that modern legal and political practice builds a much higher and broader wall between church and state than required by the text. The size and shape of the wall are evident from the nature of those things seriously challenged as “establishments” of religion in modern America. Local governments face suit if they erect nativity scenes at Christmas. Public schools face challenge if they set aside time for student prayer or permit religious references in student-drafted valedictorian speeches at graduation. Even the generic reference to the United States of America consisting of “one nation, under God” (which would have stunned

Jefferson, not on religious grounds, but rather with its implicit denial of the right to voluntary state secession) is seriously challenged as a violation of First Amendment principles.

The limited separation mandated by the First Amendment has grown in American culture to resemble the distinctly different notion of laïcité, the French concept of the secular state defined by the total separation of public life from religious belief. Where the traditional First Amendment concept imposes only a formal, institutional separation between church and state, laïcité elevates secularism to a de facto state religion. It banishes all religions but lack of religion from the public square. For example, in 2003, the French Stasi Commission, in the name of laïcité, recommended passage of a law forbidding students from wearing any conspicuous religious symbol or sign to school. The law passed by a vote of 494-16. The success of the Stasi Commission’s proposed law makes sense in light of the presumptions of laïcité. Where the First Amendment requires only that religious belief not be rewarded or punished with state power, laïcité presumes that religious belief ought to be excluded entirely from the public sphere of ideas. Jefferson captured the spirit of laïcité in an 1802 letter to a group called the Danbury Baptists, in which he wrote ” . . . religion is a matter which lies solely between a Man and His God.”

Most religions are, by their own terms, claims to absolute truth. They do not conceive themselves to concern what people prefer to believe, but what people ought to believe based on an all-encompassing absolute truth about the existence and proper relation to an actually existing deity. Where laïcité seeks only to manage public discourse, religion purports to explain reality. Religion cannot be a purely personal matter, a matter “which lies solely between a Man and His God,” because most religions demand that all people believe and behave in a particular manner necessarily pertinent to their participation in public life.

Laïcité seeks, in essence, to redefine religion to the religious. Laïcité holds that because religion is a purely personal matter, religious authority cannot be the basis for contribution to the public realm. Religious reasoning–that is, reasoning deriving its most fundamental premises from religious authority–is rejected as per se inadmissible to the public discourse. In other words, laïcité demands that religious people treat what they believe to be objective and all-encompassing truth as if it were merely personal preference. On the contrary, the tenets of the secularist belief system are enshrined as de facto truth. This principle is becoming increasingly influential in American public life.

As a result, the American religious (here I speak from both experience and observation) compartmentalize their thought processes. They keep religious reasoning private while attempting to share publicly religious conclusions disguised with non-religious arguments. For example, in the American debate over abortion law, anti-abortion advocates are overwhelmingly Christian. They oppose abortion because they believe it to be morally wrong. Yet, in the true spirit of laïcité, many do not assert this simple moral claim because they accept the secular presumption that their moral conclusion is necessarily personal, thus not reflective of any actual truth, and thus invalid in public discourse. Instead, they attempt to show that abortion is undesirable in terms acceptable to the secular notion of ethics permitted by laïcité.

The most pressing question is not whether laïcité is wise social policy. The most pressing question is whether the religious should behave this way. Under laïcité, the religious speak out of both sides of their mouths. They assert fundamental truths to themselves and other like-minded believers, but then engage in unconscious sophistry affecting secular reasons for their conclusions when contributing to the public discourse. They put forward an absolute and exclusive version of reality on Sunday (or Saturday, as the case may be), then undermine it by acceding to the different, although equally exclusive, reality of laïcité the rest of the week–not only in their discussion or writing, but often within their own minds.

This practice is inconsistent at best, hypocritical at worst, even more so because it appears to occur unconsciously. In some sense, it must occur unconsciously–there simply is not enough room in the fabric of this reality to practice consciously both religion and laïcité for any but the most inconsistent mind. To engage in laïcité is to acknowledge implicitly that the reality explained by religious belief is personal, not absolute, and thus not true by its own terms. In other words, to accede to laïcité in public life is to deny religion in public life and in private life.