Home > Anti-clericalism

1 France

Anti-clericalism is particularly discussed in the context of the French Third Republic and its dissensions with the Catholic Church. To summarize, prior to 1905, the Catholic Church enjoyed preferential treatment from the French State (along with the Jewish, Lutheran and Calvinist minority religions). During the 19th century, priests were employed as teachers in public schools, and religion was taught in schools. The Church also appeared to support royalist opinions, and was involved in anti-semitic attacks such as the Dreyfus Affair.

As a consequence, many people, especially in the political left, sought the separation of Church and State and the imposition of laïcité — that is, the separation of government and religion and the neutrality of government with respect to religious issues. Note that the division between "clericalists" and "anti-clericalists" does not exactly fit the boundaries of "believers" and "nonbelievers": on the one hand, some Christians felt the Church should not intervene in political life, on the other hand, some, like Charles Maurras, while they did not believe in God, supported the power of the Catholic Church, for they felt it was essential to national cohesion and their political goals (see also reactionary).

The 1905 Separation of Church and State was highly controversial.

Nowadays, the interferences of the Catholic Church into public life are fairly reduced and traditional anti-clericalism seems passé . It's still a somewhat popular topic in some left-wing circles, or for instance for the newspaper Le Canard Enchaîné.

Current anti-clericalism often focuses on the most "backwards" aspects of IslamCairo Egypt Islm (In Arabic: , "submission (to God)"; In Persian and Urdu: ) is a monotheistic faith and the world's second-largest religion. Followers of Islam, known as Muslims believe that God (or, in Arabic, Allh revealed His Will to Muhammad (c., especially its consideration of women as inferior being s. One may see the French law to ban notable religious symbols as a consequence of anti-clericalism.

2 See also

• Roman Catholicism's links with political authoritiesAs with any officially established religion, the Roman Catholic Church has had constantly evolving relationships with various forms of government, some of them controversial in retrospect. In its history since the Theodosian decrees of 391 it has had to d