Here is another of my letters on the French
Religion
Voltaire said that while in France, because there were only two religions, they fought one another, in England there were 20 so people of all religions co-rxisted happily side by side. This, as with many of Voltaire’s observations, was somewhat of a simplification although there was some truth in it. It is true that in England in the 18th century there was no longer any official antagonism between catholics and protestants but it is also true that antagonism still exists to the present day, certainly in Northern Ireland. Elsewhere in Britain old antagonisms are evident mostly just in insults hurled by football supporters at one another. Several big towns in England and Scotland have two big football teams, one with catholic origins and the other with protestant ones.
Protestantism, as a rebuttal of catholicism, didn’t really arise in Europe until the 18th century, the century of philosophers and rethinking of previously held beliefs. It was the century in which logic was first widely applied to fundamental questions. The sacred cows of superstition were milked mercilessly and religion relegated to the position of faith rather than absolute truth.
Prior to this both catholics and protestants had indulged in the universal religious sport of killing those who thought differently. Both those in England and those in France had greatly indulged in this sport up until almost the 18th century. In france there had notably been the Albigenses but also other non-catholic (hence heretic) groups. These groups were defeated at this time in France as a power of influence but persisted in the background. Prior to that “heretics” and catholics had committed outrages on each other possibly in equal measure. In the Baronnies where I live, Mollans was a catholic viilage sandwiched between protestant enclaves. In one attack Mollans lost over 100 men, about a fifth of its then population. And a neighbouring village, Pierrelongue, was completely wiped out and remained uninhabited until a plea for inhabitants resulted in an influx of people from the Auvergne to repopulate it. Subsequently Napoleon 1er sought some kind of understanding with the catholic church which lasted, with increasing unease, through the 19th century until Aristide Briand, managed to negotiate an agreement in which France became officially a lay country with church property becoming state owned. The officially lay status of the country is of great importance to the French;
England indulged in the same sport for many centuries but king HenryVIII came up with a game changer. Refused, for good catholic reasons, a divorce he wanted, he created a new religion, the Church of Ebgland. This new religion wasn’t catholic in that it did not accept the authority of the pope but wasn’t necessarily protestant either. It was some kind of hybrid unorthodox religion whose dictates seem designed to encompass as many attitudes to faith as possible. Catholic/protestant antagonisms persisted after Henry VIII but so did the Church of England.
The English tendency to conformity, though frequently attacked by renegades, has ensured its presence as the major religion in the UK. I’m not sure what you have to do to be excommunicated by the Church of England, other than declaring yourself an atheist or of another specific faith, but it is that flexibility that has ensured not only its survival but its pre-eminence in England.
A friend of mine, on joinng the British navy at age 15, was asked to state his religion. He said he had none so the interviewing officer put him down as Church of England. A friend in France, when I among a group of others, proposed singing carols in the village at Christmas, wanted to join in but refused on the grounds that carols were religious and she did not want to be associated with religion. In France the lay ethic is fiercely defended.
For these reasons and no doubt many others, attitudes to religion between people in France and England differ markedly. In France, people tend to be very religious or not at all. In England the distinction between those who are religious and those who are not tends to be much more vague. The Church of England tends to sweep up those in the middle.
I have made no mention of Muslims or jews and should probably explain why. With respect to muslims the reason is that neither had noticeable influence on religious thinking in either Britain or France until recent times. True the so- called Saracens invaded parts of southern France in the Middle Ages but they didn’t stay for long and had little influence at the time. They didn’t get as far as England. Subsequentltly France’s annexation of of northern Africa has seen an influx of Muslims and a much more significant role for them today. Similarly in England there was no muslim influence until an influx of Pakistanis after that sub-continent obtained its independence in 1948. Islam is now strongly associated with terrorism in both countries and has for that and other less easily identifiable reasons made muslims the subject of a great deal of prejudice. As for the jews, they were always the fall guys in any dispute that didn’t involve any immediately identifiable other groups and have from time to time been persecuted in both countries when no other scapegoat was readily available.
