COVID-19 as a Gauge for Secularization? Pandemics, Religious Voices, and Politics in France

Abstract

Based on empirical information recorded in audio-visual and virtual media, online religionist and non-religious websites, and an academic literature review, I examine the relationships between religions and politics as they are disclosed in the context of the coronavirus outbreak in France. In secularized France, religions did not play an important role in the pandemic, either as facilitator of the disease or as a limitation on its spread. Religious repertoires served marginally, if at all, as resources for interpretation, except in circumscribed sectors of French society. Religious references, however, flourished under different oblique and rather discreet forms. I thus expose the reactions to COVID-19 in France and question the complex connections with secularism (laïcité). In contrast to other countries affected by COVID-19, in France the pandemic brought about the paradoxical situation of a secular country stimulating, on the one side, the engagement of religious organizations in the fight against the virus, and on the other, maintaining limitations to religious action in the public sphere.