Paper's abstract

Cyrille Duvert, Uncertain laïcité : about sects
Going back to the origin of the laïcité principle shows it is inscribed in law mostly through the relationship between the State and the catholic church. The problem of sects must then be seen as coming out in an already secularized contexte, inside a legal system where the question is no more that of the status of religion but, more widely, that of the status of belief. But law does not define religion more than it defines belief. Therefore one must concentrate on practical consequences and legal effects of belief and among those, to an issue which seems to emerge autonomously since a decade: the place of proselytizing and how it connects to the principle of laïcité, which one might see as a pointer to the crisis of the French style laïcité model.


Key Words : sect, catholic, belief, proselytism
t. 48, 2004 : p. 109-122