Laicity and the Inherited Boundaries between Religion and Politics in Québec: Reflections after Marcel Gauchet
Issue: Vol 34 No. 1 (2015)
Journal: Religious Studies and Theology
Subject Areas: Religious Studies Buddhist Studies Islamic Studies Biblical Studies
Abstract:
An understanding of the debate on reasonable accommodations that has been taking place in Québec and the ensuing Charter of Values presented in 2013 requires an analysis of the historical and political boundaries separating political life from religious life. This paper argues that these boundaries have been structured by a history of laicization and by the mutually supporting roles of collective self-determination and laicity in Québécois identity. It presents a philosophical account of the work of Marcel Gauchet, Yvan Lamonde, and the report of the Bouchard-Taylor Commission on reasonable accommodations, and stresses the role of anticlericalism in the phases of the establishment of democracy in Québec, a society where the Catholic Church played a central social and institutional role.
Author: Jérôme Melançon
References :
Bouchard, Gérard. 2014. Interculturalism: A View from Quebec. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Bouchard, Gérard, and Charles Taylor. 2008a. Building the Future. A Time for Reconciliation. Integral Report of the Commission de consultation sur les pratiques d’accommodement reliées aux différences culturelles. Québec: Gouvernement du Québec.
———. 2008b. Building the Future. A Time for Reconciliation. Abridged Report of the Commission de consultation sur les pratiques d’accommodement reliées aux différences culturelles. Québec: Gouvernement du Québec.
Burns, Gene. 1992. The Frontiers of Catholicism: The Politics of Ideology in a Liberal World. Berkley: University of California Press.
Canadian Press. 2015a. “Sondage: 59% des Québécois en faveur d’une charte de la laïcité.” La Presse, January 21. http://www.lapresse.ca/actualites/dossiers/charte-de-la-laicite/201501/21/01-4837093-sondage-59-des-quebecois-en-faveur-dune-charte-de-la-laicite.php
———. 2015b. “Supreme Court Rules Quebec Infringed on Loyola High School’s Religious Freedom.” CBC News, March 19. http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/supreme-court-rules-quebec-infringed-on-loyola-high-school-s-religious-freedom-1.3000724
Gauchet, Marcel. 1997. The Disenchantment of the World. A Political History of Religion. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
———. 1998. La religion dans la démocratie. Parcours de la laïcité. Paris: Gallimard.
———. 2002. La démocratie contre elle-même. Paris: Gallimard.
———. 2013. L’Avènement de la démocratie. Vol. 3 of A l’épreuve des totalitarismes, 1914–1974. Paris: Gallimard.
Lamonde, Yvan. 2010. L’Heure de vérité. La laïcité québécoise à l’épreuve de l’histoire. Montréal: Del Busso.
Macdonald, Marci. 2011. The Armageddon Factor. The Rise of Christian Nationalism in Canada. Toronto: Vintage.
Melançon, Jérôme. 2014. “La philosophie et les transformations de l’identité francophone au Québec.” Fernand Dumont et les possibilités du nationalisme.” The International Journal of Canadian Studies (50): 65–86. http://dx.doi.org/10.3138/ijcs.2014.005
Taylor, Charles. 2007. A Secular Age. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Trudeau, Pierre Elliot. 2010. Approaches to Politics. Don Mills: Oxford University Press.