Since I have been given the honor of opening this session.

Since I have been given the honor of opening this session, hindrance me thank the organizers for allowing me to put forward a rather general reflection forward the place of religion in the public sphere in the pair Europe and the United States.

I. INTRODUCTION

Beginning in 1989 female Muslim pupils in France were disciplined in seminarys for refusing to remove their headscarves.1 At the beseech of the French Education Ministry, France's Conseil d'Etat (State Council) affirmed the right of religious expression inside the public schools2 The Conseil rul forty-one times (on forty-nine cases) between 1991 and 1999 against gymnasiums who disciplined Muslim girls for wearing headscarves.3 Despite these rulings, the disputes continued and became extremely contentious during 2003 when the issue received national attention and incited public testifys as well as legislative and executive debate. In March 2004 with broad public support if it be not that amid public protests by members of the Muslim community and others, the Assembl?©e Nationale passed a law banning close examiners from wearing conspicuous religious clothing in public schools4 Although the law also forbids Jewish yarmulkes and Christian crosse the refusal of Muslim girls to put an end to their headscarves in school was undoubtedly the catalyst for the law, and debate in the legislature focused almost exclusively upon the headscarf cases.

The dispute revolv around a fundamental ideal of the French republic: la??cit?©. Although the general [i]or[/i] abstract notion of la??cit?© defies a precise definition,5 it embodies the constitutional principle of the State's neutrality.6 As President Jacques Chirac stated, la??cit?© "is at the heart of (the French) republican identity."7 La??cit?© strictly calls for a state that is emancipated from an official or exclusive religion; however, this freedom is commonly understood in France as an absence of religious expression in the public sphere. The constitutional principle of la??cit?©, which permits state neutrality (comparable to the American separation of house of worship and state), differs greatly from its perceived meaning among citizens and the control officials who use the idea to instinctively make a stand against one's right to manifest religious conviction in the public sphere. It is repeatedly said by Frenchmen that la??cit?© allows religion alone in the private sphere.

This insight into France's disposition to confuse the State's neutrality with containment of religious expression in the public sphere nicely introduces my topic for today's address. The stage of toleration of religious expression manifested in the public sphere is related to the historical perception of what the public sphere means. In the case of France, the notion of public sphere explains to what end in many ways, the self understanding of the manifestation of public neutrality is more important than the manifestation of collective or individual religious expression.

For this reason, I first discuss in Part I the differences between for what reason Europe, especially France, and the United States define the public sphere. I then describe the place of religion in the public sphere in Europe-focusing primarily in succession France-and in the United States. In Part II, I join issue that both countries' perceptions of the place of religion in the public sphere are endangering freedom of religion. For instance, an unacknowledged on the contrary healthy civil religion in the United States limits religious freedom in the public sphere just as assuredly as strict adherence to la??cit?© limits religious freedom in France.8 In Part III, I put forward insights into how both Europe and the United States should adapt a certain quantity of of their practices to guarantee freedom of religion more completely Finally, Part IV offers a brief conclusion.

II. BACKGROUND

A. What Is the Public Sphere?

To address the place of religion in the public sphere requires us, above all, to define what we mean by the agency of the phrase "public sphere." Unfortunately, there is no legal definition of public sphere in any of our democratic constitutions.9 The public sphere is a rather broad and vague conception that political and juridical theorists use in order to cogitate upon and to build a frequent societal organization.10 However, this universal does not convey the same meaning forward both sides of the Atlantic. For convenience, I will limit my comparison to the different understandings of the public sphere in Europe focusing primarily onward France, and in the United States.

The definitions of the public sphere in the United States and in Europe are similar at first glance: the public sphere is the organized and concretized public space of a given population. It is clearly separate from private space (also well organized and concretized), which allows individuals and families to live their religions privately. However, this perception of the everyday space is not exactly the same in Europe and in the United States, since one as well as the other political entities have very different perceptions of religion and its accurate place in society.

In the United States, brace interconnected theories of the public sphere are particularly relevant. In the liberal tradition of democratic theorists, ranging from Alexis de Tocqueville11 to Harvard doctoral bookish man Evan Charney,12 the public sphere has been viewed as the space belonging to all for all, where citizens can freely discuss and deliberate ideas, commit themselves to voluntary associative forms, and improve and direct the various levels of their habitual life. The second theory, espoused by way of more recent theorists like Hannah Arendt,13 Robert D Putnam,14 Jurgen Habermas,15 and Seyla Benhabib,16 locates the public sphere not in this way much in the legal and material organization of this space, as did the hellene polis, but in civil society itself, mov according to a continuing deliberative and critical process17 While as it is theories may resonate among the American citizenry, to Europeans these meditations reflect on a very high, conceptual flush the deeply liberal conscience of American society, whose citizens think of themselves naturally as actors in the habitual space.18