The Church in the Third Republic

Extract

The history of the Third French Republic is, in one of its fundamental aspects, that of a great politico-religious crisis. In this period the political and religious problems were very closely interrelated. In fact, the religious problem was in large part stated in political terms as the political problem was stated in religious terms. The political conflict and the religious conflict coincided rather closely. Andté Siegfried, observing this fact in his book, Tableau des partis en France, quotes the humorous explanation of a Leftist candidate who had been defeated in a department of central France: “The amusing part of the election was that my disagreement with my fellow citizens was not about the things of this world, but about those of the next. Because my opponents repeated it to me so many times, I now believe they would have willingly trusted me with the things of this world if we had only been able to agree on those of the next. I was defeated as politically incompetent for theological reasons.”