Questions of religion and cultural policy in France

Abstract

This article explores how questions of religion have impinged on or informed various dimensions of culture‐shaping policy in France. Firstly, it considers not only how religious references have been orchestrated in high‐level attempts to frame secular national identities, but also how such processes have assumed quasi‐religious forms and functions. Secondly, it analyses the changing place of religion in French educational curricula and recent contested endeavours to introduce it as a cultural ‘fact’ into those curricula. Thirdly, the article examines influential framings of art policies in their relation to religion. It considers the pivotal function of religious fragments and debris in Malraux’s vision of the imaginary museum and the use by Bourdieu of sustained religious metaphors to describe the sacralizing dynamics of secular art world. Finally, the article examines, in a long‐term perspective, the implicit and explicit cultural policies of religious bodies themselves in their attempts to act upon prevailing cultures.