Unity or Diversity?: Pious Muslims’ and Catholics’ Negotiation of National Identity and Ethical Plurality in Modern France

“We are in a situation [in France] right now where we’re witnessing a generalized apostasy and a society based upon the foundational element of concupiscence,” said Michel, a Traditionalist Catholic. During my extensive fieldwork in Paris, Lyon, and Lille France, I heard various iterations and degrees of this sentiment from pious Catholics and Muslims alike. They were responding to what they perceived as an increasingly oppressive State interpretation of laïcité (French secularism) that was attempting to write religion further out of public life. This was in combination with State projects, such as same-sex marriage legalization and gender education reforms, which encourage certain forms of “secular pluralism” within the public sphere. This paper analyzes some of the ways that pious Catholics and Muslims are reimagining Frenchness-- including national identity and public ethics--in the face of this perceived ethical crisis. Using the examples of Paris-based Traditionalist Catholics (who split from the Church after Vatican II) and a private Muslim school community in Lille, I show how divergent pious populations in France are pushing back against certain elements of dominant Frenchness. While the Muslim school community focused on reimagining the boundaries of national identity to be more inclusive of Muslim identity, Traditionalist Catholics focused on reframing Frenchness by reincorporating Catholic mores into the social fabric in order to hedge against various threatening forms of ethical plurality. I argue that these cases illustrate the salient challenges of simultaneously fostering pluralism and a unified sense of national belonging in France.