ABSTRACT
All of these models have serious shortcomings. The militant secularist model, purportedly neutral toward religion, often seems downright hos tile to it and, particularly, to minority denominations. Think of the French law of March 17,2004, which prohibits “the wearing of symbols or cloth ing by which students conspicuously manifest a religious appearance” in all state schools.9 This law is neutrally worded and therefore theoretically applicable to all symbols, including Christian ones. Controversies, how ever, have arisen exclusively in relation to the right of pupils belonging to religious minorities to wear symbols such as the veil, the kippah, and the turban, which, unlike the small crucifixes usually worn by Christians, are by nature conspicuous. The agnostic secular model, though arguably open to all religions, puts those who do not embrace a religious concep tion of the good at a disadvantage. In the confessional secularism model the state privileges the “national religious inheritance” as a key element of civic cohesion, thus granting preferential treatment to the “historical national religion” and mere tolerance to all others. This is potentially dou bly problematic: on the one hand, it excludes minority religions and non religious ideologies from the mainstream in such a way as to cut off or diminish the role of the latter in the building of national identity; on the other hand, if adherents to the majority religion are divided among the culturally attached and the deeply religiously committed to it, the latter may object to attempts to “secularize” sacred symbols. The Italian and German controversies over the display of the crucifix in public schools are good examples of this phenomenon. The official national religion model is explicit about privileging the country’s majority religion, but seems prone to insufficient tolerance of minority religions and of non-practic ing members of the official religion. Thus, Greece, which operates under this model, is the only European Union country to ban proselytism in its constitution.10 Finally, the millet system is unsatisfactory too in that it tends unduly to disadvantage non-conformists or dissidents within rec ognized religious communities, and to thwart secular initiatives such as the polity-wide pursuit of gender-based equality.
