FRENCH-STYLE CIVIL RELIGION AND ITS METAM ORPHOSIS

In civil religion, the collective piety a society generates associates elements of civic religion (the political dimension) with elements of a common religion (the cultural dimension). In France, where the Stat e has played a major role in national affirmation, the cult of the Rep ublic and the tradition of France as the ''first daughter of the Churc h'' have marked the development of the collective imagination. Thus Fr ench-style civil religion takes the form of a lay religion with a back ground of Catholic culture. At the end of the 1980s, notably on the oc casion of the bicentenary of the French Revolution, one witnessed the emergence of an ethical recomposition of civil religion around a certa in ecumenism of human rights.