បារាំង: សាសនា

សាសនា 

thumb|upright|Notre-Dame de Reims is the Roman Catholic cathedral where the kings of France were crowned until 1825.The last sacre was that of Charles X, 29 May 1825. 
France is a secular country, and freedom of religion is a constitutional right. French religious policy is based on the concept of laïcité, a strict separation of church and state under which public life is kept completely secular.

Catholicism has been the predominant religion in France for more than a millennium, though it is not as actively practised today as it was. Among the 47,000 religious buildings in France, 94% are Roman Catholic. Whilst in 1965, 81% of the French declared themselves to be Catholics, in 2009 this proportion was 64%. Moreover, whilst 27% of the French went to Mass once a week or more in 1952, only 5% did so in 2006. La France reste catholique mais moins pratiquante – La Croix. 29 December 2009 The same survey found that Protestants accounted for 3% of the population, an increase from previous surveys, and 5% adhered to other religions, with the remaining 28% stating they had no religion. Evangelical Christianity may be the fastest growing religion in France.

The French Revolution saw a radical shift in the status of the Catholic Church with the launch of a brutal campaign of de-Christianization. After the back and forth of Catholic royal and secular republican governments over the 19th century, laïcité was established with the 1905 law on the Separation of the Churches and the State.

According to a poll in January 2007, only 5% of the French population attended church regularly (10% attend church services regularly among the respondents who did identify themselves as Catholics). The poll showed Franţa nu mai e o ţară catolică , Cotidianul 11 January 2007 51% identified as being Catholics, 31% identified as being agnostics or atheists (another pollLa Vie, issue 3209, 1 March 2007  sets the proportion of atheists equal to 27%), 10% identified as being from other religions or being without opinion, 4% identified as Muslim, 3% identified as Protestant, 1% identified as Buddhist, 1% identified as Jewish. Meanwhile, an independent estimate by the politologist Pierre Bréchon in 2009 concluded that the proportion of Catholics had fallen to 42% while the number of atheists and agnostics had risen to 50%.

Estimates of the number of Muslims in France vary widely. In 2003, the French Ministry of the Interior estimated the total number of people of Muslim background to be between 5 and 6 million (8–10%).France to train imams in 'French Islam', The Guardian According to the Pewforum, "In France, proponents of a 2004 law banning the wearing of religious symbols in schools say it protects Muslim girls from being forced to wear a headscarf, but the law also restricts those who want to wear headscarves – or any other “conspicuous” religious symbol, including large Christian crosses and Sikh turbans – as an expression of their faith"

The current Jewish community in France numbers around 600,000 according to the World Jewish Congress and is the largest in Europe.

Since 1905 the French government has followed the principle of laïcité, in which it is prohibited from recognising any specific right to a religious community (except for legacy statutes like that of military chaplains and the local law in Alsace-Moselle). Instead, it merely recognises religious organisations, according to formal legal criteria that do not address religious doctrine. Conversely, religious organizations should refrain from intervening in policy-making.Joy of Sects, Sam Jordison, 2006, p. 166 Certain bodies of beliefs such as Scientology, Children of God, the Unification Church, or the Order of the Solar Temple are considered cults ("sectes" in French), and therefore do not have the same status as religions in France. Secte is considered a pejorative term in France.