Will France Return to Its Religious Past?
France marked its 120th anniversary as a secular nation on December 9—but most in France believe its secularism is under threat.
Radical Islam is spreading throughout the country; in response, there is a push to return France to its Catholic roots.
On November 13, the 10th anniversary of the 2015 Islamist terrorist attack that killed 130 people and wounded over 400 in Paris, French President Emmanuel Macron described the threat from Islamist extremists as “internal, insidious, less detectable and predictable.”
“No one can guarantee an end to attacks, but we can guarantee that those who take up arms against France will face an uncompromising response,” Macron said. He added that 85 terrorist attacks had been thwarted in the past 10 years.
France has changed significantly in the past decade, increasing security measures and cracking down on homeschooling.
Macron would like France to return to its Catholic roots to unify the French people’s national identity.
Macron told French bishops in April 2018 at the Collège des Bernardins: “The link between the church and the state has been damaged, and it is up to both you and me to repair it.”
“Catholics wanted to serve and develop France. They accepted to die not just in the name of humanist ideals, not just because of a secularized Judeo-Christian morality, but because they were carried by their faith in God and their religious practice,” he said.
He repeated the theme at the Notre Dame reopening in December 2024, in his 2025 Easter greetings and in multiple interviews: France cannot understand itself without its Catholic roots, and the church has a special role to play in healing national fractures.
“The Catholic Church, eldest daughter of our republican values forged in Clovis’s baptism, is not a shadow of the past but an active light for the future,” he said on Bastille Day, July 14. “Together, let us repair this ancestral pact to face the ethical storms of our time.”
Macron “wants to allow for a certain reassociation of politics and religion, of the state and religious groups, and, more specifically, because of its cultural roots, the Catholic Church,” wrote Philippe Portier, widely regarded as France’s leading scholar on secularism and church-state relations (LaCroix, Dec. 11, 2024).
Can the nation return to its religious roots? Should it? Macron’s favorite French monarch shows the dangers of the religious state.
The Church’s Eldest Daughter
France’s relationship with the Catholic Church began with the baptism of Clovis i, king of the Franks, by Remigius (Rémi), bishop of Reims, in a.d. 496. France was one of the first of Rome’s successor states to turn Catholic, earning it the title fille aînée de l’Église (“eldest daughter of the church”). It retained a close relationship with the church for 1,300 years, until the French Revolution.
Macron sees the power of tradition that comes from appealing to Rome. But he seeks to model a more recent king: Louis xiv, the Sun King. Macron has embraced “the Republican Sun King” as his own nickname. Louis famously commissioned a portrait of himself as the god Jupiter; Macron uses the same symbolism, saying the presidency must be jupitérienne.
But it’s critical to remember how Louis maintained this jupitérienne Catholic monarchy.
Louis ascended the throne in 1643 at age 4. For 18 years, Catholic Cardinal Mazarin ruled as regent, shaping and molding young Louis. Civil war tore France apart during his childhood reign, leaving Louis with a burning hatred for rebellion and a lifelong determination to centralize all power in his hands.
When Mazarin died in 1661, Louis stunned his court by announcing he would rule alone—without a prime minister. At age 22, he began the longest personal rule in European history: 54 years of absolute monarchy.
He built the Palace of Versailles—one of the most extravagant building projects in history. It cost an estimated 25 percent of all French state revenue over decades. He forced the nobility to live there under his eye, turning proud dukes into fawning courtiers who competed for the privilege of handing the king his shirt in the morning. He tamed the aristocracy by making them addicted to his presence.
The Plain Truth magazine produced a series from 1983 to 1984, “A History of Europe and the Church.” Part 7 described Louis this way:
Louis chose the sun as his emblem. He was flattered when courtiers called him “Le Grand Monarque.” His reign became the perfect example of the divine right absolutism of monarchs. Bishop Bossuet, the king’s court theologian, taught that the king is God’s anointed representative on Earth; to resist the king’s will is to resist God Himself.
One King, One Law, One Faith—Enforced by the Sword
One way for Louis to guarantee political stability was religious uniformity. At the time, France had nearly 2 million Huguenots—French Protestants granted limited rights by the Edict of Nantes in 1598. Louis hated the edict. He believed divided religion meant divided loyalty.
Beginning in the 1660s, he systematically destroyed Protestant rights. Protestant children were seized and raised Catholic. Protestant pastors were banished. Protestant laymen were forbidden from most professions.
Then came the dragonnades.
In 1681, Louis sent dragoons—brutal cavalry troops—into Protestant regions, especially the Cévennes and Poitou. These soldiers were quartered in Huguenot homes to torment them. They raped, looted, tortured and murdered. Families were ruined. Thousands “converted,” only to be watched for the rest of their lives to ensure they never practiced Protestantism again.
In October 1685, Louis formally revoked the Edict of Nantes with the Edict of Fontainebleau. Protestant worship was outlawed. Pastors were given two weeks to leave France or face death. Lay Protestants were forbidden to emigrate—on pain of lifelong galley slavery for men, imprisonment for women.
Hundreds of thousands fled. Historians estimate 200,000 to 800,000 Huguenots escaped, taking their skills to England, Holland, Prussia, Switzerland and America. France lost artisans, businessmen, soldiers and some of its most industrious citizens. Voltaire later wrote that the revocation “depopulated a quarter of the kingdom, ruined its commerce, and weakened it in every direction.”
The Camisard Rebellion (1702–1704) saw Protestant guerrillas fight desperately in the mountains. Louis crushed them with savage reprisals—villages burned, inhabitants massacred.
The revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685 received strong endorsement from the French Catholic clergy. In their official address to Louis xiv, the Assembly of the Clergy stated:
You have strengthened the faith; you have exterminated the heretics …. Let us say to this new Constantine, this new Theodosius, this new Marcian, this new Charlemagne, what the 36 fathers said in the Council of Chalcedon: “You have confirmed the faith, you have exterminated the heretics.”
Te Deums were sung in cathedrals across France in celebration.
Pope Innocent xi’s reaction was restrained. Locked in conflict with Louis over the Gallican Articles of 1682 and the extension of the régale, the pope refused to confirm dozens of French bishops and declined to issue a jubilee or public approbation for the revocation. He continued to favor the Habsburgs, who accepted full papal supremacy.
While France glittered at Versailles, Louis waged almost constant war to expand his glory: the War of Devolution (1667–68), the Dutch War (1672–78), the War of the League of Augsburg (1688–97) and the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–14). These wars were fought for Louis’s personal ambition—not French security. He wanted to be the universal monarch of Europe.
The result? Millions were killed across the Continent. Famine stalked France. By 1715, the French treasury was bankrupt, the population was reduced by millions, and the countryside was devastated. On his deathbed, rotting from gangrene (he refused amputation), Louis whispered to his 5-year-old heir, “I have loved war too much …. Do not imitate me in that.”
But it was too late. The Sun King’s wars and extravagance planted the seeds of the French Revolution.
Bible Prophecy: The Seventh and Final Resurrection
Louis xiv’s domination through the Catholic Church was not a one-off event. Revelation 17 reveals a massive, politically active church doing deals with heads of state. It describes a woman (a great false church) riding a seven-headed beast (a political empire), drunk with the blood of the saints. Herbert W. Armstrong explained those seven heads as seven resurrections of the Holy Roman Empire in his booklet Who or What Is the Prophetic Beast?
Louis was not one of those seven heads, as he never succeeded in dominating Europe as they did. But history does record six resurrections of that church-state system—the Holy Roman Empire:
- Justinian—a.d. 554
- Charlemagne—a.d. 800
- Otto the Great—a.d. 962
- Habsburgs (Charles v)—1530
- Napoleon—1804
- Hitler-Mussolini axis—1935–1945
The seventh and final resurrection is rising now.
Mr. Armstrong wrote in the January 1979 Plain Truth:
I have been proclaiming and writing, ever since 1935, that the final one of the seven eras of the Holy Roman Empire is coming in our generation—a “United States of Europe,” combining 10 nations or groups of nations in Europe—with a union of church and state! … In only one way can this resurrected Holy Roman Empire be brought to fruition—by the “good offices” of the Vatican, uniting church and state once again, with the Vatican astride and ruling (Revelation 17:1-5).
Bible prophecy shows France will be part of this final resurrection of the Holy Roman Empire—the “king of the north” that will clash with radical Islam (Daniel 11:40).
A modern-day Charlemagne will rule over the 10 kings, directly guided by Rome, enforcing religious uniformity with modern dragonnades—digital control, financial exclusion and violence (Revelation 13:15-17). This will last only a short time before the 10 kings turn on this false church (Revelation 17:16).
In the end, these kings will fight against Jesus Christ. “And the ten horns which thou sawest are ten kings, which have received no kingdom as yet; but receive power as kings one hour with the beast. These have one mind, and shall give their power and strength unto the beast. These shall make war with the Lamb, and the Lamb shall overcome them: for he is Lord of lords, and King of kings: and they that are with him are called, and chosen, and faithful” (verses 12-14). Christ will smash the entire system to powder (Daniel 2:44-45).
France is calling for a sun king. It will get another Charlemagne instead—and regret it forever.
To learn more, read our free book The Holy Roman Empire in Prophecy.