Emmanuel Todd : Y a-t-il une vie sociale après la religion ?

Summary

Religion and social cohesion

Emmanuel Todd presents religion as a social framework that shapes shared values and collective identity. He outlines three stages:

• Active religion: People believe and practise, and religion helps define a community.
• Zombie religion: Belief and practice fade, but inherited values and group identity persist, often through substitutes such as nationalism.
• Religion zero: Those shared frameworks also disappear, leaving a more atomized society without a common purpose.

Todd argues that this final stage does not necessarily make people more immoral; he notes that homicide rates in France have fallen. His concern is instead the loss of belonging and a collective project. In his view, rationalist values alone have not replaced religion’s capacity to bind people together, and individuals may be diminished by isolation rather than liberated by it. He describes nihilism as one possible result, while presenting his framework as provisional and imperfect.

Protestant and Catholic traditions

Todd suggests that Protestantism’s strictness, religious anxiety and iconoclasm may leave societies more vulnerable to nihilism when belief disappears. Catholicism, by contrast, is less anxious and more accepting of ritual, images and the beauty of the world. This may leave a cultural legacy even after belief declines.

He acknowledges that countries at “religion zero” are not all alike and that his model needs further refinement.

Secularization and contemporary religion

The interview questions claims of a simple “return of religion.” Todd sees much contemporary religious language and spectacle as distinct from robust belief and community. It may reflect social fragmentation or new, loosely defined movements rather than a return to traditional religion.

He argues that surveys asking whether people believe in God cannot fully capture what belief meant historically. He also distinguishes believing from merely wanting to believe.

Todd compares secularization in Europe and the United States. He suggests that Europe’s welfare state and more settled secular institutions reduced religion’s social role, while religious groups in the United States have historically supplied forms of belonging that a weaker social state did not. He speculates that some conversions to Catholicism in the US may reflect immigration or social distinction as well as religious conviction.

Religion beyond Europe and the United States

Todd characterizes Japan as retaining rituals, hierarchical norms, and an appreciation of nature and beauty despite weak conventional belief. He describes Iran as having moved from revolutionary religious fervour toward a “zombie” stage in which national cohesion remains powerful. Russia, by contrast, appears to him more sustained by inherited family, community and state traditions.

He says the model may also help examine Hinduism, though he has not worked it out. The relationship between these stages and declining fertility is another open research question.

The Bronze Age and the origins of civilization

Todd’s discussion of the Bronze Age broadens the conversation to the origins of civilization. He points to cities, metallurgy, writing, trade and the state as material transformations, while also noting archaeological arguments that temples preceded palaces. This raises the possibility that religion helped organize early large-scale communities, complicating accounts that treat it only as a tool invented by states.

Artificial intelligence

Todd sees artificial intelligence as a valuable research aid for intellectually trained users, but warns that it can produce confident errors and may encourage conformist thinking among the wider public. Rather than a new religion, he expects it could contribute to a more polarized society.

Presenters and contributors

• Diane Lagrange — presenter and interviewer
• Emmanuel Todd — guest and principal contributor