Populism is on the rise, as are academic studies on populism. However, already in 1969, in their seminal work Populism: Its Meanings and National Charateristics, Ernest Gellner and Ghita Ionescu wrote: "There can, at present, be no doubt about the importance of populism. But no one is quite clear what it is. As a doctrine or as a movement, it is quite elusive and protean" (italics in original).1 More recently, Rogers Brubaker asked "Why populism?" stressing that populism is certainly a contested concept, but at the end of the day a useful conceptual tool for seizing the core element of the populist repertoire, that is, "the claim to speak and act in the name of the people."2 This claim is based on an overexploitation of the term "people." "Just as authoritarianism emerges due to an abuse of authority, there is populism when one uses and abuses the word 'people,' pronounced as if the referent were sacred."3 This sacralization of the people is at the heart of populism's specific political style. Given this overemphasis on the "pure people," almost deified, set in opposition to the "corrupt elite,"4 always demonized, it is all the more puzzling that the relations between populism and religion were not, for a long time, studied in detail.

The use of the Christian referent in contemporary public debate in France raises the question of the imaginary to which societies have recourse in order to construct their memory and establish their foundation. The contents of these representations and mental configurations give meaning to collective coexistence and can evolve over time, under the effect of changes in social structures, mobilization strategies carried by elites, and the demands of public opinion. The situation in contemporary France illustrates these changes. Until the 1980s, the “civil religion” produced by the governmental elites in such a way as to consolidate the political bond did not match the “common religion” lived by the populations: Christianity, at least in its Catholic form, remained outside the official mode of representation of society. The situation has changed in recent decades. By a kind of paradox, while the Church sees its social audience regressing, Christianity becomes again central in the image that France intends to give of itself. In this article, we would like to describe, in a typological way, the forms of this newfound alliance, based on public discourse over the last forty years. An immediate examination of contemporary elaborations leads us to identify three essential figures - culturalist, foundationalist, deliberative - of the articulation of politics and religion, distinct from the rationalist paradigm of the Third Republic. The developments in these pages will attempt to test this pluralist hypothesis.