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The world has had lots to say about 15 French towns that banned the full-body burkini swimsuit worn by some Muslim women. This chatter has been amplified by a viral photograph of armed French policemen forcing a Muslim woman to show some skin on a beach in Nice, whose ordinance bars clothing that “overtly manifests adherence to a religion at a time when France and places of worship are the target of terrorist attacks.”

All this seems barbaric to many Americans — a clear violation not only of the free exercise of religion guaranteed by the Constitution, but also of the liberté and égalité the French supposedly hold dear. Amid the tsk-tsking, however, it is important to remember that these burkini bans, like the 2010 French law outlawing headgear that covers the face, are not so different from American garb laws wielded against Catholics in the not-so-distant past.

In one of America’s first culture wars, Protestants attacked Catholicism as un-Christian, immoral and anti-democratic. In the late 19th century, several states passed laws, obviously aimed at Catholic nuns, that forbade teachers from wearing clerical garb in public schools. Today, such statutes remain on the books in Pennsylvania and Nebraska, where they effectively bar not only many Catholic clerics but also Muslim women with headscarves from serving as public school teachers.

France and the United States are both products of 18th century revolutions, and both separated church and state in an effort to avoid revisiting the bloody religious wars of early modern Europe. But they negotiated that divorce in different ways. Because the Roman Catholic Church had opposed their revolution, the French sought to undercut the power of religious institutions, fashioning a secular nation in which almost all expressions of religion were exiled to the private realm of home and church. It was fine to be Catholic, Protestant or Jewish, but you could not exercise that liberty in school, on city streets or at the beach.

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In the USA, where the churches were largely friendly to revolution, a more moderate enlightenment reigned. Protestant establishments of various sorts — Congregationalism in Massachusetts, Episcopalianism in Virginia — lingered until 1833. At the federal level, however, a spiritual free market emerged. Here the power of any one denomination would be restrained by the presence of other denominations competing for adherents in full public view.

As University of Virginia professor Douglas Laycock has observed, when it comes to religious liberty, France and the United States are now “like distant cousins who have lost contact.” While France sought to create a secular nation, America created a multireligious one.

Far too often, however, Americans have meddled in the free market they created. Courts interpret the term religion not only in Christian but also in Protestant terms, echoing the emphasis of Martin Luther and other Protestant Reformers on “faith” and downplaying the rituals traditionally valued by Catholics and Jews. And all but one U.S. president (the Catholic John F. Kennedy) has been at least a nominal Protestant.

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Meanwhile, many Americans continue to discriminate not only against the public expression of Islam but also against what have traditionally been its private preserves. In the liberal Democratic stronghold of Massachusetts, just down the road from my office in Boston University, the good residents of Dudley have prevented the conversion of a dilapidated farm into an Islamic cemetery, on the dubious theory that Muslim bodies pose a unique threat to public health. Meanwhile, the standard-bearer of America’s other leading political party has famously called for a temporary ban on the entry of Muslims into the USA.

As we gaze across the Atlantic and jeer the secular sexism of the French, it might be useful to recall another parable of crime and punishment and the treatment of women at the hands of powerful men: that moment when Jesus came upon a crowd ready to stone to death a woman “caught in adultery.” In one of the most intriguing moments in the New Testament, Jesus bends down to write something in the sand (we are never told what). Then, before reaching down to write some more, he says, “Let those of you who are without sin throw the first stone.”

France has much to do to protect the rights of its Muslim citizens, and to preserve its own legacy of religious liberty. And Americans certainly have every right to criticize efforts by French municipalities to summarily replace burkinis with bikinis. But we should not forget that there is still plenty of work to do here at home.

Stephen Prothero is a professor of religion at Boston University and the author, most recently, ofWhy Liberals Win the Culture Wars. Follow him on Twitter @sprothero

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