Separation in the United States dates to the First Amendment of the US Constitution, ratified in 1791, and to a 1947 decision by the US Supreme Court that extended religious freedom and the disestablishment of religion to individual states. Separation has existed in France since the 1905 Law of Separation (except in Alsace-Lorraine in eastern France and in French Guyana). Both also embrace the separation of church and state.

At the end of the Second World War, France and the United States cooperated in drafting the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, which includes religious freedom. This principle was affirmed almost simultaneously in the two countries-in the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, and in the US Bill of Rights-in 1789. Despite different religious histories, France and the United States have both long embraced religious freedom in their constitutional documents. The paradox is that both countries embrace religious freedom and respect the separation between church and state. The two discussed their differences, but failed to reach a common understanding on the goals of the two laws. In 1999, US Ambassador Robert Seiple, a Baptist and ex-chairman of the Evangelical development organization World Vision, met with Alain Vivien, the French head of MILS who is also president of a secular development organization called Volunteers for Progress. Yet their different goals appeared to conflict. In each case, the legislation was approved unanimously.

In France (on the very next day, by coincidence), the National Assembly recommended the creation of a governmental task-force, the Inter-Ministerial Mission against Sects (MILS), to monitor so-called dangerous cults. The new law created a US Commission for International Religious Freedom and appointed an Ambassador-at-large to head an office on international religious freedom at the State Department. In the United States, the International Religious Freedom Act (IRFA) imposed sanctions on countries around the world that were convicted of violating religious freedom. This gap in understanding widened dramatically in 1998, when the US Congress and the Government of France both passed legislation on religious freedom that seemed to embrace opposite goals. France and the United States appear not to see eye to eye on issues of religious freedom.

Religious notion definition