Politics can become a source of primary identity; a source of ultimate meaning. It can become something which competes with religion in the traditional sense.
Key point 2
In Western societies, the dominant way of thinking about how religious and political authority can and should be related is that religion should in some sense be private.
Key point 3
In the US, religious display and religious speech in public is seen as an expression of one’s personality and an exercise of one’s religious freedom, whereas it is interpreted in French context as an unwanted intrusion of private religious belief into the Republican political space.