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Lampooning of the Bible, Christian doctrine, and clergy dates back almost 400 years to the “strong thinkers,” French learned skeptics in the 16th century. The primary target of anti-religious satire was France’s official religion, Catholicism, the Church’s ties to the state, and its control over education. And the ridiculing wit long directed against these targets would eventually play a central and crucial role in reducing the status and influence of religion in the French Republic...

Lampooning of the Bible, Christian doctrine, and clergy dates back almost 400 years to the “strong thinkers,” French learned skeptics in the 16th century. The primary target of anti-religious satire was France’s official religion, Catholicism, the Church’s ties to the state, and its control over education. And the ridiculing wit long directed against these targets would eventually play a central and crucial role in reducing the status and influence of religion in the French Republic...

The method of the forerunners of ''Charlie Hebdo''—unrelenting and vicious satire of religion and clergy — proved so effective that France became a fully secular state, to such an extent that certain of its practices, ''laicité'', would be regarded as unsettlingly alien and intolerant by most Americans.<ref>[http://www.the-american-interest.com/2015/01/13/charlie-hebdo-and-frances-irreligious-tradition/ Charlie Hebdo and France’s Irreligious Tradition] by Kenneth R. Weinstein</ref>}}  

The method of the forerunners of ''Charlie Hebdo''—unrelenting and vicious satire of religion and clergy — proved so effective that France became a fully secular state, to such an extent that certain of its practices, ''laicité'', would be regarded as unsettlingly alien and intolerant by most Americans.<ref>[http://www.the-american-interest.com/2015/01/13/charlie-hebdo-and-frances-irreligious-tradition/ "Charlie Hebdo and France’s Irreligious Tradition"] by Kenneth R. Weinstein</ref>}}  

{{See also|Atheism and mockery}}

{{See also|Atheism and mockery}}