The various aspects of religion in the United States never left the French indifferent, but it is difficult to speak of a model of American religion. The proliferation of eccentric sects, among which the Mormons had definitively overtaken the gentle Quakers, appeared to the French as a kind of folklore that discredited the religious spirit of the Americans, and the manifestations of a dominant Protestantism could certainly not counterbalance this terrible impression, except in some very restricted circles. Liberal French Catholics, to be sure, were sometimes fascinated by the example and the rapid growth of the Church overseas, but their voice had little impact, particularly after the papal condemnation of liberalism in the Syllabus of Errors of 1864.

This situation did not change drastically after 1870. The American sects continued to elicit curiosity, horror, or irony, but over the years the French were less and less interested, to the point that even the Mormons became so “normal” that after 1890 they were no longer worth a detour. Of course, the separation of Church and State as practiced in the United States became increasingly relevant as religious strife intensified in France, but what was most interesting to the French observers was the expansion of the American Catholic Church as a result of this separation. Interestingly enough, the term Americanism, in the precise sense of a model that can be adapted to places other than the United States, was applied to American Catholicism, whereas it was used neither for the Constitution nor for the methods that had created the success of the American economy.