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The comparison of contrasting political, legal, economic and cultural trajectories of Great Britain and France, which emerged from a conflictive but widely shared history, has long attracted the attention of English and French historians. In addressing the enigma of this repulsive affinity, the question of religion regularly occupies a central place. This article focuses on the logics that have shaped two inverse grammars of the relations between politics and religion. The contrasting inscription in the public space of these two countries of some recent debates – on the wearing of the veil in public spaces or on the access to same-sex marriage – is the modest starting point for this reflection. Based on exchanges that have marked the long friendship of the author with the British sociologist Grace Davie, this reflection identifies the question of memory at the heart of both of their sociological analyses of religious modernity.