"No, evangelicals do not represent a ‘very important problem’ in France"
FIGAROVOX/TRIBUNE - Historian Sébastien Fath, specialist in Protestantism in France, takes stock of various criticisms addressed to the evangelical community and regrets that confusing remarks are often made about them, especially during discussions on the law against separatism.
By Sébastien Fath
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sébastien_Fath
French society is faced with great fear, as it has been periodically since the Middle Ages. This anxiety-inducing cocktail now combines geopolitical (anti-liberal threat of radical Islamism), climatic (global warming) and environmental (Covid-19 pandemic) elements.
The primary sovereign function of the state is to provide security. In the context of great fear, it’s natural that the government would like to step up protection of the population. The beheading of Samuel Paty and the Nice attack in October 2020 shocked public opinion.
Evangelical Protestants, who represent around a million French men and women today, just over 1% of the population, support this concern to secure society and strengthen the republican bond. Well before the Republic stabilized for a long period, starting in 1875, some French evangelical pastors were suspected of being dangerous, distributing "republican pamphlets" (which could lead to imprisonment). Recall that in French evangelical churches women voted and took part in decisions a century before the Republic finally gave them this right in 1946.
Present for more than two centuries in France, evangelicals are experiencing strong growth. It stems first of all from a dynamic of uninhibited evangelization, in all social circles, including among Muslims, in the city as well as in the countryside. It is also based on French-speaking immigration from sub-Saharan Africa, the bearer of a postcolonial Christian zeal that seeks to reinspire an aging and secularized Europe. These evangelicals of France, not "evangelists", a term as misleading as "catholist", today constitute the most dynamic branch of Protestantism.
Confidence has given way to concern, in the face of a succession of missteps by government ministers that cast suspicion on the evangelicals.
They suffer, like their fellow citizens, from the prevailing social unrest. In May 2017, they had granted widespread confidence in the ideas of President Emmanuel Macron. During the presidential campaign, the candidate Macron declared to the Protestant newspaper Réforme (February 28, 2017): “I promise neither happiness nor transcendence. I leave that to religion. Otherwise, they would be totalitarian projects.”
This was clearly different from the policies of secular salvation (cf. François Hollande's “French dream” in his speech at Le Bourget in January 2012). Protestants, but also many believers of other religions, especially appreciated this point, because for them the State is not a secular Church. The government and the administration are called upon to manage, as well as possible, a pluralistic and republican society in which the civic body is free to determine its commitments.
By their emphasis on personal freedom, contractual bond and associative entrepreneurship, Evangelicals were relatively more sensitive than Lutherans and Reformers to the discourse of freedom, devoid of political sectarianism, then developed by the new French president. This is evidenced by the Protestant Survey carried out by the IPSOS institute in October 2017, which showed that 23% of the evangelical Protestants questioned supported the political party of Emmanuel Macron, La République En March (LREM), compared to 17% of Lutherans and Reformers. A six-point gap says a lot about President Macron's confidence rating with the evangelicals in 2017.
This confidence also rested on the assurance of a secular pact preserved by its balance. A secularism supported by evangelicals, from the beginning: let us recall that Francis de Pressensé, founder of the League of Human Rights and one of the promoters of the law of 1905, was none other than the son of the evangelical pastor, and senator, Edmond de Pressensé, pastor of the Taitbout chapel.
Confidence has given way to concern, in the face of a succession of missteps by government ministers that cast suspicion on evangelicals. On December 15, 2020, the Minister of the Interior had nevertheless given pledges of good will towards the CNEF, the National Council of Evangelicals of France, which was celebrating its 10th anniversary.
In a conciliatory move, he affirmed: "to be a believer often makes it possible to be a good citizen." So, what has happened since then? On the occasion of the debates on the development of the law “reinforcing republican principles”, several small sentences were targeted, in a sometimes clumsy, sometimes erroneous way, toward evangelical protestants. On January 10, 2021, Marlène Schiappa on France 3 referred to the use among evangelicals of "certificates of virginity", an American influence. However, the information given was false, and aroused consternation, or amusement, among evangelical Protestants in France.
Contrary to governmental remarks, evangelicals overwhelmingly adopted the framework of the 1905 law, probably more than 80%.
Indeed, the use of certificates of virginity is foreign to the practices and doctrines of evangelical churches. Remember that these Protestants also accept contraception without difficulty (unlike the ordonnances of the Catholic Magisterium). They defend, of course, heteronormative and faithful sexuality, preferably in the marital context, but nothing to do with “certificates of virginity” is mentioned.
On January 23, 2021, in a special committee to the National Assembly, the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, affirms: “Today, we all see it, only Protestant worship and Israelite worship (...) have adopted the 1905 law. While Muslim worship, evangelical worship, and Buddhist worship mainly followed the 1901 law, that is to say mixed associations for which the philosophy of separation of the public and worship is totally confused.” It is the minister’s remarks, so far, that are confused, and at least inaccurate. Indeed, on the one hand, evangelicals are part of Protestantism. On the other hand, contrary to the minister’s comments, they overwhelmingly adopted the framework of the 1905 law, probably over 80% (CNEF goes so far as to advance the figure of 90%).
On February 1, Gérald Darmanin said on France Inter that "we can no longer discuss with people who refuse to write on a piece of paper that the law of the Republic is superior to the law of God." By this clumsy expression, which puts two different things on the same level, the minister drew reactions from all monotheisms, including evangelical Protestants.
Finally, on February 2, 2021, on “l’Heure des Pros” on CNews, the Home Secretary referred to "evangelicals" as "a very important problem". The subject concerns foreign financing, and the minister refers to "the soft power of foreign countries". These remarks are surprising in 2021 and appear wrong for the times. They also awaken painful memories of a time when Protestantism was denounced by nationalists as "the party of the foreigner".
There certainly was a time when some proponents of evangelical Protestantism were effectively able to be supported by the United States as a tool of soft-power against the Soviet threat. The period lasted for about forty years during the Cold War, particularly during the 1950s to the 1980s. But those days are long over. Self-financing is the rule in the overwhelming majority of French evangelical churches, nourished by a self-management culture that is part of their trademark.
Should we equate the limited funding coming from democracies with funding from states like Saudi Arabia?
Not to mention that there is a world of difference between French- speaking evangelicals and their American counterparts in relation to politics, culture, food, wine consumption, the public-private gap, etc. Moreover, should we risk equating limited private funding, coming from democracies like the United States, with funding from the State of Qatar or Saudi Arabia? These Islamist petromonarchies are admittedly fond of French weapons and luxury hotels on the Côte d ́Azur, but they are a priori further removed from Republican ideals than America...
The government minister’s equivocal remarks do not eliminate all questions about the soft power led by the great powers, including China, via companies, the media, sport (PSG, owned by the Qatari state) and religions. But an examination of the facts calls for a lower reevaluation of the "very important problem" mentioned by the minister concerning French evangelical churches.
By their accumulation, these various ministerial missteps, backed by a bill that raises many questions, have caused concern among evangelical Protestants in France. These concerns were relayed by the two main Protestant networks in the country, the FPF (Protestant Federation of France) and the CNEF (National Council of Evangelicals of France). It is too early to speculate on possible electoral missteps to be expected next year in the presidential elections of 2022, but a breach of confidence has occurred. How should one interpret these missteps of two “heavyweights” of the government (Ms. Schiappa and Mr. Darmanin), who navigate between error and confusion?
A religion on the rise in France
First level of analysis: what if there was no smoke without fire? In other words, the evangelicals would be pointed out, because there would indeed be a separatist orientation within them. Certain sectarian excesses that can be identified in some evangelical circles can support this hypothesis. Abusive authoritarianism of the pastor, stifling social control, confining or conspiratorial discourse. These sectarian indications never go so far as to call for violence, but they justify vigilance, attentive to respect for freedoms.
This phenomenon is however limited. The overwhelming majority of evangelical churches in France avoid these risks, in particular thanks to their systems of mutual validation and control "from below". When things go too far, the faithful also have the freedom to leave: turnover is important in these Churches.
Finally, against the feared “separatism”, the great appetite of evangelicals for all-out associative involvement should be noted, like the international footballer Olivier Giroud, undoubtedly the most famous French evangelical today, who is involved with the Collectif Humanitaire Monaco, the CHU de Grenoble, and the Open Doors association in support of persecuted Christians.
The 2017 Protestant Survey (IFOP) thus reports "a much stronger commitment to charitable associations among Protestants, and especially among those who claim to be evangelical Christians": 30% for evangelical Protestants surveyed by the IFOP, versus a rate of 15% for all French people. We are quite far from separatism and from being a “glass bubble church” cut off from the outside.
The second level of analysis is the worrying lack of knowledge about religions on the part of our elected officials. What if the approximations or errors of ministers Schiappa and Darmanin revealed above all an involuntary admission of religious ignorance?
We often talk about training religious representatives in secularism. It would be appropriate to better train political leaders in religions.
This is an opportunity to remember that we cannot limit ourselves to knowing about religions through what general information (certainly of value) or social networks (certainly omnipresent) say about them. There is a great deal of quality work produced by major social science research laboratories that are France's pride internationally. Philippe Portier and Jean-Paul Willaime have just provided a new example with the publication of a very fine summary on religions in France. (La religion dans la France contemporaine, entre sécularisation et recomposition, Armand Colin, 2021.)
But the flow of knowledge is not running well enough. We often talk about training religious representatives in secularism. Very good! It would then be appropriate to better train political leaders, not only in secularism, but also in the religions that (re)compose our country. This also applies to Islam, Buddhism, and even today Catholicism, sometimes grossly caricatured.
Evangelicalism represents at least one in four Christians in the world. It has become the overwhelming majority expression of Protestantism, and increasingly influences Catholicism. (See Valérie Aubourg, Réveil catholique, Emprunts évangeliques au sein du catholicisme, Labor et Fides, 2020, and Pierre Jova & Henrik Lindell, Comment devenir plus catholiques... en s’inspirant des évangéliques, ed. by Emmanuel, 2020.) It weighs heavily in the French-speaking world, in particular via sub-Saharan Africa. Good governance invites us to move away from caricatures or superficial glimpses, a source of wounds for those who are victims of repeated disparaging “little phrases”.
The third level of analysis suggests placing these successive missteps in the context of a diversion. As if we were trying to over-focus on religions to avoid talking too much about other sensitive, but neglected, aspects of the bill. Evangelicalism is not the only target. Islam is much more so, but so are all religious participants in the country. The bill, and its presentation, convey a "discourse of mistrust vis-à-vis the religious". It breaks with the French secular tradition, says political scientist Philippe Portier (director of studies at EPHE). This great scholar of secularism emphasizes that we are shifting from "minimal state intervention" to "maximal" intervention in religious affairs.
The fundamental principle of separation of religion and state has been severely damaged. Never, since the Vichy Regime, has there been such questioning of the principle of separation of 1905. We certainly did not go so far as to put in place, as during the Dark Years, an official system of cults, recognized and unrecognized. But it is implicitly in this direction that we are moving in the current project, via the obligation envisaged for the associations 1905 law, every five years, to assert their religious character to the prefecture, under penalty to be dissolved.
Heavy state control over the organization of Islam also breaks with the principle of separation of 1905. Would Jaurès and Briand have recognized their secularism in this text? I do not think so. By hysterizing the debate on religions, this bill deflects the eyes of public opinion on issues that are nevertheless equally important (but neglected in the law) in the fight against separatism: social diversity, education, and the issue of links maintained with the Wahhabite petromonarchies of the Gulf.
To avoid giving the impression of looking only in one direction, other religious threats are pointed out.
Finally, the last level of analysis amounts to raising the question of the need, in order to validate the law, for an "egalitarian guarantee" (expression used by the CNEF). Since 2015, France has experienced 25 deadly jihadist attacks on its soil, causing the deaths of 263 people. No other religious radicalism even comes close to presenting the same results.
Indeed, the separatism law aims to respond to a specific threat, jihadist political Islamism. But to avoid giving the impression of looking only in one direction, other religious threats are pointed out. This is where evangelical Protestantism would come into play, as an alternative rhetorical element to embody the figure of the threat. Basically, the intention is legitimate.
The principle of equality is the foundation of the Republic. Targeting a single religious radical is not very republican. The problem is, in reality, THE reason for this separatism bill is to respond urgently to a specific violent and fanatic threat.
This threat, tangible and repeated, is not the Islam of France as a whole, which clearly deserves the same secular, tolerant and republican regard as other religions. It is even less on the side of Christianity that we find it. It is indeed that of terrorist jihadism, which thrives on the networks of political Islamism hostile to liberal democracy, and feeds on "separatist" fractures in our society.
Wanting at all costs to find other "egalitarian guarantees" within religions is to maintain confusion, casting an increasingly generalized suspicion on those in religious communities who do not ask for much. And moreover, who often participate well in diversity, social ties and the education of values. So many resources to keep the Republic alive.
(Translated)