HISTORY OF SOUTH SUDAN (six videos)

The videos below correspond to six summaries (each a maximum of about ten minutes) of six 1.5-hour lectures (totaling 9 hours of teaching), given on South Sudan at AUAN (Neuilly University and Artistic Association) in spring 2025.

Pastor Lauzet on the beginnings of the CNEF (French Evangelical network)

Evangelical Focus is a Christian online news publication based in Europe, launched in 2015 under the Spanish and European Evangelical Alliances. It provides daily news, reports, interviews, and opinion pieces.  It is coordinated by Pedro Tarquis (editorial director) and Joel Forster (management and operations). The platform is available in English and engages audiences through its website and social media

It's not often that this media outlet covers the French scene. This is the case here with this interview with Pastor Stéphane Lauzet, who was one of the key players in the early days of the CNEF. He is interviewed about his book, which describes the beginnings of the main current French Evangelical network.

Launched in 2002-03 and then formalized in 2010, the CNEF (Conseil National des Evangéliques de France) is the main umbrella network of evangelical Protestants in France.

Link

SISR 2025 Conference

The ISSR (INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY FOR THE SOCIOLOGY OF RELIGION), founded in 1948, is a worldwide scientific organization devoted to understanding the relationship between religion and society.
The Society holds bilingual (French & English) conferences every two years. Though it does not publish its own journal, the SISR fill one issue of the international journal Social Compass annually with papers from its conferences.

The 2025 Conférence (June 30, July 4) will be held in Lithuania. Its theme :

Religion, Migration, and Conflicts

in Polarized Societies (link)

Evangelicalism and religious freedom

Religious freedom as enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights remains a perennial concern across the globe. Over the centuries many evangelicals have not enjoyed this right in practice, but they have generally advocated its acceptance, especially to allow the spread of the gospel. Not always, however, have they supported freedom for religious groups besides themselves, and sometimes they have endorsed discrimination against other bodies. 

To know much more about these key issues, here comes this reference book, edited by David W. Bebbington, The Gospel and Religious Freedom, Historical Studies in Evangelicalism and Political Engagement, Baylor University Press, 2023.

Link.

La Place 2025, the French Evangelical 'rendez-vous' in Paris

 

"La Place 2025" is a major, unprecedented, multifaceted event dubbed “the Rendez-vous of (French) Evangelicals.”

It is currently held over three days—from May 8 to 10, 2025—at the Parc Floral de Paris, and is featuring a diverse program of artists, conferences, and workshops, as well as more than 250 exhibitors and over 3,000 registered visitors.

Link.

French Evangelicals & cultic deviations (Miviludes)

MIVILUDES is, in France, an official State-sponsored mission designed to identify religious sectarian/cultic drifts.

MIVILUDES published its report for the period 2022-2024 on this April 8, 2025.

The number of reports has "more than doubled" between 2015 and 2024, increasingly mentioning evangelical churches.

These figures call for four observations:

French Evangelicals and weekly Bible reading

Pan-African encounter

The current social, cultural, and political mutations in Africa combine two dimensions.

On one hand, there is a rise in postcolonial sovereigntism. On the other hand, new pan-African dynamics are emerging, which could be described as a "pan-Africanism of nations."

This provides an opportunity to recommend the following book:

Adekeye Adebajo, The Pan-African Pantheon: Prophets, Poets, and Philosophers, Manchester University Press, 2021 (680 pages).

This book is a significant academic anthology that explores Pan-Africanism through the contributions of 36 key figures, spanning from pioneers like Edward Wilmot Blyden and Marcus Garvey to contemporary thinkers such as Wangari Maathai and Kwame Anthony Appiah.

Adebajo, a professor and former director of the Centre for Conflict Resolution in South Africa, brings together scholars and writers to offer a multidimensional analysis of the movement, encompassing its historical, intellectual, cultural, and political aspects. Recently published, it provides an updated and comprehensive approach, making it a valuable resource.

Based in Addis-Abeba, the institution at the heart of these pan-African dynamics remains the African Union.

This is an opportunity for me to warmly thank Ms. Paska Nyaboth for her visit to the GSRL earlier this month, and the great discussion provided. I also extend my gratitude to the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which supported her visit as part of the PIPA program (Program for Inviting Future Leaders).

With Ms Nyaboth Paska (African Union, PIPA program)

 

A South Sudanese national, Ms. Paska Nyaboth is one of the very bright minds shaping the pan-African Africa of today and tomorrow. She seeks solutions, informed by the experiences of peoples and nations, including French-speaking ways (in Africa and in France) to deal with religious diversity and secularism.

To be continued!

African Initiated Christianity and the Decolonisation of Development

In most, if not all African nations, religion is a key player in the social fabric. This is why such a remarkable scholarly book should not be missed.

Released in 2020, this volume investigates the substantial and growing contribution which African Independent and Pentecostal Churches are making to sustainable development in all its manifold forms. 

 

Good news !

It is downloadable for free on ResearchGate (link).

Minority Protestant Network's first newsletter

Already presented in these columns, the Minority Protestants Network is a very dynamic research network on Protestantism as a minority religion.

Led by Eugenio Biagini (Prof. Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge), Karina Benazech Wendling (Associate Prof. Université de Lorraine) with the collaboration of Laura Popa (Phd University of Giessen), it just released its first newsletter.

 

Its rich content is available here (link). 

 

Canadian Pentecostals (Brill)

Significant book !

"The Canadian Pentecostal Experience includes eighteen essays organized into three themes: 1) Historiography and Early Canadian Pentecostalism; 2) Theological Practices and Processes; and 3) Social and Cultural Change. This collection makes a significant contribution to the growing literature of global Pentecostal scholarship.

The works are important for the Canadian context but as the editors argue in the Introduction, Canadian Pentecostalism is “glocal” (shaped by both local and global realities). This collection will interest readers drawn from the wider field of religious studies and global Pentecostalism to initiate conversations about how Pentecostalism evolves in both its local and global expressions"

Link. 

Oxford Handbook of Caribbean Religions

Just released : Edited by Michelle Gonzalez Maldonado, this Oxford Handbook of Caribbean Religions offers...

• Comprehensively details a multitude of Caribbean religions in one volume
• Geographic chapters focus on religious practices in complex nations
• Thematic chapters explore a large number of religious traditions

A must-have ! Link

 

Black visions of the Holy Land

This survey of the relationships between US Black Churches with Israel and Palestine has just been published. Thank you Roger Baumann !

Based on 4 case studies, the author describes a very dominant African-American Christian Zionism, but with specific accents.

The relationship of the Black Churches with the land of Israel is placed under the sign of Civil Rights for the oppressed. This line distinguishes them from ultra-Zionist circles (John Hagee), & colors their Zionism with a more attentive listening to the injustices suffered by the Palestinians.

Link

2025-2026 Research Residencies at the Paris Institute for Advanced Study

The Paris Institute for Advanced Study is a research center in the social sciences, humanities and cognitive (neuro)sciences, and a partner of the main Parisian higher education and research institutions.

Please look at the 2025-2026 research residencies call at the Paris IAS ! It offers exceptional researchers in the social sciences and humanities the opportunity to develop a research project in ideal conditions that include: a full academic year (10 months) of time for research away from teaching and administrative responsibilities, insertion in an international and interdisciplinary community of top-level researchers and the largest concentration of scientists in Europe, within an excellent work and living environment in the heart of Paris.

More here (link)

Minority Protestant Network

There are many networks on Catholicism but not that many on Protestantism, which leads to a lack of connection between scholars working on Protestantism in its various forms.

The purposes of the Minority Prorestant network are:

1. To promote collaborative, interdisciplinary and non-confessional work among scholars and academic institutions. The goal is having conversations across all disciplines focusing on Protestantism broadly defined.
2. To organise and promote conferences, events, but also publish in academic journals, preferably in open access.
3. Engage with a wider audience and favour online visibility for a broader dissemination of research.

Affiliation is free and allows you to:

• Have your profile displayed on the website,
• Receive the newsletter,
• Share information about your events, publication, or other news on the website,
• Receive opportunities for collabotation in future events

Link

Stained Glass Ceilings: How Evangelicals Do Gender and Practice Power

In the popular imagination, Evangelical Christianity is a patriarchal religion whose traditions and lasting legacies perpetuate a singular patriarchal social order.

However, as Lisa Weaver Swartz reveals in this meticulously researched book about women in church leadership in USA, Evangelicalism tells two very different gendered stories—one complementarian and one egalitarian.

Mostly based upon a focus on the training of future Church leaders in two Evangelical flagship seminaries, Southern Baptist and Ashbury.

As usual with US monographs,(alas), a wide title, but the data is based upon two field research which are not representing the whole diversity of US Evangelicalism, far from that.

Still a really good book to read, thank you Lisa Weaver Swartz !

Link

Exhibiting Evangelicalism (Devin Manzullo-Thomas)

Exhibiting Evangelicalism provides the first account of the growth and development of historical museums created by white evangelical Christians in the United States over the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

Exploring the histories of the Museum of the Bible, the Billy Graham Center Museum, the Billy Sunday Home, and Park Street Church, Devin C. Manzullo-Thomas illustrates how these sites enabled religious leaders to develop a coherent identity for their fractious religious movement and to claim the centrality of evangelicalism to American history.

Link

The GSRL (UMR 8582) in a glimpse

Group Societies, Religions, Laicities  is a French research laboratory of the CNRS and the École pratique des hautes études (EPHE-PSL).

The GSRL brings together researchers from different disciplines (history, sociology, political sciences, anthropology, philosophy, law, etc.) working on the transformations of religion and issues related to secularism in the contemporary world. Its field of competence encompasses many cultural areas.

Link

Megachurch Christianity Reconsidered Millennials and Social Change in African Perspective

Building from a behind-the-scenes case study of Kenya's Nairobi Chapel and its "daughter" Mavuno Church, Dr. Wanjiru M. Gitau's book expands their story into a narrative that offers analysis of the rise, growth, and place of megachurches worldwide in the new millennium.

The author helps us rethink what African megachurches can be – and what we can learn out of the American framework.  Gitau shows that recognizing the psychological, spiritual, and social destabilization of modernizing societies is the first step to valuing the place of megachurches in contemporary Christianity. The book won the 2019 Christianity Today’s book of the year award in the Global Missions category.

A must-read.

Link

Defending Democracy from Its Christian Enemies

David P. Gushee is Distinguished University Professor of Christian Ethics at Mercer University, Chair of Christian Social Ethics at Vrije Universiteit (Free University) Amsterdam, and Senior Research Fellow, International Baptist Theological Study Centre. 

Surveying global politics and modern history, he analyzes in Defending Democracy from Its Christian Enemies how "Christians have discarded their commitment to democracy and bought into authoritarianism". David Gushee urges his readers to fight back by reviving their "hard-won traditions of congregational democracy, dissident Black Christian politics, and covenantal theology". 

This very important book has been motivated by the shocking events in the U.S. that culminated in the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection. A must-read !

Link.

French-speaking research to be read

Friendly reminder to our dear english-speaking colleagues : there is a great deal of french-speaking research done every year.

Do not forget to try to read it and quote it, as french-speaking scholars make effort too to read and quote your valuable work.

If not, our social science lenses will not work well, and may make us sometimes almost half blind. No valuable synthesis on religion in Africa, for example, could be done without reading extensively the huge french-speaking scientific knowledge produced by Historians, Anthropologists, Sociologists and so on.

Let me take the occasion to share this link to the new version ot Theses.fr portal, which helps to locate all the Ph.D completed in France.

Link

Trump, White Evangelical Christians, and American Politics

 Trump, White Evangelical Christians, and American Politics, political scientists Anand Edward Sokhey and Paul A. Djupe bring together a wide range of scholars and writers to examine the relationship between former President Donald Trump and white American evangelical Christians.

They argue that, while this relationship―which saw evangelicals supporting a famously unfaithful, materialistic, and irreligious candidate despite self-defining in opposition to these characteristics―prompted many to wonder if Trump himself transformed American evangelical religion in politics, this alliance reflected both change and the outcome of dynamics that were in place or building for decades.

In this book, oppotunity is given to find a welcomed balanced and fair view of the very complex issue of the relationships between White Evangelicals in America and Donald Trump.

A must-read.

Link.

Gen Z in Europe: more devout than their elders?

I recently found this article in Evangelicals Now Magazine:

The Global Religion 2023 survey, conducted by market research service Ipsos, interviewed 19,000 people in 26 countries. It has revealed that ‘in countries where religious practice is high, older adults tend to engage in it more than the young, while in countries where religious practice is low, young people tend to have higher engagement.’...

Let me confess I missed this European survey 10 months ago. But it is better late than never.

 

The whole IPSOS findings can be read here (IPSOS, GLOBAL RELIGION 2023).

 

Among the data, 5% of non-catholic Christians in France, including Evangelicals

Oxford University Press releases a new book on Christian Zionism

"In Christian Zionism in the Twenty-First Century authors Motti Inbari and Kirill Bumin draw on three original surveys conducted in 2018, 2020, and 2021 to explore the religious beliefs and foreign policy attitudes of evangelical and born-again Christians in the United States (...)

Inbari and Bumin demonstrate that a generational divide is emerging within the evangelical community, one that substantially impacts evangelicals' attitudes toward Israel. They also show that frequent church attendance and certain theological beliefs have a profound impact on the evangelicals' preference of Israel over the Palestinians. Throughout, the authors aim to add nuance to the discussion, showing that contemporary evangelical and born-again Christians' attitudes are much more diverse than many portrayals suggest".

 

Just published by Oxford University Press (link)

Birthing Revival

The nineteenth century witnessed a flurry of evangelical and missionary activity in Europe and North America. This was an era of renewed piety and intense zeal spanning denominations and countries. One area of Protestant flourishing in this period has received scant attention in Anglophone sources, however: the French Réveil.

Born of a rich Huguenot heritage but aimed at recovering the religion of the heart, this awakening gave birth to a dynamic missionary movement—and some of its chief agents were women.

To know more about this 2022 scholarly book (Baylor University Press) written by Michèle Miller Sigg, click here

And for a review (in english) of Birthing Revival from French scholar Valérie Duval-Poujol, click here

Missionaries and US Diplomacy in the Nineteenth Century

Missionary Diplomacy illuminates the crucial place of religion in nineteenth-century American diplomacy. From the 1810s through the 1920s, Protestant missionaries positioned themselves as key experts in the development of American relations in Asia, Africa, the Pacific, and the Middle East.

Missionaries served as consuls, translators, and occasional trouble-makers who forced the State Department to take actions it otherwise would have avoided. Yet as decades passed, more Americans began to question the propriety of missionaries' power. Were missionaries serving the interests of American diplomacy? Or were they creating unnecessary problems?

To know more, read Emily Conroy-Krutz ,Missionary Diplomacy Religion and Nineteenth-Century American Foreign Relations (Cornell University Press, 2024).

Congrats Emily!

Link

 

Read La Croix International

LA CROIX is Europe’s pre-eminent Catholic daily providing quality journalism on world events, politics, science, culture, technology, economy and much more. La CROIX which first appeared as a daily newspaper in 1883 is a highly respected and world leading, independent Catholic daily.

Published in english, LA CROIX international is the premier online Catholic daily providing unique quality content about topics that matter in the world such as politics, society, religion, culture, education and ethics.

Some of the chronicles I am honored to publish in the French version have been translated for LA CROIX international.

Check here (link)., for example "Pan African impulses inspired by Christianity".

TB Joshua unmasked long ago by Bisola Hephzi-Bah Johnson

Leading the Synagogue Church of All Nations (SCOAN) based in Nigeria, late Prophet T.B. Joshua (1963-2021) has been one of the most prominent African neopentecostal prophet of the last 40 years. The recent BBC documentary reveals he committed systemic abuse on some women and disciples.

 

To the people who challenge BBC's timing and European/white angle, let's remind them that huge evidence was already revealed 4 years ago by Lady Bisola Johnson in a very long TV interview in Abuja to Asabe Afrika TV (a purely African TV) by Lady Bisola Johnson (link).

Evangelist Bisola Hephzi-Bah Johnson, who escaped T.B. Joshua's cult after heavy involvement in the Prophet's first circle, wrote also a very revealing and long 2017 book with enormous evidence (link).

 

Protestant History: new Digitalized prints (BPF, Paris)

In 2023, the brand new BPF documentary portal (French Protestant Historical Library in Paris) has been enriched with some 500 digitized prints worth to be seen.

Discover some of them here (link), including this 1736 depiction of an Anabaptist Communion service (Last Supper service), from Jacok Van Schley.

 

Missionaries in the Golden Age of Hollywood

There are not that many authors who publish significant History books over a period of more than 25 years. Professor Douglas Carl Abrams is one of them.

I remember having reviewed in 2001, for the "Archives des Sciences Sociales des Religions", a very good book released by this Historian of contemporary Evangelicalism in USA. It was Selling the Old-Time Religion. American Fundamentalists and Mass Culture, 1920-1940, Athens, University of Georgia Press, 2001 (link).

In this year 2023, this lover of France has released another very valuable piece of research related to the same fields (mass culture and US Evangelicalism). It is Missionaries in the Golden Age of Hollywood, Race, Gender, and Spirituality on the Big Screen (Springer, Palgrave MacMillan, 2023).

Congrats and thank you Douglas Carl Abrams.

Link