The Groupe Sociétés Religions Laïcités (GSRL) remains today Europe's biggest social science research centre working on contemporary religion.
Based in Aubervilliers (Campus Condorcet), it upgraded this year its website.
French Windows
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Have a look at the GSRL's new website
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Religion and Francophonie (French speaking world)
A GSRL program led by Pascal Bourdeaux and Sebastien Fath (GSRL) 321 million people worldwide are able to express themselves in French (OIF data 2023).
From a social sciences perspective, these French-speaking spaces lead us to think differently about religious interaction and dynamics. The French-speaking global framework (including Africa, Americas, Asia, Carribean isles, Pacific islands....) invites to reshape analysis beyond a hexagonal prism (French-centered) that remained hegemonic for long.
Deploying the analysis of religion in society in this French-speaking and postcolonial space-time, such is the purpose of this program “Religion and Francophonie (French-speaking world)”.
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The Other Evangelicals (Eerdmans, 2023)
For many, the answer is "white," "patriarchal," "conservative," or "fundamentalist"--but as Isaac B. Sharp reveals, the "big tent" of evangelicalism has historically been much bigger than we've been led to believe. In The Other Evangelicals, Sharp brings to light the stories of those twentieth-century evangelicals who didn't fit the mold, including Black, feminist, progressive, and gay Christians.
Though the binary of fundamentalist evangelicals and modernist mainline Protestants is taken for granted today, Sharp demonstrates that fundamentalists and modernists battled over the title of "evangelical" in post-World War II America. In fact, many ideologies characteristic of evangelicalism today, such as "biblical womanhood" and political conservatism, arose only in reaction to the popularity of evangelical feminism and progressivism.
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MISTIC, a research program to discover
This blog gathers information related to the MISTIC research program (Migrations of religious specialists and transnational construction of competence) financed by the French Collaborative Institute on Migrations (CNRS).This research program focuses on the migration and transnational circulation of religious specialists of various faiths.
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Evolution of religious landscape (Switzerland)
According to the new study juste released by the Federal Statistical Office (Switzerland)...Between 2010 and 2021, the proportion of Roman Catholics and Reformed Protestants fell slightly (by 6 and 7 percentage points respectively), in contrast to that of Muslims and other Islamic communities (+1 point). The proportion of Jewish communities has hardly changed whereas that of persons without religious affiliation has risen by 12 percentage points.
And Evangelicals themselves may represent about 2,5% of the Swiss population.
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Studies in World Christianity, 9.2
This issue of Studies in World Christianity includes a look at some of the papers from the 2022 Yale–Edinburgh Conference on ‘World Christianity: Legacy and the State of the Field’.- Kyama Mugambi, ‘The Gospel beyond the West: The Sanneh–Walls Legacy and Emerging Conversation Partners in World Christianity Studies’
- Jackie Jia Chyi Hwang, ‘Longing for Belonging: Forwarding Andrew Walls’ Thoughts on Migration and Mission through an Ethnographic Study on Diasporic Chinese in Singapore’s Christian Communities’
- John Sampson, ‘Unearthing Treasure in Clay Jars: T. C. Chao and the Formation of Chinese Dogmatic Theology
Together, these articles very much pay tribute to the pioneering work of Andrew Walls, Lamin Sanneh and the Yale–Edinburgh Group. But they also demonstrate the ways in which the ideas which gave birth to the field of World Christianity have been generative across a multiplicity of disciplines to open up new ways of understanding Christianity.
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Caught in the Current
Caught in the Current
British and Canadian Evangelicals in an Age of Self-Spirituality
Evangelical Christianity is known for its defence of traditional Christian teachings and resistance to liberalizing trends. Many Western evangelicals themselves do not yet realize how their faith is being reshaped by the modern zeitgeist.
Caught in the Current explores how and why Western evangelicals are changing. Church attendance is declining, conservative moral positions are unpopular, and young people are drifting away from the faith. Evangelism is avoided, so few are joining congregations. Yet these surface changes are only symptoms of a more profound shift that church leaders have not fully apprehended.
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Africa: towards the World's biggest megalopolis
According to a vast global study published in The Guardian,
"By 2100, the Lagos- Abidjan stretch is projected to be the largest zone of continuous, dense habitation on earth, with something in the order of half a billion people".
Among these people living in the World's biggest megalopolis, millions and millions of young French-speaking African citizens impacted by post-colonial Christianity and revivalism....in a context of massive Global warming, which is directly threatening the megalopolis, boosting people to leave.
Cf. Howard W. French, "Megalopolis: how coastal west Africa will shape the coming century"
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Nigerian Gospel and "“Singing in Tongues”
The Nigerian gospel music industry has over the years witnessed the emergence of many artistic, cultural and philosophical movements. One of these movements is the “singing-in-tongues” paradigm, particularly endorsed by the new generation of Pentecostal hip-hop musicians, many of whom seem bent on redefining the boundaries of Nigerian gospel music. Although remarkable, the singing-in-tongues paradigm (as deployed by Nigerian artistes) has remained understudied or virtually non-theorized by scholars. This paper seeks to fill this apparent gap in knowledge by exploring the singing-in-tongues concept in the light of two philosophical/religious currents, namely esotericism and postmodernism. What has been the place of the singing-in-tongues paradigm in the evolution of the Nigerian gospel music industry?
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Discover the French Collaborative Institute on Migration
As I've just been honored to be accepted as a fellow at the French Collaborative Institute on Migration, let's put some light on this great research structure.
There are ten « Convergence Institutes » (collaborative institutes) in France that were created in 2016 and 2017 on behalf of an international jury leading the 2nd Programme des Investissements d’Avenir.
The goal is to gather scientific research by gathering 600 researchers from various institutions to combine disciplines and create an original training program. The French Collaborative Institute on Migration (CI Migration) is the only program that brings together social sciences, human sciences and health sciences.
Within the CI Migration, 5 specialised thematic departments and a department dedicated to the academic course (Master’s Degree on Migrations) have been established.
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The white church as a racialized organization (W.E.B Du Bois)
The so-called "Black Church" is often described and analyzed within the US context. But what about the White church?Let's thank Damon Mayrl for his very stimulating article released in Sociology of Religion this spring (vol 84, issue 1, sprin 2023). Its title is:
The Funk of White Souls: Toward a Du Boisian Theory of the White Church
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World Vision: God's Internationalists
As the amount of research on Christian Nationalism is growing rapidly (for good reasons), let's not forget that Evangelicalism per se can't be simply coined as a whole as "nationalist". A very robust internationalist and transnational trend can be noticed all over its contemporary history, including on the US ground.Time to remind readers of this highly valuable piece of research published by David P. King in 2019 on one of the World's biggest humanitarian NGO today : World Vision.
"Chronicling the evolution of World Vision's practices, theology, rhetoric, and organizational structure, King demonstrates how the organization rearticulated and retained its Christian identity even as it expanded beyond a narrow American evangelical subculture".
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Harry Belafonte (1927-2023)
"You can cage the singer but not the song"
Harry Belafonte (1927-2023)
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Healing and Power in Ghana
African Initiated Churches are not always chronologically postcolonial. Many of them started during the colonization process, and encountered the hostility of the colonizers. This is the case of the oldest Ghanean African Initiated Church, which has been studied by Paul Grant in this remarkable book published in 2020 (Baylor University Press).In nineteenth-century Ghana, regional warfare rooted in profound social and economic transformations led thousands of displaced people to seek refuge in the small mountain kingdom of Akuapem. There they encountered missionaries from Germany whose message of sin and forgiveness struck many of these newcomers as irrelevant to their needs. However, together with Akuapem's natives, these newcomers began reformulating Christianity as a ritual tool for social and physical healing, as well as power, in a dangerous spiritual and human world. The result was Ghana's oldest African-initiated variant of Christianity: a homegrown expression of unbroken moral, political, and religious priorities.
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Imaginer la libération, des femmes noires face à l'Empire
Good news! Annette Joseph-Gabriel's landmark book entitled Reimagining Liberation: how Black women transformed citizenship in the French Empire, (Champaign, University of Illinois Press, 2019, 262 p) has now been translated in French. And will be available as soon as the beginning of May, 2023. -
White US Evangelicals and Politics: a documentary to watch
From the Cold War to the present day, the rise of white Evangelical Christianity in America has brought religion clearly into the public sphere. A must-watch: this three-part documentary (from ARTE Channel) on how the politico-religious machine of US white evangelicalism is determined to reshape USA.... and the world (with the participation of the sociologist Philippe Gonzalez).
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9% of the French population today are Christian, but not Catholic
According to the French national institute for statistical and economic studies (INSEE), in 2019‑2020, 51% of the population aged 18 to 59 in metropolitan France declared that they had no religion.On the increase over the past ten years, this religious disaffiliation concerns 58% of people without immigrant ancestry, 19% of immigrants who arrived after 16 years of age and 26% of descendants of two immigrant parents. If Catholicism remains the first religion (29% of the population declares itself Catholic), Islam is declared by a growing number of faithful (10%) and confirms its place as the second religion in France. The number of people declaring another Christian religion also increases, reaching 9%.
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Disaffiliation within Canadian Evangelical communities
Evangelical Protestantism is often studied from the angle of proselytizing and conversion dynamics.Research on departures and defectors from Evangelicalism are much rarer. For example, Canadian evangelical communities have not received much attention in recent years regarding disaffiliation, even though this phenomenon exists throughout Canada and most notably in the Quebec province.
This excellent article (written in french) from Benjamin Gagné sheds very useful analytical light on theses processes.
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Evangelicals and Electoral Politics in Latin America
For a deeper understanding of the various ways through which Evangelicals get involved in Politics in Latin America, this new book from Prof. Taylor Boas (Boston University) is a must-read:"Why are religious minorities well represented and politically influential in some democracies but not others? Focusing on evangelical Christians in Latin America, this book argues that religious minorities seek and gain electoral representation when they face significant threats to their material interests and worldview, and when their community is not internally divided by cross-cutting cleavages. Differences in Latin American evangelicals' political ambitions emerged as a result of two critical junctures: episodes of secular reform in the early twentieth century and the rise of sexuality politics at the turn of the twenty-first.
In Brazil, significant threats at both junctures prompted extensive electoral mobilization; in Chile, minimal threats meant that mobilization lagged. In Peru, where major cleavages divide both evangelicals and broader society, threats prompt less electoral mobilization than otherwise expected. The multi-method argument leverages interviews, content analysis, survey experiments, ecological analysis, and secondary case studies of Colombia, Costa Rica, and Guatemala."
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(Un)believing in modern society
Professor at Lausanne University (Switzerland), Jörg Stolz was invited today for the GSRL monthly seminar.He spoke about the secularization process from an international perspective.
An occasion to remind that he was among the editors of this important book:
Stolz, J., Könemann, J., Schneuwly Purdie, M., Englberger, T. and Krüggeler, M. (2016). (Un)Believing in modern society. Religion, spirituality, and religious-secular competition. London: Routledge.
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Charismatic Healers in Contemporary Africa
Congratulations to Sandra Fancello (Anthology Editor), Alessandro Gusman (Anthology Editor)for this remarkable book.Based on ethnographic studies conducted in several African countries, this volume analyses the phenomenon of deliverance – which is promoted both in charismatic churches and in Islam as a weapon against witchcraft – in order to clarify the political dimensions of spiritual warfare in contemporary African societies. Deliverance from evil is part and parcel of the contemporary discourse on the struggle against witchcraft in most African contexts. However, contributors show how its importance extends beyond this, highlighting a pluralism of approaches to deliverance in geographically distant religious movements, which coexist in Africa. Against this background, the book reflects on the responsibilities of Pentecostal deliverance politics within the condition of 'epistemic anxiety' of contemporary African societies – to shed light on complex relational dimensions in which individual deliverance is part of a wider social and spiritual struggle.
Spanning across the study of religion, healing and politics, this book contributes to ongoing debates about witchcraft and deliverance in Africa.
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Prosperity Gospel in Africa
Marius Nel holds the research chair regarding Pentecostalism and Neo-Pentecostalism at North-West University in Potchefstroom, South Africa.In this scholarly book, written from a pentecostal perspective, the author provides useful insights about the African roots of Prosperity Gospel, which till recently has been far too much related only to US influence.
"Africans' prevailing interest in the prosperity gospel is not only connected to the influence of American prosperity teachers reaching a worldwide audience through their imaginative use of the media, but is also related to the African worldview and African traditional religion, and its lasting influence on contemporary Africans and the way they think about prosperity, as well as their interest in prosperity in post-colonial Africa".
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Christian nationalism : PRRI 2023 survey
According to the PRRI, "The rising influence of Christian nationalism in some segments of American politics" may pose "a major threat to the health of our democracy. Increasingly, the major battle lines of the culture war are being drawn between a right animated by a Christian nationalist worldview and Americans who embrace the country’s growing racial and religious diversity".
To check this PRRI survey about Christian Nationalism (2023), click here
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Secularism in Comparative Perspective
Edited by Jonathan Laurence, this new book on Secularism in Comparative perspective- Brings new texts on the critical issue of Secularism in comparative political contexts
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Includes many non-Western experiences and viewpoints on how secularism is theorized and lived
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Featuring the writing of preeminent scholars – such as Michael Walzer, Asma Afsaruddin, Sudipta Kaviraj AND Carol Ferrara, who wrote an essay on France, which provides a thorough history of the 1789 French Revolution, Church-state relations, colonialism, and education, and how the intersection of these elements with the evolution of French secularism led to modern-day laïcité
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'Fundamentalism and American Culture', third edition updated
'Fundamentalism and American Culture' (Marsden) has long been considered a classic in religious history, and to this day remains unsurpassed. Now available in a new edition, this highly regarded analysis takes us through the full history of the origin and direction of one of America's most influential religious movements.
In the twenty-first century, militantly conservative white evangelicals have become more prominent than ever in American life. Marsden's volume, which now takes the history through the end of the Trump administration, remains the essential starting point for understanding the degree to which that militancy has been shaped by the fundamentalist heritage of the twentieth century.To read more about this third and updated edition, click here (link)
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Christianity in Sub-Saharan Africa
How hard it is to grasp the whole picture of a continent !This scholarly book about Christianity in Sub-Saharan Africa provides a good example of success.
Published in 2017, this comprehensive reference volume covers every country in Sub-Saharan Africa, offering reliable demographic information and original interpretative essays by indigenous scholars and practitioners.
It maps patterns of growth and decline, assesses major traditions and movements, analyses key themes and examines current trends.
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France : welcome to Campus Condorcet
Have you not heard yet of the CAMPUS CONDORCET (France) ?Time to catch up !
Apart from being my beautiful workplace, it is one of the world's biggest social science university campus.
"Campus Condorcet firmly believes that the exacting requirements of scientific excellence can be reconciled with social impact. It therefore intends to radically transform the approaches and practices used for research, training and innovation promotion in the social sciences and humanities (SSH) fields, as well as their interface with other sciences. This ambition for far-reaching change is on a par with the level of investment required to create a campus that will bring together an exceptionally large scientific community both by European and global standards (3500 researchers and 4600 doctoral students), in a dynamic region, and the many challenges that this entails".
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Women in Christianity in the Age of Empire (1800-1920)
Edited by Janet Wootton, "Women in Christianity in the Age of Empire (1800-1920)" offers a broad view of the nineteenth century as a time of dramatic change, particularly for women, critiqued in the light of postcolonial theory.This edited volume includes important contributions from academics in the field.
Overarching themes include the cult of domesticity, the changing impact of Christianity on views of women's nature in an age of scientific thinking, conflation of 'gospel' and 'civilization' in global mission, and the exclusion of women from public spheres of life."
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Exorcizing the Spirit of Protestantism (Ethiopia)
Diego Maria Malara's fascinating article discusses the exorcism of Protestant spirits from Ethiopian Orthodox hosts in Addis Ababa.This controversial ritual is animated by injunctions to draw essential distinctions and boundaries between Protestantism and Orthodoxy, at a time of religious liberalisation. The expulsion of Protestant spirits provides an occasion to reaffirm the centrality of local Orthodoxy to Ethiopian identity,... but at what cost ?
Read here (link)
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New French-speaking role models for Christian Africa ?
Based in Accra (Ghana) Pastor Dag Heward-Mills is one of the most prominent postcolonial Evangelical leader in West Africa. Here below (link) he's advertised in Ivory Coast.Less knowed is the fact that French-speaking West Africa is experiencing, over the last 25 years, a major Evangelical/Pentecostal revival, creating new French-speaking role models for Christian Africa.To know more, click below to discover this Field Album (pics done during a 8 days stay in Abidjan, Ivory Coast).
