Under the umbrella of the European Evangelical Alliance, this much-needed forthcoming book will give us precious insights about EVANGELICALISM in EUROPE (Langham).
Articles & Books
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Evangelicalism in Europe (Langham), forthcoming
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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.
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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!
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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 !
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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Christianity's American Fate
Christianity’s American Fate (2022) situates the ascendancy of conservative Evangelicalism within the broader transformation of American religion."How did American Christianity become synonymous with conservative white evangelicalism? This nuanced and informative work by a leading historian of modern America traces the rise of the evangelical movement and the decline of mainline Protestantism’s influence on American life.
In Christianity’s American Fate, David Hollinger shows how the Protestant establishment, adopting progressive ideas about race, gender, sexuality, empire, and divinity, liberalized too quickly for some and not quickly enough for others. After 1960, mainline Protestantism lost members from both camps―conservatives to evangelicalism and progressives to secular activism".
This book may be also taken as a contribution to the polarization thesis defended, in France, by Philippe Portier, Jean-Paul Willaime and Alain Dieckhoff.
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A major book on the Geneva Revival
The nineteenth-century international religious movement known as the Reveil had a major impact on Protestantism, and particularly on Evangelicalism. That impact is still evident today. Yet as a multi-faceted phenomenon, this movement has not received its due share of scholarly attention. This book offers a collection of essays exploring the international dimensions of the Genevan strand of the Reveil, providing an overview of events and trends, outlining the careers of some of its key figures, and highlighting some of the areas in which it made a contribution to contemporary society.COngratulation to Jean Decorvet and the whole team for this major book.
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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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'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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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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Asia and the secular
This afternoon, I was fortunate enough to attend the GSRL's monthly research seminar at Campus Condorcet.We enjoyed a remarkable presentation of this book :
Asia and the Secular, Francophone Perspectives in a Global Age
This volume looks at the secular state in the context of contemporary Asia and investigates whether there existed before modernity antecedents to the condition of secularity, understood as the differentiation of the sphere of the religious from other spheres of social life. The chapters presented in this book examine this issue in national contexts by looking at the historical formation of lexicons that defined the "secular", the "secular state," and "secularism". This approach requires paying attention to modern vernacular languages and their precedents in written traditions with often a very long tradition. This book presents three interpretive frameworks: multiple modernities, variety of secularisms, and typologies of post-colonial secular states.
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Protestantism in Spain: tribute to Frances Luttikhuizen
As Protestantism (mainly Evangelical/Pentecostal) is growing in Spain, let's not forget Frances Luttikhuizen, an English Philology lecturer, writer, and researcher of Protestantism, who passed away in Barcelona this last summer 2022.Her main fields of interest included the history of translation, linguistic awareness, Cervantes' works, and the Spanish Reformation.
Among Luttikhuizen’s most important works is the book España y la Reforma Protestante (Spain and the Protestant Reformation, 2018, 468p (link), of which Spanish theologian José Moreno Berrocal has said it is “a work that represents a before and after in the studies of the Reformation in Spain (...).
There is a wealth of data and ideas that will make this book a constant and obligatory reference work”.
Some reviews of this book are available, mostly in Spanish, including in this History of Philosophy publication (link)
Thank you Evangelical Focus for this obituary (link)
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The complexity of the French principle of Laïcité
Want to discover The groundbreaking volume published by Philippe Portier and Jean-Paul Willaime about religion and secularism in France ?Reminder, Philippe Portier is Professor of History and Sociology of Secularism at Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, PSL, France, and Jean-Paul Willaime is Emerite Professor of History and Sociology of Protestantism at Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, PSL, France. Both are outstanding scholars
Here are some points from the Chapter introduction (link)
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Prayer and the Political Praxis of Spiritual Warfare in Nigeria
Combining religious studies with ethnography, Powerful Devices (forthcoming) explores Nigerian Pentecostals and US Evangelicals’ praxis of transnational spiritual warfare.By closely studying spiritual warfare prayers as a “device,” Powerful Devices shows how the rituals of prayer enable an apprehension of time, paradigms of self-enhancement, and the subversion of politics and authority.
Abimbola Adunni Adelakun explores charismatic Christianity’s relationship to science and secular authority, technology and temporality, neoliberalism, and reactionary ideology.
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"French secularism and the fight against separatism" (Nancy Lefevre)
French lawyer Nancy Lefevre serves as in-house legal counsel to the Conseil national des Evangéliques de France (CNEF), the main French Evangelical network (officialized in 2010).She is also considered as a prominent defender of religious freedom in that country.
Published last year in the International Journal for Religious Freedom, this insightful article discusses the historical roots and conceptions of laicity underlying the 2021 reform.
It also focuses on the impact on religious organisations resulting from the state’s greater control over religious groups’ activities
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Manufacturing Huguenot identity (Cabanel)
Patrick Cabanel (EPHE-PSL) is the most prolific Historian of Protestantism in today's France, with many major contributions. His last book deals with identity making.At the beginning of the XIXth Century, the French Huguenots had emerged very weakened from centuries of persecution. But still alive ! These Protestants became specialists in commemoration, in the making of places of memory, of museums, emphasizing heroes and heroines. In doing so, they transformed the identity of the group: it was no longer just religious, as it has been the case for three centuries; it became historical, memorial, cultural.
It is increasingly disconnected from practice and belief, even from endogamy, and capable of being transmitted over generations.
A must-read book, which would deserve a translation in english.
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Faithful Deliberation: Rhetorical Invention, Evangelicalism, and #MeToo Reckonings
While often perceived as an insular enclave with a high level of in-group agreement about political and social issues, predominantly white evangelicalism includes prominent voices urging deliberation about appropriate responses to sexual abuse, domestic violence, and the discourses surrounding these traumas. In Faithful Deliberation: Rhetorical Invention, Evangelicalism, and #MeToo Reckonings (University of Alabama Press, 2022), T J Geiger II examines theologically reflective rhetorical invention that reconfigures trauma-minimizing commonplaces in order to facilitate community-internal deliberation. -
Religion and Secularism in France Today
Philippe Portier is Professor of History and Sociology of Secularism at Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, PSL, France.
Jean-Paul Willaime is Emerite Professor of History and Sociology of Protestantism at Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, PSL, France. Both are outstanding scholars.This groundbreaking volume explores the dynamic life of religion and politics in France and investigates the extent to which the French idea of secularisation has been pushed to be more thorough and radical in its interaction with its other European counterparts.
A must-read !
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Evangelical belonging and Migrant experience (USA)
In the Hands of God: How Evangelical Belonging Transforms Migrant Experience in the United StatesWhy do migrants become more deeply evangelical in the United States and how does this religious identity alter their self-understanding? In the Hands of God examines this question through a unique lens, foregrounding the ways that churches transform what migrants feel.
Drawing from her extensive fieldwork among Brazilian migrants in the Washington, DC, area, Johanna Bard Richlin shows that affective experience is key to comprehending migrants' turn toward intense religiosity, and their resulting evangelical commitment.
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African Pentecostalism in Britain
This fortcoming book is based on ethnographic research among African Pentecostal Christians living in the UK. Written by by Katharine Stockland, Senior Social Researcher at the National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR), UK, the book title is : African Pentecostalism in Britain Migration, Inclusion, and the Prosperity Gospeladdresses themes of migration and community formation, religious identity and practice, and social and political exclusion. With attention to strained kinship relationships, precarious labour conditions, and struggles for legal and social legitimacy, it explores the ways in which intimacy with a Pentecostal God - and with fellow Christians - has been shaped by the challenges of everyday life for Africans in the UK.
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Essays on the new Green theology
The way churches consider ECOLOGY arises in an increased way in our current society. How can we think theologically about this awareness? How to integrate the ecological dimension without excessively sanctifying nature?How to act for the safeguard of Creation from a Christian perspective?
Thinkers from different Christian traditions (Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox), from three generations of theologians (pioneers, consolidators and new thinkers) and from various sensibilities in green theology discuss in this volume the emergence of an essential Christian concern: the relationship between man and his environment.
Directed by Prof. Christophe Monnot and Frederic Rognon, written in French, this scholarly book (247p) is a must-have.
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Ethnographic studies on Creole religion (ASSR)
Started in 1956 and currently published by Editions de l'EHESS, Archives de Sciences Sociales des Religions has a tri-part objective: to promote a comparative perspective, broadened by all religions, both living and dead; to encourage collaboration between all social sciences in order to shed light on the many facets of the phenomenon of religion; and to welcome the exposition of theoretical developments in research.The journal is bilingual (French and English) and occasionally trilingual (Spanish). It publishes two thematic issues and two bibliographic issues per year. The current issue, just released, has been coordinated by Valérie Aubourg and Mathieu Claveyrolas. It is about Creole religion, studied through ethnographic lenses. Two papers are written in English. Others are also provided with an abstract in English.
A must-read ! Link.
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Madeleine Albright (1937-2022)
Former secretary of State (USA), Madeleine Albright (1937- 2022)i s gone.She left a mixed legacy of strong committment to Democracy worldwide, but also of ambiguous global interventionism (including strong support for embargo on Irak, indirectly leading to DAESH's birth).
Smart and well-trained, interested by the role of Faith on Geopolitics, she published a significant book in 2006.
Its title : The Mighty and the Almighty. Introduced by President Bill Clinton.
In that book, she argued that politics and religious values can work together to promote peace. In her seventeenth chapter about Africa, she pleaded for a better training for diplomats, who should take faith seriously. A good lesson that applies to French diplomats too.
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Communities of the Converted: Ukrainians and Global Evangelism
As a terrible war has started in Ukraine, let's remind the wider public that the Ukrainian society has considerably evolved since the end of the Soviet Union.Increased religious pluralism is part of it. The rise of Ukrainian Evangelicalism is one of its main features.
It has been studied by Catherine Wanner, who released in 2007 a very good book (Cornell University Press).
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The forgotten history of Black Europeans
The presence of people of African descent in Europe is generally viewed through the prism of slavery and colonization, obscuring a much older shared history. In her new book African Europeans, An Untold Story, Professor Olivette Otele uncovers a forgotten past, from Emperor Septimius Severus, to enslaved Africans living in Europe during the Renaissance, and all the way to present-day migrants moving to Europe’s cities.
With a forthcoming translation in French. A must-read book !
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Non-violence in French Protestantism and its literary translations
The French website CAIRN is an amazing ressource, including an international edition which allows many scholars to have an insight into top-level publications in french.Here is an example with Patrick Cabanel's article about Non-violence in French Protestantism during World War One.
"French protestants played a part in the emergence of radical pacifism and non-violence during the First World War. The values and actions of Bertin Aguillon and Jules-Philippe Guiton, two young methodist ministers who died in 1914 and 1917, are well documented, the latter having kept a diary that has recently been published. This is not the case of Cévenol Roux and the Berthalon du Dauphiné brothers who, for many years, took refuge in the mountains. (...) Patrick Cabanel suggests opening this chapter on protestant radical pacifism, between history and literature."
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Pentecostalism in Africa: Pneumatic Christianity in Postcolonial Societies
During recent decades, Pentecostal/charismatic Christianity (pc/c) has moved from an initially peripheral position to become a force to be reckoned with within African Christianity and sub-Saharan African societies in general...Bringing together prominent Africanist scholars from a variety of disciplines (theology and church history, anthropology, sociology, religious studies, political science, developmental studies) this Brill volume published in 2014 offers an elaborate treatment of the social, cultural and political impact of pc/c in sub-Saharan Africa. A must-read book for whoever wants to study today's Postcolonial Christianity in Africa.
