History of the FATEB, "an African Dream" (book)

Historical studies on theological training sites for Evangelicals in the vast Francophone Africa ?

There are very few. 

All the more reason to highlight this book by John F. Robinson (PhD, University of Strasbourg), published in May 2025. It is titled *An African Dream: The History of an Evangelical Seminary for French-Speaking Africa*.

This seminary is the renowned FATEB, Faculté de Théologie Evangélique de Bangui (in French), one of the first university-level evangelical seminary in the area.

Founded in 1974, it is still based in Bangui, the capital of the Central African Republic.  

Congratulations to John F. Robinson for this book.  

Link to learn more.

Jason E. Shelton, The contemporary Black Church

Black Americans have moved from traditional Christian denominations into non-denominational institutions but also to the more open identification of being spiritual but not religious.

As this change has happened, the influence of Black preachers has dwindled, as have the community ties once forged in the crucible of ‘the Black Church’ as a singular oppositional body to white racism, Jim Crow, and unfavourable economic conditions. 

Jason Shelton's The Contemporary Black Church (New York University Press, 2024) examines how African American religious institutions are evolving through new leadership models, political engagement, and adaptations to social changes while maintaining their historic role in community empowerment.

Link

"Why France is suddenly full of evangelical churches"

Contrary to what this video suggests, France is not suddenly full of evangelical churches.

However, there is a growing visibility in France of a diverse form of evangelical Protestantism. It now reaches over a million people and attracts young audiences. This has caught the attention of journalist Elena Pompei and the YouTube channel ENTR, which published this 11,5-minutes in-depth report a week ago. Let's notice it is featuring an interview with sociologist Christophe Monnot, affiliated with the GSRL research laboratory.

The ENTR channel describes itself as: "ENTR, a unique channel made by young journalists from DW, France Médias Monde, and partners all over Europe."

Lien.

 

Romanian Pentecostal Churches in Italy

There are approximately 150 Romanian Pentecostal churches in Italy today. The number has roughly tripled since 2000, from about 50 churches, reflecting the influx of over 1 million Romanian migrants (including many Pentecostal).

To know more, let's read Pietro Cingolani, "Romanian Pentecostal Immigrants in Italy: Between Adaptations and Innovations" in Guglielmi, M. (eds) Immigrant Christianities. Religion and Global Migrations. Palgrave Macmillan, 2025 (p.121-142).

These Pentecostal groups differ from other confessions but show convergences in multicultural Italy. They challenge the Catholic Church's symbolic monopoly and the Romanian Orthodox Church in Italy.

Catholics and Orthodox share strong dogma and clergy-laity separation. Pentecostals prioritize experience over theological preparation. Transnational migration prompts adaptations to Italian context. They adopt a culturally neutral approach to include minorities segregated in Romania.

Despite conservative gender views, they promote women's agency in Italy. Churches enhance assistance and pastoral activism toward youth. They incorporate specific Catholic elements in this process.

Link.

African Evangelicalism and the Transformation of Africa (Jacob K. Olupona)

"What is the impact of Evangelical Christianity on Africa? Evangelical Christianity and the Transformation of Africa (Georgetown University Press, 2025) aims to answer this question.

Evangelical Christianity is manifesting into a strong presence in African states, perhaps more than in any other place in the world.

Given its exponential rise in Africa, it is increasingly clear that Christianity in its evangelical form is exercising significant influence in virtually all spheres of life, defining the essence of public and private life.

Drawing on original works from leading scholars in humanities and social science disciplines-such as Afe Adogame, Yolanda Covington-Ward, Jacob Olupona, Derek Peterson, Shobana Shankar, and Nimi Wariboko, this volume endeavors to produce a comprehensive study of Evangelical Christianity in Africa, paying careful attention to disciplinary interconnections, as well as social, cultural, political, and economic forces".

 

Link.

 

Evangelicalism in Europe Unity in Diversity (Langham)

What does the evangelical movement stand for? In the twenty-first century the term has become highly contested. In August 2024, the Fellowship of European Evangelical Theologians met for its biennial conference in cooperation with the European Evangelical Alliance to explore evangelical identity in Europe with particular emphasis on unity in diversity. This collection of essays, and invited additional chapters, was presented by national leaders and experts from across Europe. 

Read more here (LANGHAM)

"The Spirit blows where it wills" (Desert Assembly 2025)

"Every year, the village of Mialet in the Cévennes mountains of southern France becomes a meeting place for those who want to keep alive the country's reformed history and its struggle for religious freedom."

Theme : ‘The Spirit blows where it wills: 1525-2025: 500 years of extraordinary Protestant diversity’.

An event commemorating the 500th Anniversary of Anabaptists, including historians Neal Blough and Sebastien Fath.

Read more here (Evangelical Focus)

And if you want to watch some pics, click here (Flickr Album)

Evangelicalism in Europe (Langham), forthcoming

Under the umbrella of the European Evangelical Alliance, this much-needed forthcoming book will give us precious insights about EVANGELICALISM in EUROPE (Langham).

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

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

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. 

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

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

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.

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.

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

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).

 

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

Evangelicalism in Spain (2023) : new data

"The number of evangelicals in Spain, as well as the amount of churches planted, continues to increase, according to figures for 2023 published by the ministry Evangelism in Depth (EVAF), which studies the statistical evolution of evangelicalism since 1996."

Over 1,000 Spanish municipalities include at least on evangelical church.

To read further, click here (link)

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.

A must-read.