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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).
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.
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."
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
'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)
Based in Accra (Ghana) Pastor Dag Heward-Mills is one of the most prominent postcolonial Evangelical leader in West Africa. 
"Prophet Harris, The 'Black Elijah' of West Africa" (David Shank, Brill, 1994, 346p) offers the only comprehensive study of the thought of William Wade Harris, the Glebo (Liberia) loyalist whose prophetic mission from 1910-29 moved tens of thousands of West Africans out of traditional religion into the stream of Christianity and modernization, particularly in the Ivory Coast.
It reviews that unparalleled breakthrough, thoroughly examines traditional African, Western missionary and colonial influences which helped determine religious innovation and shape his vocation as prophet of Christ's reign of peace and prosperity." (link).
As I'm getting ready to go to Ivory Coast for field research, let's thank Professor Bony Guiblehon (Bouaké University / IMAF) for this very good piece of research (among many others):
Guiblehon, B. “LES JEUNES ET LE MARCHÉ DE LA SPIRITUALITÉ PENTECÔTISTE EN CÔTE D’IVOIRE”. European Scientific Journal, ESJ, Vol. 8, no. 24, Oct. 2012 (link)
The main objective of this paper is to question the Pentecostal spirituality market filled by a generation of young pastors who position themselves in the Ivorian religious audience. Indeed, the market of spirituality arose in the 1990s in the context of socio-economic crises, political and religious freedom, showing a new generation of self-proclaimed servants, "pastors", "bishops", "doctors" , "apostles", "prophets" ... in the Pentecostal movement. These young people perceive spirituality as an opportunity for self-recognition, social dignity and professional integration. To reach their goal, they put on the religious market products such as theology of prosperity and healing, they are involved in communication enterprise, take care of their style ( look) and leadership to meet the social and spiritual expectations of people experiencing the anguish of life pressure. Mobilizing social marketing strategy they capture potential believers and financial resources that could contribute to their personal success
As Alexandre Antoine (EPHE-PSL) is going to defend tomorrow his PhD Thesis on the History of the Assemblies of God in France (1909-1968), it's time to highlight this stimulating European research network on Pentecostalism:
The European Research Network on Global Pentecostalism (GloPent) is an interdisciplinary academic networking initiative coordinated by experts on Pentecostal and Charismatic movements at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, the University of Basel, the University of Birmingham, the University of Cambridge, the University of Heidelberg, SOAS University of London, and the University of Uppsala.
We are interested in:
Why so many postcolonial churches today? One reason may be that the "universalism of the Gospel" taught by Europeans did not always translate/lead into a redefinition of social, economic, status boundaries.
Result: enslaved or colonized people remained both "connected and separated by the Christian faith".
A "separate Canaan"....
Without challenging systemic injustice and economic exploitation.
To bring light on this issue from a Colonial North-American perspective, let's remind this brilliant book published in 1998 by John Sensbach:
"Based on German church documents, including dozens of rare biographies of black Moravians, A Separate Canaan is the first full-length study of contact between people of German and African descent in early America. Exploring the fluidity of race in Revolutionary era America, it highlights the struggle of African Americans to secure their fragile place in a culture unwilling to give them full human rights. In the early nineteenth century, white Moravians forsook their spiritual inclusiveness, installing blacks in a separate church. Just as white Americans throughout the new republic rejected African American equality, the Moravian story illustrates the power of slavery and race to overwhelm other ideals".
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)
While doing research on the New Apostolic Reformation, a growing movement already studied, from a French-speaking perspective, by Prof. André Gagné and Prof. Philippe Gonzalez, I found this book.
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.
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
Within my current researches on Prosperity Gospel, I am in the process of reading Matthew Avery Sutton's book:
Aimee Semple McPherson and the Resurrection of Christian America, Harvard University Press (May 31, 2009)
"Her life marked the beginning of Pentecostalism's advance from the margins of Protestantism to the mainstream of American culture. Indeed, from her location in Hollywood, McPherson's integration of politics with faith set precedents for the religious right, while her celebrity status, use of spectacle, and mass media savvy came to define modern evangelicalism".
A remarkable book about one of the most influential women in contemporary Christian america.
Did you know ? There is a vibrant Armenian diaspora in France. Among them, many Evangelicals, strongly attached to Biblical orthodoxy (as they understand it) and Christian orthopraxy.
On the occasion of the 175th Anniversary of the Armenian Evangelical Church (worldwide), French Armenians, oganized within the Union of Armenian Evangelical Churches in France, have recently updated they website with a very detailed narrative about their History and identity in Contemporary France.
Thank you for that, Pastor Joel Mikaelian.
Let's thank Samuele POLETTI for this remarkable piece of research just released in the TERRAIN review :
"Miracles matter and the matter of miracles, The miraculous reshaping of world and self among Nepali Pentecostal Christians".
The author skillfully demonstrates how the overlapping of everyday life with the biblical narrative acts as an imaginary device that supports the conversion of unprivileged people in a context in which they do not enjoy much freedom of choice.
Fulfilling the promise of a better life, the production of the miracles that I present provides a glimpse of what it might mean to “live in a book”.
Over the past four decades, since the 1960s, there has been a steady flow of Africans moving to India for short-term activities: education, medical treatment and trade.
This just released article explores how debates and rituals in primarily Pentecostal- Charismatic churches – which have emerged as the focal point of community interaction for contemporary Africans in India – become crucial in shaping, reconfiguring and showcasing the markers of an imagined Africanness.
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.
Did you know that Baptist chiurches started in France before they started in Texas ?
If you master just a little bit of French, please try to follow this video, which is the first of a serie of short History videos retracing the long story of Baptist Churches in France from 1810 to 1950 (based upon a PhD).
Good news ! Under the title of "Education, Famine, and Conversion: Evangelical missionary strategies and accusations of souperism in Ireland, 1800-1853", Karina Wendling (PSL / EPHE, GSRL) completed her PhD.
It will be defended on the 13th of June, 2022.
Professors Peter Gray and Patrick Cabanel directed the thesis.
In the particular context of Protestant Ascendancy, Catholics perceived Protestant charity during the Great Irish Famine (1845-51) not as genuine relief but as Souperism - or the bribing of souls. This thesis comes within the framework of preceding research that has focused on the cultural and political implications of this fight for souls and examines overlooked aspects of the context in which these accusations appeared to better understand how missionary strategies disrupted the religious territoriality in a time of growing Irish nationalism.
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.
Amid fear and polarisation, French evangelicals share “hope” as “churches continue to multiply”, says historian
Uncertainty and discontentment give the far-right a chance to win the Presidential election on Sunday.
But Protestants continue to support Macron, says researcher Sebastien Fath.
Some scholars suggest that the combination of an enchanted worldview, an emphasis on miracles and prosperity teaching, and a preoccupation with evangelism discourages effective political engagement and militates against development. However, Nigerian Pentecostalism and Development argues that there is an emerging movement within contemporary Nigerian Pentecostalism which is becoming increasingly active in development practices.
This book goes on to explore the increasingly transnational approach that churches take, often seeking to build multicultural congregations around the globe, for instance in Britain and the United States.
What were American Evangelicals doing in Russian public schools after the collapse of the USSR?
Actually, the Russian Ministry of Education had invited them. Faced with the need for new approaches to moral education after the demise of communism, the Russian Ministry of Education turned to a group of Western evangelical Christians called the CoMission for help. Oddly enough, a government that had promoted atheism, destroyed churches, and persecuted Christians for more than seventy years now found itself partnering with Christians to train their educators to teach ethics.
While a few books have described the changes in Russian public schools, this book, first published in 2002 and then in 2018 (new edition) provides the first in-depth case study of moral education in Russia after communism. Link
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).
Right-wing populists across Western democracies have markedly increased references to Christianity in recent years. While there is much debate about how and why they have done so, less attention has been paid to how Christian communities react to this development. The present study addresses this gap through a comparative analysis of Christian responses to right-wing populist politics in Germany, France and the US.
Read more (link)
Nigerian Pentecostalism continues to assume many of the externalities of popular culture in the country, creating a unique composite of spirituality and secular entertainment. In an emergent trend, church leaders invite popular entertainers into church services and other church-related events with the declared aim of energizing their congregations.
Where does the imperative in Nigerian Pentecostalism to outsource the work of inspiration to performers and jesters come from?
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."
Released at the end of Nov, 2021, the study on the life of French evangelical Protestant families was commissioned by the "National Federation of Protestant Family Associations" (Fédération nationale des associations familiales protestantes, FNAFP) in cooperation with the National Council of Evangelicals of France (Conseil national des évangéliques de France, CNEF).
The data was collected from 636 Protestant families between 1 and 30 September 2021.