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.
evangelicals
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Evangelicalism in Europe Unity in Diversity (Langham)
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"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)
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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).
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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 mediaIt'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.
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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.
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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:
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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.
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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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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 -
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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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)
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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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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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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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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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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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Christianity in Ivory Coast: read Bony Guiblehon
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
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A separate Canaan
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".
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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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"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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French Evangelical Armenians
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.
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Evangelical missionary & accusations of souperism in Ireland
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.
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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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"Protestants continue to support Macron" (interview)
Amid fear and polarisation, French evangelicals share “hope” as “churches continue to multiply”, says historianUncertainty 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.
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Nigerian Pentecostalism and Development
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.
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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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"French Evangelical Protestants between concern and trust"
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.
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Orthodoxy & Evangelicalism: Contemporary Issues in Global Perspective
Since the 1990s, the Eastern Orthodox and Protestant Evangelical communities have had more direct contact with each other than at any other time. A small but growing number of dialogues have occurred around the globe along with significant comparative studies in history, doctrine, worship, and spiritual life. Few regional studies, however, have examined areas outside the Anglophone world, or the political and legal aspects of relationships between these traditions. Therefore, this volume breaks fresh ground.This volume is a collection of scholarly essays on current issues and/or developments in Orthodox-Evangelical relations, at both global and national levels, which will inform the ongoing dialogue.
Available in open access here ! Link
