MIRCOM 2026 Conférence

Initiated by Karina Bénazech Wendling (Associate Professor, Université de Lorraine/IDEA), MIRCOM is a research project that is sponsored by the MSH Lorraine (Maison des Sciences Sociales et des Humanités de Lorraine) and partners.

MIRCOM is a research project that aims to explore the role of Jewish and Protestant minorities in nation building in three European countries with Catholic majorities: France, Ireland and Italy.

Don't miss this International Conference “Common ground or walled gardens? The Jewish and Protestant minorities’ contribution to vivre ensemble in France, Ireland and Italy (1789 – 1948)”, 19-21 May 2026, Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge

For proposal of papers or further information, click here (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.

 

Evangelicals in France in social media (France 24)

Since the early 2020s, evangelicals have slightly surpassed one million followers in France.

This continues to arouse the growing curiosity of mainstream media.

After France 2, it's France 24's turn to examine the influence of French evangelicals on social media.

"An area in Bordeaux, France, hosted a massive evangelical worship service attracting nearly 4,000 followers to hear Quebec preacher Claude Houde. Evangelicalism is a religion gaining traction with youth, largely by recruiting on social media. Carla, a 19-year-old influencer, shares her faith with 300,000 followers on TikTok."

Link to France 24: 

Evangelicalism in France : social media used to attract young believers

European evangelicals' portrayal on public TV causes concern

A lengthy report on evangelicals recently sparked debate in France: "Evangéliques, un succès pas si angélique" ("Evangelicals, A Success Not So Angelic"), broadcast on public television (France 2, program Envoyé Spécial).

Approached from the angle of abuse and manipulation, it could have fostered an interesting debate, but it is undermined by a highly questionable methodology and bias (including confusion between priest and pastor, mass and worship service, etc.).

As a result, the documentary provoked disapproval and misunderstanding, particularly from the two main French umbrella organizations, the Protestant Federation of France (link) and the National Council of Evangelicals of France (link), both of which issued public statements.

It should be noted that a few days earlier, another report, this time on a Spanish public channel, also addressed the evangelical issue from an anxiety-inducing perspective (link).

This led Evangelical Focus media to highlight that “It is difficult to understand how information about the evangelical reality in Spain can be reported without a single opinion from at least one of its representatives” (link).

Is all this fair game after all, or is being a religious minority in Europe still a challenge today ?

Nevertheless, no doubt these two controversial public TV reports provide additional material to a contemporary history of pluralism and minority protestant networks in secular Europe (link).

Forthcoming conference : Pietism and Education (France)

Great forthcoming conference on Pietism and Education (Campus Condorcet, feb 2026, France)

It is still possible to apply for a communication (deadline 15th of october, 2025)

"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)

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

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

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!

2025-2026 Research Residencies at the Paris Institute for Advanced Study

The Paris Institute for Advanced Study is a research center in the social sciences, humanities and cognitive (neuro)sciences, and a partner of the main Parisian higher education and research institutions.

Please look at the 2025-2026 research residencies call at the Paris IAS ! It offers exceptional researchers in the social sciences and humanities the opportunity to develop a research project in ideal conditions that include: a full academic year (10 months) of time for research away from teaching and administrative responsibilities, insertion in an international and interdisciplinary community of top-level researchers and the largest concentration of scientists in Europe, within an excellent work and living environment in the heart of Paris.

More here (link)

The GSRL (UMR 8582) in a glimpse

Group Societies, Religions, Laicities  is a French research laboratory of the CNRS and the École pratique des hautes études (EPHE-PSL).

The GSRL brings together researchers from different disciplines (history, sociology, political sciences, anthropology, philosophy, law, etc.) working on the transformations of religion and issues related to secularism in the contemporary world. Its field of competence encompasses many cultural areas.

Link

French-speaking research to be read

Friendly reminder to our dear english-speaking colleagues : there is a great deal of french-speaking research done every year.

Do not forget to try to read it and quote it, as french-speaking scholars make effort too to read and quote your valuable work.

If not, our social science lenses will not work well, and may make us sometimes almost half blind. No valuable synthesis on religion in Africa, for example, could be done without reading extensively the huge french-speaking scientific knowledge produced by Historians, Anthropologists, Sociologists and so on.

Let me take the occasion to share this link to the new version ot Theses.fr portal, which helps to locate all the Ph.D completed in France.

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

Protestant History: new Digitalized prints (BPF, Paris)

In 2023, the brand new BPF documentary portal (French Protestant Historical Library in Paris) has been enriched with some 500 digitized prints worth to be seen.

Discover some of them here (link), including this 1736 depiction of an Anabaptist Communion service (Last Supper service), from Jacok Van Schley.

 

Christian Missions and the Construction of South Sudan (AfCo)

What kind of impact did have the French on the long history of South Sudan (a land which became independant in 2011) ? 

This article, originally published in french in 2013, is available in english (full-text)

Christianity has been a driving force in the process of nation building in South Sudan. Focusing on the city of Wau (Bahr el-Ghazal), this study considers the impact of Catholicism. Starting with the legacy of the French Marchand Mission, which originated in the modern city of Wau, Catholicism expanded initially through the work of the Comboni Mission.

Following the horrors of the first civil war (1955–1972), Wau became a diocese in 1974, and the Catholic Church established a major medical center there headed by a white missionary, Father Hubert Barbier. In spite of the destruction wrought by the second civil war (1983–2005), the work continued against the backdrop of an international awareness-raising campaign led by Father Barbier in France.

Link

Have a look at the GSRL's new website

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. 

The brand new GSRL website is available here : GSRL Link

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.

Link

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.

"Black women living in the French empire played a key role in the decolonial movements of the mid-twentieth century. Thinkers and activists, these women lived lives of commitment and risk that landed them in war zones and concentration camps and saw them declared enemies of the state. Annette K. Joseph-Gabriel mines published writings and untapped archives to reveal the anticolonialist endeavors of seven women. Though often overlooked today, Suzanne Césaire, Paulette Nardal, Eugénie Éboué-Tell, Jane Vialle, Andrée Blouin, Aoua Kéita, and Eslanda Robeson took part in a forceful transnational movement. Their activism and thought challenged France's imperial system by shaping forms of citizenship that encouraged multiple cultural and racial identities. Expanding the possibilities of belonging beyond national and even Francophone borders, these women imagined new pan-African and pan-Caribbean identities informed by black feminist intellectual frameworks and practices. The visions they articulated also shifted the idea of citizenship itself, replacing a single form of collective identity and political participation with an expansive plurality of forms of belonging".

Link

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%.

The whole study is available here (link)

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". 

Link

GLOPENT, European Research Network on Global Pentecostalism

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:

• Networking active research about Pentecostal and Charismatic movements worldwide, with a special focus on Africa, Asia, and Latin America
• Promoting scientific exchange through our conferences, our journal PentecoStudies, our mailing list, and our website
• Giving scholars a wider platform to introduce their work in Pentecostal Studies by providing bibliographies, papers, news, and links
• Providing academic information about global Pentecostalism to the European academia
• Providing study resources for the scholarly community, such as our dedicated GloPent Web Search Engine on Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements
• Facilitating discussion on theory and method in Pentecostal Studies
• Stimulating academic publications in Pentecostal Studies

Link

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)

A Park renamed in Paris to honor Protestants

The city of Paris has decided to make more visible its commemoration of the St Bartholomew massacre of Protestants 450 years ago on the 24th of August 1572, by renaming a park in the city centre. 

This inauguration will be held tomorrow, on Friday the 16th of September, 2022.

Anne Hidalgo, the mayor of Paris, will be speaking.

As I plan to attend, expect pictures to be posted on this Flickr album (link).

Happy Summer 2022

(Photo glass ceiling of the Library of the History of French Protestantism, SHPF in Paris)

Happy bright summer to all!

And looking forward to seeing you back on this blog in September 2022.

(in the meantime, you can continue to follow me on the Twitter feed, @SebFath, https://twitter.com/sebfath)

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.

Link.

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 !

Link

History of French Baptist Churches, a video serie to follow

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).

 

"Protestants continue to support Macron" (interview)

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.

Link