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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:
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:
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!
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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%.
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".
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:
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)
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).
(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)
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.
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 !
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).
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.
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)
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.
"The Chosen" is the first-ever multi-season TV show about the life of Jesus. Three years after its premiere episode, the series now hits television screens for the first time across France airing on one of this country's top TV channels.
"To be on a major network is a first," said Katherine Warnock, one of the show's producers. "We love our platform, we love having a free app that's available to the whole world, but to be embraced by Canal + has been such an honor."
Read how the Christian TV network CBN, based in USA, has reported about the launching of THE CHOSEN in France for Christmas 2021 (C8 Channel, national TV, dubbed in French language).
Just a few days ago, Yvan Castanou, a prominent megachurch pastor (IMpact Centre Chrétien, ICC) based in the Paris' suburbs, met in Lagos Bishop David Oyedepo, Nigeria's most powerful Evangelical pastor.
The go-between was pastor Matthew Ashimolowo, megachurch pastor based in London (Kingsway International church).
This kind of connection doesn't come by accident. It is a testimony of a much larger movement going on: Evangelical/Neopentecostal Revival is on the way in the global French-speaking world, connecting more than ever before the strongest English-speaking and French-speaking networks.
To know more about African Evangelical networks in Europe from a French-speaking persoective, read Fancello and Mary (link).
Victims of abuse within France’s Catholic Church welcomed a historic turning point on Tuesday, 5th of October 2021 after a new report ("Rapport Sauvé") estimated that 330,000 children in France were sexually abused over the past 70 years, providing the country’s first accounting of the worldwide phenomenon. The figure includes abuses committed by some 3,000 priests
To be continued (Religion News Service Website)
Victims of abuse within France’s Catholic Church welcomed a historic turning point on Tuesday, 5th of October 2021 after a new report ("Rapport Sauvé") estimated that 330,000 children in France were sexually abused over the past 70 years, providing the country’s first accounting of the worldwide phenomenon. The figure includes abuses committed by some 3,000 priests
To be continued (Religion News Service Website)
"This (excellent!) 2021 book is the first account of British Protestant conversion initiatives directed towards continental Europe between 1600 and 1900.
Continental Europe was considered a missionary land—another periphery of the world, whose centre was imperial Britain. British missions to Europe were informed by religious experiments in America, Africa, and Asia, rendering these offensives against Europe a true form of "imaginary colonialism".
British Protestant missionaries often understood themselves to be at the forefront of a civilising project directed at Catholics (and sometimes even at other Protestants). Their mission was further reinforced by Britain becoming a land of compassionate refuge for European dissenters and exiles. This book engages with the myth of International Protestantism, questioning its early origins and its narrative of transnational belonging, while also interrogating Britain as an imagined Protestant land of hope and glory."
From industrial policy and nuclear power to "strategic autonomy" and the 35-hour week, the 2020s are popularising many French instincts about world affairs and the state.
Thank you Jeremy Cliffe for this stimulating analysis (NewStatesman)