Evangelicals in France Voice Concern Over Discrimination

Evangelicals in France are facing growing problems as authorities enforce secularism, discriminate them or label them as supporters of the highly unpopular U.S. President, French Protestant leaders say.

By Kenneth Chan, Tuesday, December 21, 2004

Evangelicals in France are facing growing problems as authorities enforce secularism, discriminate them or label them as supporters of the highly unpopular U.S. President, French Protestant leaders say. Though religious freedom is not under threat in the proudly secular nation, the problems have prompted mainstream and evangelical Protestant leaders to speak out.

"Evangelical churches face more and more administrative problems from local authorities," Stephane Lauzet, secretary general of the French Evangelical Alliance (AEF), told Reuters. "It shows the difficulties officials here have with religion."

According to Reuters, there are about a million Protestants in France--a country of 60 million. Most are from the Lutheran or Reformed traditions but evangelical ranks are growing, both in established churches and in new congregations of African, Haitian and Asian immigrants. Of the French Protestant Federation (FPF)--the main ecumenical partner of the World Council of Churches in France--Evangelicals make up 40 percent. And their ranks are growing, Reuters reported, even at a time when France is stressing secularist laws such as the ban on religious symbols in state schools.

However, despite their numbers, Evangelicals say they encounter bureaucratic hurdles when trying to open churches and say they are seen as sects because they differ from France's traditional faiths.

In one reported incident, local officials in northern Paris refused to let a large Haitian evangelical congregation purchase the warehouse they have been using as a church, saying it has too few parking spaces.

"But they've already been there for 12 years," said FPF's Jean-Arnold de Clermont, without parking space ever being mentioned as a problem. The FPF head told Reuters that other congregations had similar difficulties.

Lauzet said evangelicals also had more problems getting permits for new church buildings.

Meanwhile, both Clermont and Lauzet report that many French--unfamiliar with the varied faces of Protestantism--linked the evangelicals with the U.S. religious right and with U.S. President George W. Bush, highly unpopular in France.

"To them, anything that's not Catholic is a sect," Lauzet said.

Last spring, the left-leaning weekly Le Nouvel Observateur ran a cover story with a picture of Bush and the headline "Evangelicals--the sect that wants to conquer the world."

The magazine apologized after protests by the FPF and AEF.

Currently, mainstream and evangelical Protestants make up only two percent of the population in traditionally Catholic France.