French, American: it's all the same !?

When I have described to American evangelicals the intellectual and emotional resistance that one faces when sharing the gospel in France, I have on a number of occasions gotten the response, “Yes, isn’t it terrible. It is like that here in the States too.” Well, is it really?

My wife was in the courtyard of our apartment complex talking to the daughter of a neighbor. The seven-year-old exclaimed, “But in light of the suffering in the world, how can you say that God exists?!” Now how many American seven year-olds do you know who would respond this way at the mere mention of the name of God?

Our neighbor has now become a believer and her daughter (above 9 years later),
who spoke with Louise in the courtyard, attends the Dijon GBC's youth group

As I mentioned in the earlier blog entries “RELIGIOUS SMOKE”, the Crusades and the Inquisition irreparably marred the European psyche. At about the same time that the United States was experiencing a tremendous spiritual revival, C.S. Lewis stated:

“Certainly I feel that very grave dangers hang over us. This results from the apostasy of the great part of Europe from the Christian faith. Hence a worse state than the one we were in before we received the Faith. For no one returns from Christianity to the same state he was in before Christianity, but into a worse state; the difference between a pagan and an apostate is the difference between an unmarried woman and an adulteress.”(“Letters,” 15 Sept. 1953, 89)

C.S. Lewis' "Letters"

In the 16th through 18th centuries Protestant believers fled to North America to escape European politico-religious persecution. In 1776 on the New Continent, the United States consequently inaugurated religious freedom and separation of Church and State as founding principles to protect people from the tyranny of the power of the monarchy wedded with the authority of the Church.

In 1789 on the Old Continent, France inaugurated state secularism to protect people from the tyranny of the power of the monarchy wedded to the authority of the Church. Seeing no other way to uncouple the authority of the Church from the power of the Monarchy, the French revolutionaries overthrew both, and promoted secularism as the remedy to the problem of Christendom that had been plaguing the Continent for centuries.

The Rights of Man

So France and the United States arrived at two opposing prescriptions to the common menace of Christendom (the majority Church wielding domineering political power). The United States promoted freedom of religion; Europe promoted philosophical secularism.

The United States is admittedly pragmatic, while Europe is hubristically philosophical. Take for example the American philosopher Benjamin Franklin’s aphorisms that still guide people today: “a penny saved is a penny earned,” and “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”

My wife regularly pulls out vignettes from Franklin's life found in Isaacson's book. Our kids smile and humor her! (source: www.barnesandnoble.com)

Now compare the tenor of Franklin’s sayings to some European philosophers:

“God is dead” (Nietzsche).
“God’s only excuse is that he does not exist” (Camus).
And “even if God did exist, it would change nothing” (Sartre).

Friedrich Nietzsche

Albert Camus was the second youngest-ever recipient of Nobel Prize for literature in 1957

Jean-Paul Sartre received the Nobel Prize for literature, but refused it.
Sartre spent some time at the Château de St. Albain which was then owned by the Schweitzer family (Sartre was Albert Schweitzer's nephew); it is now the property of GBIM

Just as Jesus and his apostles formed the foundation of Christianity, just as the Founding Fathers formed the foundation of the United States, the Enlightenment philosophers formed the foundation of today’s Europe. And much of Europe's intellectual foundation was resolutely anti-religious, laid to protect people from suffering and death at the hands of Church authorities empowered by the monarchy.

The upcoming blog entry, “PHILOSOPHICAL MIRRORS,” will provide a chronological overview of some of the foundational voices of Europe from the 16th to the 20th century.

Caveat: if philosophy class was not your cup of tea or coffee or… just abstain. But if you would like to glimpse one of the chief contributors to European resistance to the gospel then read on.

Application: A pragmatic thought concerning evangelism: “Different strokes for different folks.”

As we all know, one faces obstacles when sharing the good news of Christ even in the United States where 35% of the population is evangelical, where laws were designed to promote religious freedom, where the mindset is pragmatic, where there is a favorable religious past—Christians made significant contributions to societal wellbeing.

How much more then does one encounter obstacles when sharing the good news of Christ in France where only 0.8% of the population is evangelical, where laws were designed to protect people from religion, where the mindset is philosophically anti-religious, where the atrocious religious past has marred Christ's reputation.
In light of these stark differences, it simply makes sense that one might use quicker, more direct approaches when sharing the gospel with an American, than with a European; it takes time for the European to overcome the visceral reaction against Christianity, to work through the intellectual questions, to discover who Jesus really is and what life with Him might truly be like.C. S. Lewis captured the heart of these differences by simply saying that one does not woo a divorcée as one does a virgin.