I was recently asked about the “church’s relative silence in the face of two global wars” and how this “has created an environment where organized religion has little credibility and appeal.”
Well, the “Church’s” silence during the wars is clearly seen here in Europe as being Roman Catholic tacit collusion with Hitler. And in general, European’s equate the Church with this same Roman Catholic Church. But the disinterest and divorce from the Roman Church was already complete by the end of the 19th century.
Adolf Hitler and Pope Pius XII
Where then was the “Evangelical Church” between the wars?
The Spanish evangelical church? Well Protestantism never penetrated Spain which explains today’s evangelical population of only 0.4 percent (1 out of every 250 people, compare that to 1 out of every 3 people in the USA).
The Czech “evangelical” church had been suffering from John Huss’ execution by the Catholic church in 1415. This is today an extremely secular country with only 0.25 percent evangelical population.
John Huss
So in those two countries the evangelical presence was infinitesimally small to the point of invisibility.
The English stood firm during WWII; the believers as well.
In Germany, believers like Dietrich Bonhoeffer, were send to the concentration camps for being part of the German resistance movement. There he was hung.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
In France, the evangelical church (the Huguenots) began to be expelled on August 23, 1572, when about 4,000 Protestants (men, women, children) were brutalized, murdered, and thrown into Paris’ Seine River.
The Saint Barthelemy massacre
Evangelicals not did really begin to gather again publicly until 1849, when the Free Church once again officially constituted itself. But its numbers were small. Note: There were an estimated 25,000 French evangelicals after WWI and 50,000 after WWII (Fath, 185).
Many French evangelicals became involved in the French résistance. Having known persecution against their own, they reacted strongly against Vichy-Nazi antisemitism. Additionally, there were a significant number of messianic jews in the French evangelical church at the time due to an evangelistic focus toward jewish people at the end of the XIXth and beginning of the XXth centuries.
La résistance française
For example (Fath, 165-166), an evangelical pastor in Nice, Edmond Evrard, had entered the French resistance movement in 1942. In March 1944, he had the audacity to organize in the Baptist church he pastored, a celebration of the jewish Purim festival! (See The Book of Ester)
The first Protestant member of the French resistance to be shot by the Nazi’s was 18-year old André Guésiec from Brittany. He was arrested in April 1941, imprisoned for one month and shot on May 12, 1941 (a mere 60 years ago).
One might say that the Hebrews list of the faithful continues to grow. I am thankful and indebted to these heros of faith, contrary to the image that many have of Christianity due to the Crusades and Inquisitions, for their courage and self-sacrifice on behalf of others.
From the ghetto to network: protestant evangelicals in France 1800-2005
by Sébastien Fath
