France

Answer to Prayer

Evangelical Christianity has grown over the last 50 years despite the systemic secularization of society, religious indifference and decline in church involvement. In 1960, evangelicals in France numbered 180,000; by 1990, they had reached nearly 400,000, and in 2010, they were 600,000. Evangelicals meet in over 2,500 fellowships with dozens more forming every year.

Challenge for Prayer

Major spiritual strongholds hinder acceptance of the gospel:

a) France’s religious history is stained with violence – the bloody wars of religion in the 16th Century which claimed 200,000 lives, the brutal persecutions of the Huguenots in the 17th Century and the French Revolution in 1789-1801. Starting with the Reformation and then Counter-Reformation, France moved through the Enlightenment to philosophically culminate in modern-day atheistic existentialism and a materialist view of life.

b) The widespread involvement with occult practices. There are more people earning a living in occult practices than there are registered doctors, and 10 times more than evangelical pastors and missionaries. The spiritual vacuum created by aggressive secularism has been filled with witchcraft and esotericism, since most French have no meaningful contact with dynamic Christian faith.

     For an additional 12 Challenges for Prayer see Operation World book, CD-ROM, or DVD-ROM.