France

Answer to Prayer

An encouraging growth of unity among evangelicals has emerged in recent years out of a history of division and lack of cooperation. Through the French Evangelical Alliance, the French Evangelical Federation and the larger Pentecostal and charismatic unions, the National Council of French Evangelicals (CNEF) was initiated in 2001. It has since grown and now represents most of the 43 church unions of all denominations as the voice for evangelical Protestants in France.

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.