Baptists in France

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Basic information
Fédération des Églises Évangéliques
Baptistes de France - FEEBF
Spiritual direction: President: Jean Dupupet
(Jouy-le-Moutier)
1st Vice-President :
Gwenyth Gelin (Paris)
2nd Vice-President:
Christian De la Roque
Membership: World Baptist Federation
European Baptist Federation
Fédération protestante de France
Conseil national des évangéliques
de France
Municipalities : 127
Parishioners: approx. 7000 (as of 2009)
Share of the
total population:		 approx. 0.01%
Official Website: www.feebf.com

The history of the Baptists in France goes back to the first third of the 19th century. Today, most of the local Baptist congregations are organized in the Federation of Evangelical Baptist Churches of France ( Fédération des Églises Évangéliques Baptistes de France - FEEBF ). There is also a smaller union, the French-language Evangelical Baptist Congregations , as well as a number of free Baptist communities.

history

Baptist baptism in Paris (late 19th century)

The first French Baptist church was built in Nomain in the Nord department in 1820 . The building was preceded by a revival movement initiated by the Swiss evangelist Henri Pyt (1796–1835) . It led, among other things, that several residents of Nomains asked the evangelist for the baptism of believers . Among those who were baptized by Pyt in a tributary of the Scarpe in 1819 and who formed the first French Baptist church were the men Jean-Baptiste Ladam (1789–1846), Alexis Montel, Ferdinand and Louis Caulier, and Jean-Michel Wauquier. Ladam worked as a colporteur and was imprisoned for the first time in 1823 for his evangelistic activities. The farmer Louis Caulier was called to be the first pastor of the ward. The movement slowly spread to the departments of Nord, Aisne and Oise .

Baptism also found its way into Brittany in 1834 after Welsh pastor John Jenkins settled in Morlaix as a church planter . In 1836 the Baptists began to develop supra-local structures. In Douai one was a training center for pastors founded. A first common creed was also made during this period. From 1852 a period of persecution began for the French Baptists. Both the social environment and the established churches reacted to the planting of free churches with harsh rejection and harassment. Nevertheless, there was a further surge in growth. Between 1875 and 1900, around 30 additional communities were established in Belgium , France and French-speaking Switzerland .

In 1911, 10 congregations joined together to form the Federation of Evangelical Baptist Churches in Northern France ( Fédération des Églises Évangéliques Baptistes du Nord de la France ). In 1913 there were 15 pastors in the service and cared for 883 baptized members who were spread across 28 congregations. The First World War , the effects of which were devastating in northern France, significantly reduced the number of churches. 8 Baptist community centers were destroyed. From 1921 missionary work expanded to all of France. Theological discrepancies, however, caused the Baptist Union to split up in the late 1920s, with the result that some local congregations founded a new organization, the French-language Evangelical Baptist Congregations ( Églises Évangéliques Baptistes de langue française ).

In 1937 the FEEBF founded the Baptist Domestic Mission ( Mission Intérieure Baptiste - MIB ). Between 1946 and 1960, they founded 20 new parishes in various major cities, including Lyon and Strasbourg . Between 1976 and 1984 the number of parishes increased from 46 with 2,300 parishioners to 71 with 3,800 parishioners. This growth was due to both new church planting and the re-entry of separated churches.

Statistics and Ecumenism

Baptist Church in Ris-Orangis

In 2005 the FEEBF comprised 127 autonomous local congregations with around 7,000 members baptized as believers and 20,000 people attending church services. The smaller association of the Evangelical Baptist Congregations of the French Language has 42 congregations with around 2,600 members. There are also 62 independent Baptist congregations with around 3500 congregation members.

Only the FEEBF is a national association of the European Baptist Federation and the World Baptist Federation .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Compare with Lothar Nittnaus: Hamburg - the first Baptist congregation on the continent? , in: The Bible is to blame. 175 years of Baptism on the European continent (Ed. Dietmar Lütz), Hamburg 2009, pp. 34–36
  2. ^ Sébastian Fath: You ghetto au réseau. Le protestantisme évangélique en France 1800–2005. (= Histoire et société. N ° 47). Labor et Fides, 2005, ISBN 2-8309-1139-3 , p. 116 and p. 332. - See also the note on the Mairie homepage , viewed on March 22, 2019.
  3. ^ Homepage of the European Baptist Federation: Baptists in France: 20,000 Worshipers and Only 7,000 Members ; Accessed June 7, 2010
  4. ↑ David Boydell, Klaus Rösler: Two meter long frieze shows Baptist traces in church history. Report on the homepage of the European Baptist Federation of June 9, 2009, accessed on September 8, 2017