A Strategic Look at the Faith of France’s Youth

This is the third part in a continuing series on the Youth of Western Europe, with a focus on France. See below for links to the first two parts of this series.

The political animosity of France seems not only to be directed at the U.S., but also at the Christianity it sees portrayed by the U.S. This unfortunate association, combined with historical milieu of the country, as well as its confusing religious history – where Christianity fought itself more than it ministered to its people – have led to the alarming state of lostness among French youth. They must be reached with the Gospel in this generation! To have such a highly technological and ostensibly educated society’s youth reject Christ would erode the “progress” of the last centuries. If the church cannot keep its children and address this situation in every country, it cannot claim to have reached a people.

According to the 24-7prayer.com website,

“80% of the youth population of France have never even seen or held a Bible!”

Couple that with France’s long history of persecuting religious minorities, and one can see how any authentic, Bible-believing fellowship that emerges could easily receive the moniker of “cult.” Although the evangelical community in France is greater than 500,000, most of those are over the age of 40. In fact, it is reported that there are more full-time occultic practitioners in France than there are Christian workers (24/7prayer.com reports 50,000 occultic practitioners)!

“Of France’s 60 million inhabitants, about 40 million consider themselves Catholic, but only about 5 million attend church each month. Up to 5 million are Muslim and 650,000 are Jewish. One million are Protestants; about 650,000 of them belong to the often austere and liturgical Reformed and Lutheran churches, but only a small proportion attend church regularly,” reported a February 2005 Christianity Today article.

The article claims that there are the 350,000 evangelical churchgoers in France, but most French are deists, agnostics, and atheists ripe for a renewed effort of the church.

Scripture exhorts the church to preach the Gospel to all nations, but it is not a one-time event. Our Lord obviously meant to “keep preaching” the Gospel – not to drop a Bible bomb on a culture and then move on, thinking the task was done. Historically the church has done a better job of exposing people to the Gospel than it has curing them of paganism. All these factors lead to the need to re-examine our “unreached peoples” classification and press forward in the understanding that we must make disciples and not reap decisions from the nations. The youth of France are in desperate need of the transforming power of the Gospel and to be reached with its life-giving truth.

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The Youth of Western Europe: Historical Background to a Lost Faith

This is the second part of a series that is focusing on the youth of western Europe. The series is subtitled Ignorant Heirs of a Reformation and focuses on the youth of France.

HISTORICAL
Known for its rich history and culture, France has long been a leader and influencer of world affairs. For the purpose of this paper, only the history since the Middle Ages will be considered. In the last 1000 years, however, France has been the epicenter of religious strife, political upheaval, invasion, occupation, torture, and political struggle.

It has been a culture with a long history of religious ambiguity, corruption and deep tension. It was in Avignon, France in the 1200s that a dual papal battle began, with one Pope located in Avignon and the other located in Rome. After the errant leadership of Pope Boniface VIII, the French king Phillip IV manipulated the church and had the capital of the Catholic Church moved to Avignon in 1305. So began a long “captivity of the church” as the French king used his influence over the pope during a particularly weak and corrupt era n church history to enrich his kingdom and fund his ongoing war with England. Pope John XXII, installed by Phillip’s influence, devoted his whole tenure as pontiff to enriching the papal treasury (and subsequently, Phillip’s war coffins). It wasn’t until 1415 that a single Pope was finally elected by the illustrious and imposing Council of Constance – Pope Martin V.

By this time, however, incredible damage had been done to the cause of Christ through a multitude of Crusades, religious infighting and greed among the church’s leaders. A generation of Reformers arose to debate the church’s error, defend the Gospel, and describe the true meaning of church to an apathetic culture. Ironically, the same Council of Constance that created the end of the papal battle (in 1415, there were actually three men who were called as Pope!), also named John Wycliffe a heretic and ordered him burned.

In the next 400-500 years, Europe was the site of such great spiritual earthquakes, with the likes of John & Charles Wesley, Martin Luther, and John Calvin – that many considered Europe entirely Christianized. The discovery of the American continent and its emergence as a world power suddenly shifted attention away from France, allowing some of the religious “dust” to settle. It settled thick. Generation after generation would remember the fallacies and sheer outrage of acts of the “church.” Even with the spirit of reform in the air, to many outsiders, it just looked like a reorganization.

In the 20th century, Catholicism reigned in France, but it was nominal at best. France was embattled by Germany, invaded, and occupied in the early part of the century. It never seemed to recover its sense of national identity. Once a staunch ally of the United States and its old rival, England, in the last 30 years, France has leaned steadily leftward politically. Recently, France became the subject of debate among American political conservatives as it refused to endorse or help in the war on terror in Afghanistan or Iraq. In fact, upon closer examination, a people once known for their arrogance now considers Americans to be supremely arrogant as anti-U.S. attitudes continued to grow, particularly among the young people of France.

Because of the well-publicized faith of U.S. President George W. Bush, many of the young people in France identify America’s “arrogance” with its religion and have turned their back on the faith of their fathers – which in most instances never had a chance to establish itself either.

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The Youth of Western Europe: Ignorant Heirs of the Reformation

The following is a series that was formerly created as a paper for the Perspectives class. I went through training to be a coordinator for this excellent, missions-intensive seminar, and we were required to write a paper upon completion.

I chose to focus my paper mainly on the youth of France. I took three years of French in high school and have always been drawn to the country. Here’s hoping that this series will provoke thought, prayer, and strategic mission effort toward the youth of Europe and specifically, France.

Western Europe is one location on earth that many would never consider as having “unreached people” living within it. The likes of John Calvin, Martin Luther, William Wilberforce, and other great Christian leaders and reformers are inscribed on the pages of history books and church cathedrals across the continent. However, the youth of France today, who will be the focus of this paper, have rarely seen or even held a Bible!

Many would say that to classify anyone in Western Europe as “unreached” is ridiculous. However, within the youth population of France, there are dozens of other ethnic people groups, each desperately needing a witness of the Lord Jesus among them. While other missiologists continue to publicize and hype the “10/40 Window” to the church, unreached people exist in historically Christian countries. This unnecessary overemphasis may be the result of a man-centered approach to the interpretation of Jesus’ words in Matthew 24.14 where Jesus said that the gospel of the kingdom must be preached to the whole world and “then the end will come.” That one passage has shaped and formed the strategies of hundreds of American mission agencies in the last 20 years and has resulted in the neglect of emphasis on other key influential areas, particularly Western Europe and France.

The youth in this powerfully influential area of the world are at crucial spiritual crossroads, and to abandon a concerted, strategic focus on them may set the church back even as it pours resources elsewhere. In fact, to neglect the evangelization of the youth culture of France or Western Europe will eventually create the most influential non-Christian group of countries in our world. The purpose of this series is to identify the urgent spiritual needs of the youth of France and to develop a strategy for reaching them with the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

[Above image taken from worldmap.org. Source.]

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