Decked in Sunday finery, the chattering line stretches out the door and up a gritty block of warehouses and homes in this working-class Paris suburb.
Inside, the congregation at Impact Christian Center sways and chants to gospel rhythms with an African flavor as the day’s first morning service rolls on, way behind schedule.
It is hard to believe that this outburst of religious fervor is occurring in France, the most staunchly secular nation of an increasingly secular Europe.
Yet even as Christians are fleeing mainstream churches across the region, evangelical Christianity is booming — thanks most recently to flourishing migrant churches like Impact Christian.
France alone has witnessed an eightfold increase in evangelicals over the last half-century — from 50,000 to 400,000.
Those numbers are small in absolute terms; evangelicals represent less than 2 percent of the European population.
But their influence is growing, as Roman Catholic and traditional Protestant churches increasingly borrow from their hands-on and inclusive doctrine. Perhaps most significantly, the evangelicals attest that spirituality is not dying out in Europe.
"Non-belief, doubt and secularization continue to progress, but increasingly we’re witnessing a spiritual turning in recent years," said Christopher Sinclair, an expert on evangelical movements at France’s University of Strasbourg. "What’s striking about the evangelical movement is that it’s growing. You can see this throughout Europe. It’s answering a spiritual need."
As it grows, European evangelicalism is developing a sharply different face than its American counterpart.
Evangelicals have largely stayed on the sidelines of political battles — in part, experts say, because many believe in a strong separation of church and state but also because they remain divided on a number of key issues.
"We evangelicals in France are a minority among a Protestant minority," said Etienne Lhermenault, general secretary of the Federation of Evangelical Baptist Churches of France. "So we have a minority mentality. Our American evangelical friends have a majority mentality — even if they’re not exactly the majority." (RNS)
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