Articles varia
- ZORN Jean-François - La missiologie dans tous ses états à la veille de l’autonomie des Églises protestantes nées de la mission : l’enseignement de Jean Faure (1907-1967)
- TEULIÉ Gilles - « Ceux qui font tomber la barrière de couleur au pays de l’apartheid ». Le pasteur Georges Mabille et les prémices de la ségrégation raciale d’État en Afrique du Sud
- NKOLO FANGA Jean-Patrick - L’exercice du ministère pastoral dans les Églises d’Afrique. Nouveaux défis et perspectives
- ROHMER Céline - La pratique de la justice dans l’Évangile de Matthieu : pour une reprise des débats
- RORDORF Bernard - Luther et Pascal, lecteurs de Romains 13. Les conditions de l’obéissance des chrétiens aux autorités
Missiology in all its forms at the brink of autonomy for the Protestant Churches born of the mission: The teachings of Jean Faure (1907-1967)
How did the time the pastor-missionary Jean Faure stayed in Togo and Morocco impact his missiology as formulated in his work? To address this question the author first consults the studies of those who tried to save the work of Faure who died before any of it could be published. The article is based on the principles and methods of mission as elaborated by Faure for his classes at the School of Missions and the Faculty of Protestant Theology in Paris in the early 1950’s. Using a paradigmatic definition of the mission, Jean Faure shows how its problem has a more general intellectual impact beyond the moment of its enunciation.
“Those who break the colour barrier in the country of apartheid.” Pastor Georges Mabille and the beginning of state-imposed racial segregation in South Africa
This article examines the first years of the apartheid era in South Africa through the eyes of George Mabille, a French protestant missionary from the Paris Evangelical Missionary Society, stationed in Johannesburg amongst the Sotho miners, an extension of the French Mission in Lesotho, from 1946 to 1957. He fought segregation in South Africa along with fellow anglophone clergymen, when the apartheid regime was in its early stages, period which is often neglected by researchers who study apartheid. This study is based on the concept of micro-history as defined by Carlo Ginzburg, and as far as the corpus is concerned on archival material from George Mabille held by the Défap (Département évangélique français d’action apostolique) in Paris, as well as testimonies given by people who knew him well, in order to account for how resistance to apartheid was initiated within the country, which forms it took, in which context and what the consequences were.
Being a pastor in the African Churches. New challenges and perspectives
Once known as discursive ministers of the Word, today’s pastors in Africa also improvise as therapists to varying degrees depending on the possibilities of their ecclesial affiliation. In this article, we seek to answer the question: How can the pastors of the Churches of Africa meet the challenges associated with the therapeutic expectations of Christians without falling into an excessive spiritualization of life events? To achieve this, we put into dialogue the experiences of pastors based on interviews and sociohistorical, theological and biblical reflections.
Justice in the book of Matthew: A renewal of debates
In 1999 the Roman Catholic Church and the Lutheran World Federation signed a mutual declaration on the doctrine of justification. Twenty years later the author looks at the way this declaration emphasizes the Pauline comprehension of justification. Founded on the radical opposition between justification by law and justification by faith in/of Christ, the declaration superbly ignores another New Testament author, great thinker of God’s justice and its practice, Matthew. To cast aside the first Gospel shows Paul clearly as the champion of grace. But such exclusivity stifles the debate inherent in biblical texts, and turns divine justice, in the name of unity, into a dead idea. This article advocates renewing the debate on plurality as the unique form of Christian unity.
Luther and Pascal, readers of Romans 13. The conditions of Christian obedience to authority
This article examines the way Luther and Pascal interpret the thinking of the apostle Paul in Romans 13 on obedience to the authorities. Despite their historical and confessional differences, the German reformer and the writer of “Pensées” both distinguish between human and divine justice, and the relation between the pole of life in the world and the pole of life before God. The fact that authority is ultimately referred to God, far from being theological justification of political power, marks its relative and limited character.