Last posts on sebastien fath

Retour sur le colloque ”Afropéanité” (FUTP / CARES / Bruxelles)

2022-10-24T23:41:00+02:00

Des interventions passionnantes, des échanges nourris et stimulants, des pistes à poursuivre:

Le colloque de lancement du centre CARES, à Bruxelles, fut un grand succès scientifique, et au-delà.

Je remercie vivement Bernard Coyault, le doyen de la FUTP, de m'avoir donné l'occasion et l'honneur de présenter les trois intervenantes de la dernière table-ronde, Christiane Baka, Kirafiky et Jeanine Mukaminega. J'ai énormément appris à l'écoute des riches présentations déployées tout au long des deux journées du colloque. Merci !

Et à suivre, sur le Fil-info Francophonie du portail Regardsprotestants, quelques éléments post-colloque (lien).

Evangelicals in Brazil and in USA : a comparative study

2021-01-07T21:16:21+01:00

Debates do NER is a Brazilian biannual journal, created in 1997 on the initiative of the Center for the Study of Religion (NER), of the Graduate Program in Social Anthropology at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS).

Debates do NER is currently one of the most important vehicles for disseminating research related to the Social Sciences of Religion in Mercosur. Thanks to my Brazilian colleagues Marcelo Camurça and Emerson Giumbelli, whom I warmly thank, I had the opportunity to publish in 2020 a comparative historical study on Evangelicalism, USA vs Brazil.

Brazil has been marked, over the last fifty years, by a recomposition of its religious landscape. Its main characteristic is the spectacular decline of Catholicism, even if it remains dominant, in favor of evangelical Protestantism (Miller & Morgan, 2019). These Evangelical, Pentecostal, charismatic, neopentecostal churches used to be confined to the margins. They are now mainstream in Brazil, although they remain in the minority. They participate in large-scale geopolitical recompositions (Dieckhoff, Portier, 2017). They defend a "Christianity of conversion" rooted (or not much) in the Protestant heritage, in which the practical effectiveness of the faith and the local association of militants prevail.

On the ethical level, these evangelicals are reputed to defend positions described as "conservative", and a rather patriarchal moral order, in opposition to the social liberalization which has accelerated since the 1970s. This Brazilian evangelical progression is often reported to American evangelism which remains very powerful today. In both cases, one is tempted to paint the stable and enduring idealtype of an inherently conservative, reactionary, populist and socially rather retrograde evangelical Christianity.

The theoretical hypothesis underlying this article is to examine this static vision more closely from a dynamic and comparative perspective, which will be based on two processes:

-the geographic decentering, with a case study on the South of the United States

-the temporal decentering, with a look back at two 50-year sequences: the years 1800-1850 in the South of the United States (the Bible Belt), and the years 1970-2010 in Brazil.

Four reasons explain the methodological interest of this comparison.

-The first is that Brazil is now on the way to resemble the American Bible Belt. Brazilian society is impacted by tens of millions of evangelicals supported by media, televangelists, missions that draw the contours of a militant subculture.

-The second reason for this comparison is the shift, in both cases, from an established Church (the colonial Anglican Church, in the southern United States, the colonial Catholic Church, in the case of Brazil), to a plural Christian landscape marked by evangelical development.

-The third reason is the passage, in both cases, from an evangelical culture "of the margin" (ultra-minority), to a mainstream evangelical posture, endowed with a real prescriptive power over the mainstream media, culture and politics.

-The fourth interest of the comparison is the religious issue of the transition from a slavery/colonial society to a post-slavery/colonial society.

The purpose of this article is to invite comparison by focusing on the US case, from which the Brazilian case is examined.

Link to full text (in Portuguese)

New Christianities explored in Afrique Contemporaine

2015-11-01T23:26:00+01:00

Edited by the Agence Française de Développement (French Development Agency), the quarterly journal Afrique Contemporaine makes available the analyses and opinions of researchers and specialists on the evolution of the African continent with a view towards sustainable development.

It has been an honour for me to lead a special issue, with my colleague Dr Cedric Mayrargue, about NEW CHRISTIANITIES in Africa (mostly Evangelicals).

This edition (n°252) has been released in July 2015, whith a rich content (related to Congo, South Sudan, Ivory Coast, Ethiopia etc.).

Link.

Regulating religion in the PARISIAN area

2011-06-30T21:50:00+02:00

On the 14th of June, 2011, I've had the priviledge to be part of an international conference jointly organized by my French research team (the GSRL) and Washington University (St Louis, USA).

My topic was: Regulating religion in the Parisian area. You want to know more? Here is my PDF draft paper (sorry, you won't see the Powerpoint presentation, but there was one also).

S.Fath, Regulating religious diversity in the Parrisian area.pdf

It is a preliminary document which will need to be revised, improved and extended.

Protestants in Canada: a forthcoming book from Brill

2010-10-27T10:32:00+02:00

I juste received an email from Jason Zuidema (Concordia University) and I want to share the good news: a manuscript on French Protestantism in Canada has been officially accepted by Brill.

Henry Gooren, the general editor, has officially accepted the manuscript into the 'Religion in the Americas' series.

Click to continue

Besides the work of copy-editing, there are still a few chapters which need a bit more work.

However, according to Jason Zuidema, the manuscript as a whole is sound and might be published in mid-2011.

I am very pleased and honoured to be part of the package, as I wrote this chapter:

"The other American dream
French Baptists and Canada (XIXth-XXth century)"

S.Fath's updated CV in English (2010)

2010-08-11T22:38:00+02:00

Just before leaving France to the ASR annual Conference in Atlanta (2010), it is more than time to revive this blog.

Just in case you have forgotten this blog's author, well, please have a look to this short updated CV.

I did it two monthes ago for the British academic public.

S.Fath's short CV (2010).pdf