Abstract EN:

After the fall of the Second Empire, protestants in Southern France are anxious to help their country recover from the wounds inflicted by the defeat. They think it their duty to evangelize their fellow-countrymen while allowing themselves to be « awakened » in order to answer the divine design. During the period from 1870 to 1914, they intend to « unfurl the flag of the Gospel » in their own country. A minority group, even in the South where the strongest protestant minorities are to be found, they are the divided members of the « national » reformed Church or, alternatively, belong to others and smaller churches. These latter take part in different ways in these projects to which other organizations — the evangelization societies — are fully dedicated, with the help of youth organizations and religious book societies. French protestantism is not strong enough to rely on its own resources. Foreign countries, anglo-saxon protestantism particular, offer examples of evangelists, establish missionary societies in France and provide French protestantism with men and subsidies. Men, means and methods are enlisted into the service of the Gospel. The campaigns conducted in the cities and rural areas of the South, in addition to a number of territorial conquests, can serve as indexes to the dynamism of protestantism in Southern France prior to the upheaval caused by the Great War.