A study of the Social Christian movement within French Protestantism and its role in resisting the persecution of the Jews in World War Two.How does one become 'righteous among the Nations'? In the case of Henri Nick (1868-1954) and André Trocmé (1901-1971), two French Protestant pastors who received the title for their acts of solidarity toward persecuted Jews, it was because they had been immersed, from an early age, in the discourses and practices of social Christianity. Focussing on the lives of these two remarkable figures of twentieth-century Christianity, Revivalism and Social Christianity is the first study in English on the Social Gospel in French Protestantism.Chalamet presents a genealogy of the movement, from its emergence in the last decades of the nineteenth century to its high point during World War II, in Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, where Trocmé and many local people rescued hundreds of Jewish refugees. As social Christians who prayed and worked for the coming of God's kingdom on earth in the midst of a society ravaged by two world wars, Henri Nick and André Trocmé combined a deep revivalist faith with a concern for the concrete conditions in which people live.
Christophe Chalamet is Associate Professor of Theology at the University of Geneva, Switzerland. He is the author of Dialectical Theologians: Wilhelm Herrmann, Karl Barth and Rudolf Bultmann (2005).
List of Images and MapAcknowledgmentsAbbreviationsIntroductionPart OneThe Meanings of Conversion-Henri NickPart TwoAndré Trocmé's First Steps in Spiritual and Social ChristianityPart ThreeThe 'Conspiracy of Good' in Le Chambon-sur-LignonPart FourAfter the WarEpilogueAppendixDeclaration Read by Pastors André Trocmé and Édouard Theis in the Church of Le Chambon on Sunday, June 23, 1940BibliographyIndex Nominum
People marvel that the folk at Le Chambon took in the Jews. But what Chalamet helps us see is this did not come out of the blue. Rather, this was made possible by people such as Henri Nick and Jacques Kaltenbach, whose discovery of the social dimensions of the gospel made [the actions of] Trocmé possible. The implications are clear-heroism is the outworking of lives that never appear heroic.