| La traduction d'Évangile et liberté |
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|  | Faith and Reason
Traduction, Mercredi 26 Janvier 2011 à 18:53 - English
By Marie-Noële Duchêne
Translated by Jack McDonald
In its 2007 number on “Religions and Society”, Cahiers français analysed the current religious state of affairs in French society. Here is one statistic:
• Religious practices and beliefs now show an astonishing “DIY” character. For example, only 52% of French people who describe themselves as Roman Catholics also declare a belief in God. | | |
| A poll in 2003 for three prominent French media organisations (the Conseil supérieur de l’audiovisuel, La Vie and Le Monde) also produced some surprising data:
• 54% of the French declare a belief in God, 33% are atheists, 52% rationalists, 51% Christians.
• 77% think that each individual should work out his own religious position irrespective of the Churches’ teachings.
• The existence of God is held to be certain only for 24% of those who declare a belief in God.
• 30% of Christians deny that Jesus is the Son of God.
• 40% of Christians deny that Jesus rose from the dead.
• 63% of Christians do not believe in the Trinity.
• 6% of Christians believe in the resurrection of the body after death.
• 47% of Christians think that the more scientific progress is made, the harder it is to believe in God.
These results reveal the gulf between the teaching of the Churches and the faith actually lived by their adherents. And yet, our modern world is clearly in search of meaning and of a spiritual dimension.
“We have stopped missing God” wrote the philosopher André Comte-Sponville in his L’esprit de l’athéisme/The Spirit of Atheism. But which God is he talking about?
A certain image of “God Almighty” has been imposed by the Church for centuries. But if God is indeed almighty, all-powerful, how can he permit the suffering of the innocent? Evil is one of the most tenacious arguments against the existence of this “God Almighty”. Fortunately, the latest revision of the “TOB”, the French ecumenical translation of the Bible, has deleted this fundamentally unbiblical term. As the theologian Raphaël Picon wrote in his Dieu en procès/God on Trial, “God is the ground and the centre of all existence and not a being above the rest. God is the foundation of all being. The call of this God is first and foremost the call to be.”
Dogmas like the Trinity have been formulated, to which the faithful are supposed to assent. The result is that churches Catholic and Protestant are empty. The words used in sermons and confirmation classes have lost their resonance: ideas of “grace”, “salvation” and “sin” are no longer understood. “The Church’s vocabulary, and to a large extent the Bible’s, are far removed from our particular historical situation” wrote the theologian Paul Tillich.
At least some theologians, especially the liberal Protestants Tillich, the Process theologians, André Gounelle, John Spong, have realised the dramatic urgency of the problem, and Évangile et Liberté exists to address it.
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Evangile et liberté in english
Evangile et liberté en español
Evangile et liberté in italiano |
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LES NOTES RÉCENTES
Preguntas de los lectores
La preghiera che disturba
Quello che mi permette di avvenire al mondo
Cambiare il mondo
Una hora de Gracia
Charter of the Protestant Church San sebastian de los Reyes (Madrid)
Youth Creed
Il bastian contrario : “Che tutti siano uno”
I testi apocrifi, riflesso delle prime comunità cristiane
La resurrezione di Cristo
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