Sébastien Fath is a French professional historian and a Ph.D at the Sorbonne University. Also trained in Sociology, he is the main French specialist in the study of Evangelical Protestantism. Author of sixteen books, he is a permanent researcher at the National Center for Scientific Research. He is a full member of the GSRL, a research team working on religion and secularism. As a social scientist and a citizen, he focuses on cross-cultural reflexion on Civil Society, Politics and Religion. He is working in a twofold direction since 2009. First, relationships between evangelicalism, immigration, interculturality and urban space. This includes studying the cultural reshaping of congregations in Paris through the impact of immigration, the new types of Gospel music produced between Africa and Europe, and the new Protestant landscape as it is impacted by demographic changes. The second direction is Geopolitics and Evangelicalism. Three topics in particular are studied: -Sub-saharian Africa as a contact-zone between Evangelicalism and Islam, -Protestant Francophony -Religion & society in South Sudan.
Experience (since 1998)
1998: Doctoral Thesis in « History of religions and belief-systems », directed by Prof. Jean-Paul Willaime. Title: Resident Aliens ? Sociology and History of Baptist implantation, 1810-1950. Another Way of Being a Christian in France.
1999: Enters the CNRS at the CR2 level, statutory member of the GSRL research team
Dieu bénisse l'Amérique, la religion de la Maison Blanche, Paris, Seuil, 2004
Militants de la Bible aux États-Unis, Évangéliques et fondamentalistes du Sud, Paris, Autrement, 2004
Le protestantisme évangélique, un christianisme de conversion, Turnhout, Brépols, 2004
Du ghetto au réseau, les protestants évangéliques en France de 1800 à 2005, Genève, Labor et Fides, 2005
Dieu XXL, la révolution des megachurches, Paris, Autrement, 2008
Protestantisme évangélique et valeurs, Excelsis, Charols, 2010
Dieu change en ville. Religion, espace, immigration, Paris, L'Harmattan, 2010
La nouvelle France protestante, Geneva, Labor & Fides, 2011
Les fils de la Réforme, idées reçues sur les protestants, Paris, Cavalier Bleu, 2012
Les nouveaux christianismes en Afrique, Paris, AFRIQUE CONTEMPORAINE review, n°252, 2015
Gospel et Francophonie, une alliance sans frontières, Tharaux, Empreinte Temps Présent, 2016
Publications in English
2003. "A forgotten missionary link between France and Britain: the role of the Baptist Continental Society in France between 1831 and 1836", London Baptist Quarterly, vol. 40, July, 2003 : 133-151
2005. "Evangelical Protestantism in France : an example of Denominational Recomposition?", Sociology of Religion, 2005, vol.66/4 : 399-418
2006. "The Impact of Charismatic Christianity on Traditional Baptist Identity", in Ian M. Randall, Toivo Pilli and Anthony Cross, Baptist Identities, International Studies from the Seventeenth to the Twentieth Centuries, London, Paternoster Press: 77-91
2007. "Putting God into the City : Protestants in France", in Alec G. Hargreaves, Politics and Religion in France and the United States, Lanham, Lexington Books : 49-62
2008. « Empire's future religion : the hidden competition between postmillennial American expansionism and premillennial Evangelical Christianity », in Peter Hetzel et Ellis Benson, Evangelicalism and Empire, Brazos Press : 120 -129
2011. "The other American Dream: French Baptists and Canada in the 19th and 20th Century", in Jason Zuidema, French-Speaking Protestants in Canada, Historical Essays, Leiden, Brill, 2011 : 243-263
