Since France, protecting it's colonial investments, invaded Ivory Coast, it's only fair that the citizens of Ivory Coast should invade France:
The buoyant spirit of African evangelicals is moving through the gritty suburbs of France's main cities, especially in the ring of rundown towns around eastern Paris including Montreuil.
Hardly known 20 years ago, these fast-growing immigrant churches are slowly carving out a place in France's religious landscape. They face hurdles from local officials and complaints from neighbours, but some small hopeful signs have appeared.
"There is prejudice against us," said Yvan Castanou, pastor of the Impact Christian Center in Ivry, a suburb south of Paris.
"It's against evangelical churches. Some officials see them as an invasion from the United States, associated with (U.S. President) George Bush and the conquering spirit," he said.
They're coming from Africa, but it's really "an invasion from the United States." Why? Because they're Christians. (One minute, the US is a deeply racist country, the next minute, it is identical in spirit to the poorest blacks in the world. Gosh, it's hard to decipher leftist antiamerican hatred.)
"The second fact is that when you're black...," he added, his voice trailing off before launching into a litany of complaints about life as an African immigrant in France.
France is hardly the racial-harmony utopia we were led to believe it was.
About 250 "ethnic churches" operate in greater Paris alone, serving 36,000 black evangelicals. Many are from the Democratic Republic of Congo, formerly Zaire, but also from Cameroon, Ivory Coast and other African countries....
The unfamiliar ethnic churches burst into the headlines in early 2004 when two magazines branded evangelicals as "Bush's allies" and "a sect that wants to conquer the world."
That "sect" is a little movement called "Christianity." Not the newly-begotten leftist roll-yer-own religion trying to claim that name, but the ancient faith of the poor and downtrodden who made it what it is today.
These people want to conquer the world? This is clearly projection. French elites work tirelessly to exert influence in Africa, Europe, and the Mideast. France has had colonies in Asia and South America. Today, France faces violent domestic riots from French Muslim youths. And yet it is poor, black, boisterous, joyful Christian immigrants who are depicted as bent on militaristic conquest. George Bush should be proud to be closely linked to such people! So much for "the left" being the party of the little guys.
Rev. Jean-Arnold de Clermont, head of the French Protestant Federation (FPF), said the evangelicals were "victims of collateral damage" from France's confrontation with its large Muslim minority and French hostility to the Bush administration.
Exactly. Angry at Bush? Scared of Muslim immigrants? Why not bash some poor black Christians! They look and speak funny, and, after all, we know they have those annoying ethics which will keep them from doing to us what the Muslim youths might, or even returning what we do to them.
While this prejudice also hit white French evangelicals, many of whom came from other Protestant denominations or Catholicism, it was especially hard on black immigrants whose poverty and lack of political clout made them easy prey.
Ethnic churches complain that local officials often bar pastors from building premises for services in their towns. Congregations renting unused warehouses for years suddenly hit snags at town hall when they try to buy the buildings.
Better, I guess, to leave used industrial spaces vacant and decaying than to allow them fall into the hands of blacks, who would plan to use them to teach people to love their neighbors as themselves, and submit to the governing authorities.
Can't have that, really.
"The evangelicals, especially the immigrants, face major difficulties," Clermont said. "There are all sorts of municipal regulations and the mayors apply them with extreme rigour." ....
"When the Muslims sneeze, everybody panics," he complained. "But we are Christians. We black people are expressive in the way we praise God, but we don't want fights or confrontations. It seems that this attitude doesn't help."
Yes. I'm sure their concerns would get so much more attention if they just started killing people they didn't like, and burning cars and shops. Always good to reward the violent and punish the peaceful.
The best-known harrassment case occurred last February when the communist mayor of Montreuil barged into Sunday morning services at six black churches demanding to conduct safety inspections on the spot. He evacuated four of them.
I guess Sunday morning is the usual time for safety inspections in France?
"I was getting ready to get up and preach when he came," said Mas Miangu, whose church is located in a disused warehouse in an industrial zone in Montreuil.
"Just by chance, an FPF official, a Frenchman who is the national prison chaplain, was there and told him we were not a sect but a member of the FPF," he said. "The mayor left."
Amazing how much "safer" a church is found to be once it reveals it has political connections.
"He would not have done this in a mosque or a synagogue," added Mas Miangu, who came to France from Congo 30 years ago. "We consider this both anti-religious and racial segregation."
Lovely place.
Pray these immigrants will be able to help the French see how much God loves them and wants to help them, but how they (like all of us) first need God's forgiveness for our sins, available only through Jesus's death.
"Very well then, with foreign lips and strange tongues, God will speak to this people..." (Isaiah 28:11)