“Control techniques”, “marketing to convert people en masse”, “promises of divine healing”. These are some of the accusations that France's public television has levelled against evangelicals in an extensive prime-time report.

Entitled ‘Evangelicals: a not-so-heavenly success?’, the 52-minute report on the programme Envoyé Spécial (Special Envoy) aimed to “reveal what goes on behind the scenes” in the country's evangelical churches. According to Franceinfo’s website, evangelicals preach “strict Christianity” in an attempt to imitate American megachurches.

The full report, broadcast on 26 September by France 2 (the second channel of the national public television), can be viewed here, in French.

From baptisms to homophobia and manipulation

Taking as their starting point a baptism service in one of France's largest churches, the Martin Luther King (MLK) church in Crétiel, south of Paris, a team of seven journalists paint a worrying picture of French evangelical churches as a whole. These are accused of being “ultra-conservative”, with homophobic doctrines and a tendency to practise so-called “conversion therapies”.

In France, there were around 745,000 evangelicals in 2022. Current estimates put the figure at more than one million.

The public television report links the decline in attendance at the Catholic Church to evangelical growth and takes a highly critical view of the supposed “techniques” used to “attract” and “control” new converts.

A key of their success, the report argues, is the “truly spectacular shows devised by the pastor”, who is often the central figure who addresses the audience like a “personal coach”.

The first part of the television documentary follows a new believer, showing her praying at home and attending a church service after a two-hour drive from Belgium. The journalist asks her about her views on demonic possessions and describes the Christian magazine she reads at home as “fundamentalist” for opposing abortion.

Another interviewee is a Christian influencer with over 700,000 followers on TikTok. According to the report, the man spreads “radical Christianity” on social media that “sends Muslims, homosexuals, or unmarried couples to hell”.

The report critically shows a private physiotherapist praying for his patients’ recovery and claims that “paranormal phenomena are omnipresent for evangelicals”.

Interviewing an unidentified former evangelical, Envoyé Spécial denounces “prayers of self-flagellation” for sins, including homosexuality. This testimony states that his psychologist encouraged him to “leave the cult so as not to end up in a psychiatric hospital”.

Finally, with a hidden camera, a reporter pretends to be a lesbian interested in the gospel and asks for an appointment to speak privately with a pastor from the MLK church. The only controversial statement the report manages to get from the hidden camera is the pastor’s encouragement to live a celibate life and celebrate the relationship with God and with other Christian friends.

In its final minute, the tv programme ends by talking about “financial pressure” on people who attend evangelical churches, concluding by emphasising the work of Miviludes, the French state body dedicated to combating ‘sectarian drifts’ in the country.

‘Journalism should reveal the truth, not make harmful generalisations’

After the broadcast, the two most representative entities of French Protestantism agreed to ask France Télévisions (the public television company) for an explanation for what they consider to be “stigmatising” and “unsubstantiated” journalism.

The president of the French Protestant Federation (FPF), Christian Krieger, held an urgent meeting with the secretary general of France Télévisions at the media group's headquarters. The following day, he expressed his “deep concern about questionable journalistic methods”.

Both the MLK Church, a member of the FPF, and other evangelical churches, Krieger added in statements reported by the magazine Réforme, share a “commitment to dialogue, openness, and active participation in social and church life”.

The FPF stated that it “deplores the fact that this report chose to present evangelical churches through the reductive prism of the excesses of a few, without nuance or real expertise. This truncated approach obscures the richness and vitality of an evangelical church”. It added: “Journalistic investigation is legitimate when it reveals the truth. But it cannot claim to do so at the cost of prejudicial generalisations about individuals or institutions”.

“An attack on evangelicals and Christians as a whole”

The National Council of Evangelicals in France (CNEF, representative in the European and World Evangelical Alliance) also expressed its “shock” at a journalistic product that it defined as “an overt attack on evangelical Protestantism and the Christian faith as a whole”.

Signed by its president Erwan Cloarec and the rest of the board of directors, the communiqué states that “equating evangelicalism with an ‘ultra-conservative’, homophobic movement and presenting it essentially through a biased portrayal amounts to stigmatising the 1.2 million evangelical Protestants in France and, more broadly, all French Christians”.

The CNEF, which has promoted projects to combat sexual and other types of abuse in churches and has worked alongside Miviludes in identifying illegal practices in the French evangelical world, expressed its disappointment at “the questionable journalistic methods used: biased questions, incriminating editing without consulting any experts, oversimplification and generalisations”.

“These methods create suspicion and fuel unfounded prejudices; they provide fertile ground for discrimination and stigmatisation”, they say.

For all these reasons, the CNEF has contacted the French Minister of the Interior and is preparing a complaint to ARCOM, the country’s audiovisual regulatory body.

Aggressive secularism and religious freedom

After the broadcast, several French pastors and missionaries also expressed their disappointment with the work of their country’s public television. Some, however, added a nuance, lamenting that some churches do teach doctrines that go beyond the limits of the evangelical faith.

France is one of the countries in Europe with the most secularised tradition of the state (known as ‘laïcité’). Evangelicals, who have seen a significant increase in places of worship in recent years, complain that political powers and some of the media platforms often cross lines that end up undermining the religious freedom of citizens.

In recent years, evangelical initiatives have highlighted the fundamental rights of people who adhere to a religion, in places such as schools and the workplace.