Frédéric Rognon

Bible et violence : quelles dialectiques ?

La Bible entretient avec la violence des relations complexes, d’ordre dialectique. En relisant quelques textes en fonction de leur teneur cathartique, et selon le principe exegetique et hermeneutique de l’analogie de la foi, nous pouvons les comprendre comme une entreprise de deconstruction et de delegitimation de la violence. Le processus qui met en œuvre diverses strategies litteraires semble etre une condition requise pour proposer une ethique et une spiritualite de la non-violence.

Restorative Justice: Asserted Benefits and Existing Obstacles in France

The principle of restorative justice is introduced in some Anglo-Saxon contexts but seems to be far from being adopted more widely in the Western world. In France, such concepts are promoted at different levels but meet important obstacles. This chapter starts with reminding the philosophical and historical roots of this model and interrogates the meaning of certain resistances that can be observed nowadays.

The Reception of Jacques Ellul’s Thought in French Protestantism

It is commonplace to observe that, during his lifetime, Jacques Ellul was better known in the United States than in France. This would seem to confirm the biblical adage according to which “a prophet is not without honor except in his own country.” Nevertheless, it should be pointed out that Ellul was a member of the National Synod (from 1947 to 1970) and of the National Council (from 1956 to 1968) of the Eglise Reformee de France (Reformed Church of France), respectively the legislative and executive bodies of the largest French Protestant denomination. Describing his situation in the Reformed Church, Ellul famously said that he was a part of a “minority within the Protestant minority.” (Protestants represent only 2 % of the French population.) Ellul was not kind to his own community; he considered self-criticism a precondition for social criticism. At the end of his last term in office in 1971, he was awarded responsibility for drafting a report on the state of theological education to be presented at the Nancy-Pont-a-Mousson Synod of 1972 (Ellul 1972). Despite this official recognition, many of Ellul’s opinions (concerning issues as diverse as the war in Algeria, Israel, Islam, apartheid in South Africa and Aides) received cold receptions, as attested by the avalanche of letters to the editor that his articles in the French Protestant weekly Reforme inevitably provoked. His criticism of church institutions also gave rise to many misunderstandings. Such was the case when, in Hope in Time of Abandonment, he proclaimed that the Holy Spirit had left the Reformed Church overly preoccupied with financial and real estate issues, as if the Holy Spirit was still present, “we would know about it” (Ellul 2004a). Or alternatively again when, on the eve of the regional Synod in autumn 1983, he predicted, in line with the Congregationalist ecclesiology he embraced at the end of this life, that the Reformed Church in France would disappear in less than 10 years were the Synods and all regional and national bodies not abolished with their authority returned to the local communities (Ellul 1983).

Jacques Ellul : une critique protestante des médias

La critique des medias que propose de Jacques Ellul (1912-1994) revient pour l’essentiel a rapprocher information et propagande, et a envisager les medias comme un vecteur de l’adaptation de l’homme a la societe technicienne. Cet article s’efforce de discerner les presupposes theologiques de cette analyse, lies a une certaine comprehension de la foi et de l’esperance chretiennes.

Pacifisme et tyrannicide chez Jean Lasserre et Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Première partie : L'établissement des faits historiques

L’influence du pasteur francais Jean Lasserre sur l’evolution de Dietrich Bonhoeffer vers le pacifisme a ete plusieurs fois relevee, mais n’a encore jamais fait l’objet d’une etude historique et theologique approfondie. Frederic Rognon [*] s’efforce ici, dans une recherche en deux volets, d’en retracer les etapes, et d’en discerner les modalites et les enjeux. Cette premiere partie est consacree a la reconstitution des donnees factuelles de ces deux biographies croisees. La seconde partie (a paraitre) abordera la question de l’interpretation de leurs incidences theologiques.

Pacifisme et tyrannicide chez Jean Lasserre et Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Seconde partie : l'interprétation des incidences théologiques

Apres avoir reconstitue la trajectoire biographique croisee de Jean Lasserre et de Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Frederic Rognon [*] propose dans la seconde partie de sa recherche, une relecture theologique des influences qu’ils ont pu exercer l’un sur l’autre. Il emet notamment l’hypothese d’une assomption differenciee de l’utopie sacrificielle, pour comprendre comment chacun des deux pasteurs evalue le recours paradoxal au tyrannicide au cœur meme d’une theologie de la non-violence.