As a Christian missionary for La Famille, we have been led to travel a lot and we have sometimes experienced difficulties in countries which were more or less welcoming. But I have to say, as a French citizen, that it is on French soil that I have had my most traumatizing experience.
Claude is a Protestant. The freedoms of his Evangelical Association are being more and more restricted due to the growing climate of fear of “cults” that is spreading in France today and affecting many religious groups. I represent the CLEF Association [Lyons Evangelization and Training Circle], which is affiliated with the French Evangelical Alliance. This Alliance is part of the Protestant Federation. There are about 5,000 of us in and around Lyon.
Our centers had no probiems prior to the October 1994 publication of an article in Paris- Match magazine that misrepresented “Arc-en-Ciel” as the Brittany branch of the Order of the Solar Temple (OTS). Because the article cited documents supposedly from the Renseignements Généraux, I visited this government agency’s offices in Rennes. I asked if there was anything we could be accused of even though I had no idea what such a thing could be. Everyone I spoke to in Renseignements Généraux explicitly assured me there was nothing against us.
I founded Horus, an agrarian community in Ardèche. Our specialty is a particular form of organic farming. We grow giant vegetables without fertilizers. It is an ancient method, which has been used and proven over 6,000 years. The trouble started as soon as we, naively, spoke out publicly about this method of farming, saying, “In the end, if one applies our method, all French agriculture can forego the use of fertilizers and pesticides.”
In February, EIFRF with several co-signatories have sent an open letter to French politicians, which you can find here: In February, EIFRF with several co-signatories have sent an open letter to French politicians,
The European Parliament Intergroup on FoRB and RT (Intergroup on FoRB &RT) condemns the attack on Christian villages and the abduction of Syrian Christians in Syria. Activists have claimed that ISIS has massacred a number of Christians, burned dozens of houses, torched churches and abducted men, women and children in a series of dawn raids in Northeast Syria. The attack on the Christian villages in Syria follows the murder of 21 Copts in Libya by ISIS last week.
