Evangelical group Torrents de Vie has attracted the hostility of the media and the government in France after a journalist covertly recorded images and conversations at one of the organisation’s summer camps.
Torrents de Vie means ‘Streams Of Life’. Part of a larger international inter-denominational Christian ministry, it is active in ten French cities offering seminars, pastoral counselling and conferences. Its website says it ‘offers spiritual support, combining teaching, listening and prayer, to Christians of all denominations seeking help for their personal difficulties. Our values are based on Biblical love and grace’.
In July a reporter from news broadcaster BFMTV attended one of its camps with a hidden camera, recording conversations between people seeking spiritual help with issues related to identity and sexual orientation.
The subsequent TV report showed testimonies of someone struggling with their ‘confusion and emotional dependence on other women’. Another says: ‘The Lord has restored my relationship with men’.
BFMTV invited the French government’s French Minister for Equality, Bérangère Couillard, to the studio to comment. She condemned ‘it in the strongest possible terms’ and said she was sending the images to the public prosecutor so the actions of Torrents de Vie could be investigated. She also called its ideas ‘homophobia and transphobia on display’, and said it should be ‘dissolved as an organisation’.
So-called ‘conversion therapies’ were banned in France in 2022. The law includes criminal penalties (up to three years imprisonment and a fine of up to €45,000) for people who are convicted of trying to ‘convert’ LGBTQ people to heterosexuality.
Torrents de Vie is one of 120 associations that are members of the National Council of Evangelicals in France (CNEF), a body representing most evangelical Protestants in the country.
The CNEF reacted to the new law by reaffirming their commitment to ‘the protection of individuals and its opposition to all forms of abuse, particularly those committed against people questioning their sexual orientation and gender identity’. The Council launched a listening service for potential victims of abuse of all kinds in churches last year.
But the CNEF also underlines the need to make sure ‘that all people remain free to seek spiritual and religious support from the faith to which they belong, in accordance with their freedom of worship and personal freedom’.
Dr Carys Moseley of Christian Concern said: ‘This shows how Christians in France cannot trust the 2022 law prohibiting “conversion practices”, nor can they protect themselves from state-sanctioned persecution by conducting their own internal inquiries into alleged victims.
‘The French government, just like the Maltese government, has now widened its target, first going for “conversion therapy”, then “conversion practices”, and now “homophobia and transphobia”.
‘What is needed is a thorough unmasking of the deceptive agenda at the root of worldwide bans on “conversion practices”. Their real aim is to attack the notion of Christian conversion and sanctification, and thereby prevent churches from conducting Biblically-based mission and pastoral care. This undercover report spies on Christian liberty.’
According to a recent survey, there are 745,000 evangelical Christians in France. The faith minority has grown 15-fold since 1950, with over 2,700 active places of worship registered.
