Another way of being a Christian in France: a century of Baptist implantation: France is the largest country of Western Europe. Its cultural influence is very ancient and still strong today, in spite of the fact that, since the beginning of the twentieth century, English has gradually replaced French as the language of the world's cultural elite

Baptist History and Heritage, Wntr-Spring, 2001 by Sebastien Fath

   Catholicism is not merely a system of religion; it is mainly a system of
   political government; her aim, everywhere, is to enthrone herself in the
   very soul of the nations, to frame their ideals, their institutions, and
   their laws, so that the religious and civil organisms should be practically
   one. In one word, it is theocracy. To speak, therefore, of a modern
   nation--and of France especially--without speaking of Catholicism, would be
   almost as impossible as to speak of the Jewish people without mentioning
   the Jewish religion. (6)

For many Baptists, like Reuben Saillens, the Baptist implantation, based on a form of religion that values the individual choice and the Bible, instead of collective obedience and tradition, represented the opposite of the Catholic culture. In some ways, a sociological approach could lead to the same kind of conclusion. In his polemicist tone, Reuben Saillens stated:

   There is one thing, in this world, of which Rome is afraid, and that is,
   the individual conscience. Any system, therefore, which tends to annihilate
   the individual, to absorb him in the mass, to make him a mere cipher
   incapable of independent action, is a sure ally of Rome. Provided that the
   people obey her, they will receive from her what imperial Rome already
   provided, Panem et circenses. (7)

No serious historian or sociologist would agree with such a partial view, but the idealtypic opposition (speaking like Max Weber) between a religion of the individual and a religion of the mass helps us to understand why the Catholic Church feared the Baptists so much. They embodied the exact opposite model of the church. But at the beginning of the twentieth century, the Catholic hierarchy, in spite of a persistent monopolist complex, did try to take into account the lasting character of the newly established Republic and a new context of pluralism. During the twentieth century, relations between Catholics and Baptists became much less tense. The growing secularization of French society brought closer together religious groups that seemed for so long totally irreconcilable. However, the legacy of the Catholic monopolist complex still causes difficulties for Baptists, and for Protestant Evangelicals in general, in a country which has not easily gotten used to religious pluralism.

The Trotskyst Complex.--With the Moriscus Complex suffered by mainline Protestants (the difficulties of evangelization) and the Monopolist Complex suffered by Catholics (difficulties admitting religious pluralism), the Trotskyst Complex is the third cultural legacy inherited by French Baptists at the beginning of the twentieth century. The Trotskyst Complex describes the situation of the frustrated forerunner. It refers to the Trotskysts, a militant minority (still active in France) contesting the mainline interpretation of Marxism by Lenin and Stalin.

Like the Trotskysts, always persuaded of being right and having the truth, the French Baptists have considered themselves as forerunners of the triumph of the truth and of the apostolic model of the church. Like the Trotskysts, French Baptists have been very frustrated to realize that in spite of their value and the conviction of holding the truth, they have remained a tiny minority. This minority position sometimes led to bitterness, extreme individualism, (8) and distrust. This distrust toward other churches (which were accused of partial blindness by the Baptists because they did not rejoin the Baptist team, forerunners of the rehabilitation of the New Testament church) created many problems. Because of this bitterness and distrust, the weak evangelical movement sometimes suffered in France. Some opportunities of common involvement were missed. American Baptists realized that such a complex was a danger. They tried to help French Baptists loose this minority complex and engage in wider involvement with other churches. James Franklin, representing the American Baptist Foreign Mission Society in France, emphasized this need after World War I.