Love in a Time of Hate by Hanna Schott

Author:Hanna Schott [Schott, Hanna]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-5138-0159-9
Publisher: MennoMedia
Published: 2017-04-07T04:00:00+00:00

View of mountains of the Massif Central. Hanna Schott.

Even after the French Revolution permitted Protestants to move about freely and to practice their faith openly, the Chambonnais remained exactly as they were. The frugal Huguenot farmers had become accustomed to the hardships of life in the austere landscape, and they knew that they could only expect trouble from the world around them. So why should they leave the plateau?

When André became the pastor, some 95 percent of the inhabitants of Le Chambon were still Protestant. The congregation numbered no more, but also no fewer, souls than it had three hundred years earlier.

One thing had changed: several of the Protestants in the region had adopted the teachings of an English minister who traveled and preached throughout much of Europe, as well as in North America, Australia, and New Zealand, during the second half of the nineteenth century. John Nelson Darby, a former Anglican priest, was an original, idiosyncratic interpreter of the Bible. His followers became known as Darbyites. The Darbyites separated themselves from the Reformed Church and met in their own private gatherings. They rejected the idea that the church should be led by theologically trained pastors—professionals who, in a certain sense, always stood over the laity. Instead, they tried to move toward their ideal of a congregation of equal “brothers.” (They were not so convinced of the equality of the sisters.) If conservative Protestants from the plateau were biblically rooted and especially familiar with the Old Testament, then the Darbyites were even more zealous. The Darbyites often did not even take the trouble of quoting a biblical text; it was enough to simply cite the chapter and verse. They all knew many of these passages by memory, so chapter and verse sufficed to communicate what a person was thinking. Thus, if one simply said, “First Timothy 2:9,” the other person knew what was meant: namely, that a woman was wearing a hat which was not appropriate for a Sunday morning gathering.

***

Even though the Darbyites did not attend André’s sermons that fall, they naturally turned a critical eye to the new pastor. André was now thirty-three years old. He had seven years’ experience as a congregational leader, he had been married for eight years, and he was the father of four children. Almost nothing of that shy, mumbling student who was perpetually red with embarrassment was still recognizable. One exception, perhaps, was his posture. In almost all the pictures from this period, his head is tilted slightly to the side, as if he could prevent himself from appearing too tall.

But his fear of standing in front of people and speaking freely had disappeared completely. According to his brother Francis, André became a “gifted pulpit speaker” during his time in Le Chambon. His clear, full voice filled the sanctuary—not a small matter in the decades before the installation of church sound systems. “His authority exceeded that of anyone I ever heard preach,” wrote Francis, astonished by his younger brother. “He began in a simple, unforced manner with current events or religious reflections.

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