La vie associative

is very important in France. Despite all our preconceptions about the extended family, latin hospitality and café culture, many French people find themselves very isolated. One answer to this is associations. Associations are defined by law and registered with the local authority, and they can be for anything from antiques to rugby, from scrabble to ecology, from choirs to mushroom pickers. Until recently associations were given monetary grants by government, and it has been suggested that this should be started again to reinvigorate the associations in the troubled banlieus. Most French people are members of say three or more associations, and they join them like students join clubs during freshers’ week at university - because they fancy them or have some degree of interest in the activity.

Local churches are associations. They begin life as cultural associations (culturelles) under the 1901 law and then, once their doctrinal basis and constitution are defined they register as cultuelles under the 1905 law for the separation of church and state.

Associative life highlights (and maybe contributes to) one of the problems of church life in France - the way that Christians are not regularly and dependably present on Sundays for services (and there is usually only one service) and the way that very few Christians make the midweek meeting a priority. The church can be viewed as another association - this time an association about God and the gospel, but still just an association - so it doesn’t really matter whether I am there or not. Of course, that means if I am not reliably present I am not usefully available for any practical purpose, etc.

We have to realise as well, of course, that because churches are few and far between, it is very common for Christians to travel 20 or 30 miles to church. When you travel 30 miles to church then any hindrance to coming is bigger, and midweek meetings are harder to attend.