Tommy Hand lantern

Tommy Fallot (1844 - 1904) is Pasteur Protesting. He will be the initiator of the great movement of the “social Christianisme”.

He was born with the Round of applause from the Rock in Alsace where he is very early sensitive to the influence of men of concerned faith of the social problems involved in the industrialization and the emergence of the proletariat.

He begins in 1871 his studies of theology to Strasbourg in a faculty become German, whose intellectualism disappoints it somewhat, and finishes his university life by supporting in 1872, his thesis on the Poor and the Gospel, showing well by there the orientation that he intends to give to his ministry.

After four last years like Pasteur of Wildersbach, close to the Round of applause of the Rock, it leaves the Church Lutheran, and accepts a station of Pasteur of the free Church of the vault of North (boulevard of the Villette), one of the most popular districts of Paris.

It is there that it comes into contact with the work of evangelization of the Reverend Robert Mac All, English, stimulating Pasteur of the “conferences morals”, intended to bring to the most stripped the message of the Gospel.

The success of these meetings is to be brought closer to the demonstrations initiated by the Alarm clock great movement of faith which crosses at the XIXe century the majority of the European countries.

Hand lantern at the request of Mac All, takes care of the “station” of the Villette which will be during nearly 5 years with its ministry with the vault of North, the center of its activity. But it quickly perceives the major danger of this a little feverish attempt at evangelization which, in its progressive distance of the questions theological and connected with the church, contributes to divisions of Protestantism.

From 1882, Hand lantern, in complement of its pastoral ministry, will deal to the defense of the public morality and in particular with the problem of the prostitution.

Its concern marked more and more for the problems of the people pushes Fallot to adhere to the ideas Socialisme, even if he condemns from the start excesses of the revolutionary socialism.

This rejection of this socialism pushes Fallot to found the socialist Circle of the Christian freethinking, become in 1882, the Company of fraternal assistance and social studies, which will lead to the great movement of the social Christianisme, at the same time utopian and critical project aiming at bringing a Christian solution to the social questions.

At the same time with Nimes constitutes “the École of Nimes”, around the economist Charles Gide, uncle of André Gide. This one seeks a third way between Capitalisme and Socialisme. It is at the origin of the co-operative movement: co-operatives of production and consumption. It stresses solidarity.

The echo of these innovations pleasing with Fallot of the eminent men like the senior Raoul To combine and of the pastors like Charles Wagner, Wilfred Monod, Elie Gounelle, but it also draws up against him a preserving and middle-class fringe of Protestantism.

In 1890, Fallot, reached in its health by 12 years of an intense activity and disappointed little of echo which its ideas socializing in institutional Protestantism meet - where the oppositions between orthodoxe and liberal are sharp requires to find a simple parish of countryside.

It is with Holy-Cross then with Aouste close to Crest in the Drome, that it will spend the 10 last years of its life, as a true evangelist of the local populations.

It is as in the many writings of this period, as it will show how much it was concerned well with oecumenism before the word is not marked and of the necessary unification of the various currents within the Reformed Churches (Protestant).

See too

External bonds

virtual Museum of Protestantism
Site of the Audience protesting, Protestant Cultural center
Site of the Protestant federation of France
Site on the Cross huguenote
Site of the Reformed Church of France
Site of the evangelic Federation of France

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Tommy Hand lantern

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