The snap election that has snapped the status quo
God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. (Acts 17:27)

In April 2024, when the well-maintained blades of the iconic Moulin Rouge cabaret, (the Red Mill) collapsed from the windmill into the street below, many remembered the fire that devastated the Notre Dame cathedral a few years ago, and wondered if perhaps these mishaps to iconic landmarks were not a sign of a country in turmoil – perhaps even that God Himself might have something to say through them.

Given that so many in this country are caught up in either a strongly liberal secularism, or with occult pursuits, and do not know how to look to the Word of God for understanding, it would certainly make sense that the Lord would send ‘signs’ that the media could not miss as part of His way of stirring people’s hearts, and perhaps causing them to reach out to Him in the way Paul spoke of in the passage from Acts that I quoted above.

It certainly seemed significant that this occurred in in the Montmartre/Pigalle region of Paris (historically Paris’s equivalent of Soho); the birth place of the can-can, and the place from which cabarets spread right across Europe. The mercy is that no one was injured.

Now that the country has entered uncharted territory, following the surprise election that Macron called without even consulting his cabinet, this would be a good opportunity in more detail for those who would like to explore this in some depth to focus on France in prayer – partly to understand more of the politics involved but still more to pray for the work of God to increase the length and breadth of both the country itself and throughout the French-speaking world.

On the eve of the French general election, Marine le Pen appeared poised to reap the great dividend from her life’s labour and to make her National Rally party (Rassemblement National; or RN) the largest party. So successful she’d been in transforming the image of the party that for the first time, multitudes, including many traditional believers, are now considering it safe and suitable to run the country.

Has the leopard really changed its spots? It is hard to forget that Marine le Pen’s father, who founded the party, dismissed as Holocaust as ‘just a detail.’ Le Monde remained wary, convinced that it would prove less moderate than Giorgia Meloni has been so far in Italy were the RN to come to power, and that it would ‘revert to type’ by promoting Fascist ideals and practices – not to mention cosying up to Russia.

As you would expect, Moscow is following developments with great interest – not least because the RN is widely perceived as being anti-Ukraine as well as Euro-sceptic, and has itself been the recipient of Russian largesse.

We can be sure that those few days between the first and second round of elections in France were a week of intense horse-trading between the parties, as the various factions involved in an ungainly coalition of left-leaning parties under the Popular Front banner tried to come up with workable solutions to prevent Marine le Pen’s Rassemblement National (RN) from winning enough seats to have a majority.

A new coalition of left-wing organisations, based entirely on electoral expediency rather than shared ideology, emerged in record time, following just six days of hard talking and planning. Its main constituents include La France Insoumise (LFI), (France unbowed) the Parti Socialiste (PS), the Greens (Europe Ecologie-Les Verts, EELV) and the Communist Party. The not so hidden agenda behind its creation was to provide an alternative to the influence of LFI’s firebrand leader, Jean-Luc Mélenchon. Prominent amid this grouping has been the re-emergence of some of the familiar socialist big beasts from the 1990s.

At the same time, the left set out to provide a credible alternative and home for the millions who have had enough of Emmanuel Macron, and who are deserting his ‘centrist’ party in droves, considering it to be aloof and uncaring. Seeking to recreate the success of the grouping of the left wing parties (The Popular Front) that led to the election of the socialist Léon Blum in 1936, the problem with this new grouping is that very deep differences of opinion remain between the parties. However, as Christopher Bickerton warned in this overview in Unherd, any idea of a leftist consensus runs the risk, therefore, of being a mirage.

In a remarkably efficient display of tactical voting, The New Popular Front, comprising the five disparate parties of the left, ended up with the largest number of seats, with Macron’s Ensemble also coming in ahead of the RN – who themselves yet managed to almost double their quota of MPs in the National Assembly and to triple their vote from last time – quite apart from their excellent showing in the European election. It took the highest turnout in forty years to ensure that the far right did not win this time round. Quite simply, the nation at large are not yet quite prepared to trust the successors of the SS/Vichy/ Nazi ultra-right wing to rule over them.

If and when the RN does come out on top in years to come, France is likely to become a thorn in Brussel’s side, greatly reducing payments to the EU, and effectively achieving a mini ‘Frexit’ without bothering to go through the hoops of actually leaving the EU.

It may well be that the time will come for the young rising star, Jordan Bardella (28), the darling of Marine le Pen and the far right who has shot to celebrity status – not just in France but, according to this article in Time Magazine, the whole of Europe’s far right. Bardella’s initial dejection at the surprise election result led him (after acknowledging and saluting the fact that people had voted democratically) to charge Macron with ‘electoral cobbling’ in order to do anything to block the far right from coming to power. He was right of course, but his party realise that they need play the long hand, given that Macron with all his vast experience and astuteness will not be able to participate in the next presidential election in 2027. He and his party are likely to be well positioned next time round. As Francois Valentin wrote in Unherd,

‘Whereas 33% of the vote gave the Labour Party 65% of the seats in Parliament in the UK, 33% of the vote in the first round led to Le Pen only obtaining 25% of seats in theirs. A system made to provide strong parliamentary majorities risks giving birth to a parliament splintered into millions of confettis à la Dutch. The irony that Francois highlights is that French public opinion is probably the most Right-wing it has been in the history of the Fifth Republic ‘In the recent European elections the Right actually won 44% of the vote, and yet France has ended with potentially its most Left-wing governments since 1981.’

Francois’s conclusion is that the right wing surge cannot be stalled indefinitely, and that the dam will break.

Because of the way the second round operated, it was inevitable that many of those who voted for RN in the first round who undoubtedly feel that their first votes have been stolen from them. Mercifully, predicted protests did not get out of hand, and violence was kept to a minimum. May the eventual outcome lead France down a more stable path than currently looks possible. Amen.

To explore the idea of the cordon santaire operates and applies in other countries, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cordon_sanitaire_(politics) Cohabitation is a system of divided government that occurs in semi-presidential systems, such as France, whenever the president is from a different political party than the majority of the members of parliament.

The election result has enabled Macron to keep the present administration in place until after the Olympics in Paris, when he will make his own choice of Prime Minister, and try to sort out a workable system after that quite possibly very necessary fire gap. There is no mechanism for him to be removed, but is he in danger of being a lame duck President? Over to You, Lord.

As in Britain (and elsewhere) people are feeling the heat of the cost of living crisis and are desperate to try a change. With the ultraleft fire brand Mélechton declaring his absolute refusal to compromise on his policies, or to engage in any form of power-sharing, it will take grace and compromise between Macron and the more amenable of the leftist blocks to make government workable, divided as it now is almost equally between three different power blocs.

What you actually have in the New Popular Front are two centrist left parties, the Socialist and Greens, and then two extreme left-wing organisations including the communists very considerable differences of policy and outlook. According to Christopher Bickerton in this overview in Unherd, any idea of a serious leftist consensus runs the risk of being no more than a mirage. It may well be, however, that those first two named on the left may prove more conciliatory, and be willing to working with Macron, who himself is greatly weakened as the result of having lost something like 150 seats himself.

Given that the real work is done more by the Prime Minister than the president anyway, the risks of him becoming effectively something of a lame-duck president are real – although we should not underestimate his proven capacity to reinvent himself. He will need all those skills and more to navigate the way forward. Macron was already having so much difficulty passing anything of significance through Parliament before the election that he had to resort to something known as “Article 49.3:” that is a special constitutional power which enables a government to pass bills without a vote in the National Assembly, the lower house of parliament, after the Cabinet has sat. As you can imagine, this is a process that has proved highly controversial. https://apnews.com/article/france-pensions-special-constitutional-power-explained-8ac5128e6bec83129d952a458cbbef81 tool

There have been isolated attacks of violence against fifty or so candidates and campaign workers thus far. As you can imagine, all police leave had to be cancelled. (French police are widely accused of using heavy-handed tactics, and are both feared and disliked by many, but just to put the other side of the case for the moment, their own morale is at an all-time low with having had to police so many urgent and often ugly situations in recent years, in which they are the target of everybody’s dislike.)

Let’s continue praying for the Lord in his mercy to restrain the “the secret power of lawlessness” (the mystery of iniquity KJV, 2 Thess. 1:7-8) which undoubtedly includes the blind hatred and aggression that is rising and raging in so many parts of the world, until such time as He decrees.

Many French people are worried that violence and confrontation between these widely disparate groups is likely to lead to what the atheist French writer-philosopher Albert Camus called a ‘clash of civilisations:’ a phrase that Samuel Huntingdon took up in his acclaimed book ‘The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order.’

According to one survey, a huge majority (83%) agree with the comment made by the former Interior Minister mayor of Lyon: “Today, we live side by side. I fear that tomorrow we’ll live face to face.”

Father, we asked You to overrule in this election, concerning the candidates for each seat. Now we pray with regard to the tonality and ethos that will emerge in the years ahead. We pray that being in government will not go to people’s head and lead to unwise extremism. We pray especially for Jordan Bardella, that You will overrule where this young man’s head, mind and policies go.

Above all we pray that you will be at work by Your Spirit in the heart of this country, in which the vast majority have never read the Bible, or had any exposure to the gospel.

French history is more than volatile of course. The world[‘s favourite holiday destination though it be, I am always aware how quickly things can become unstable and take dangerous turns in France. (Even at the school I attended in Dieppe when I was seventeen, when everyone took to the streets to protest an unpopular aspect of military I remember being faced with machine guns at every corner – just as they were everywhere just over the border in the Basque country under General Franco).

The history of French intolerance makes for a sobering tale, since at least 1190, which is when my knowledge of it cuts in. We are all too familiar these days with recent atrocities in Nazi Germany, Bosnia, and Rwanda, but some historians consider the widespread massacres of the heretical Cathars in south west France to have been the forerunner of all subsequent acts of genocide in Europe.*

There was great savagery again over a prolonged period when Catholic France launched its prolonged and viciously violent persecution against the Huguenots, and then when the desperate Huguenots took equally violent measures in retaliation, before vast numbers of them were forced to flee to other countries, taking their great skills with them.

For a summary of some of these historical landmarks, see my summary in Focus on France and my prayer article ‘Let’s pray for creativity in reaching France!’

Many of you will remember reading about my precious stays in Dauphiné, where I visited Le Camp de l’Eternel in a forest, where Huguenots hid out from dragoons intent on slaying them, and the remote home of the young woman who began to prophesy – one of the remarkable and ultimately very costly phenomenon of the ‘child prophets,’ which was a peculiar characteristic of the Huguenot revivals.

The following account is a powerful summary of that time of great upheaval.

Then, of course, came all the horrors of the French Revolution, when all the possessions of the Church and monasteries were handed over to the state in 1789, with the worship of God being superseded by a deistic adoration of the Supreme Being. 1905 marks another important date: the separation of the church and state under a leftist coalition, and the declaration of a secularist stance.

*When papal attempts to win influential but heretical Cathars back to the mainstream church, events turned increasingly violent, with involved formal crusades being launched, which led to decades of the most brutal persecution and destruction. It is generally considered that the Inquisition came out of this, as well as the strengthening of the French crown that led to the years of the papacy residing in Avignon. If you are sufficiently interested, you can follow the painful twists and turns in this overview, which makes for grim reading.

Pray for God’s life and power to visit France afresh in new ways.

* http://www.pro.parcoursalpha.fr/
https://www.premierchristianity.com/home/an-unexpected-wave-eastern-upeuropes-catholic-charismatic-revival/2331.article * Some of you might be interested too in this article which was written by someone we met some years ago in Montpellier.

The insightful geo-political analysis site, Foreignpolicy.com, considers that le Pen in power would have led the country much further to the right even than Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party, which itself has been described as the most right wing Republican party since the Second World War.

What upheavals Europe has experienced and is going through! In the Quaker ‘Epistle from the Yearly Meeting held in London in 1945, I came across this phrase: ‘In Europe unmasked we see the evidence of demonic evil.’ It was Marine le Pen’s father who infamously dismissed the Holocaust as ‘just a detail,’ that founded the party emerging out of the shadows of SS dominated Vichy France, With such memories still alive, how can the sight of far-right parties advancing right across Europe (don’t forget Gerd Wilders’ sudden and unexpected stunning victory in the Netherlands), not be a cause for considerable concern.

The usually interesting and reliable Unherd, however, this article, takes a different view, arguing that Marine le Penn has done such a good job of detoxifying her party that it may well find a way to make compromise work on such important matters as not rocking the boat within the EU, and even in continuing to support Ukraine, for all that it is not instinctively keen to do – especially in the light of its close relationships with Russia in the recent past.

It may to some extent be below the radar now, but do continue to pray for how the RN develops. although there will still be many of their far right MEPs in the European parliament. Along with the very strong right wing movement in Germany, and now Czechia, Hungary, Austria, with Poland and Holland heavily affected too. Lord have mercy on the European Parliament; keep the dark shadow of Fascism at bay we pray.

So far from Macron’s desperate gamble to hold a snap election rebounding entirely against him, his shrewd agreement with six left-wing parties has saved his bacon, dashing the hopes of the far-right RN who were confidently expecting in Parliament. Perhaps they had forgotten the old maxim that French people vote with their hearts in the first round but with their heads in the 2nd round. (More often than not they vote against another candidate winning than because they love the person or party who they are voting for.

This prayer cast for France makes a good starting point for our prayers.

Praise God for many signs that the Lord is moving and breaking out. As long ago as 2016, Premier Christianity was reporting that 800 French parishes were running Alpha courses.* May the Lord work in power through these, and every other means to bring people to Christ, both in France itself and across the huge French-speaking world. For, ‘how can they call on the One they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the One of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can anyone preach unless they are sent? (Rom.10:14-15)

By every means possible, Lord, find ways to let Your word shine forth into French people’s hearts, both in the home country itself, and across the vast reaches of the French speaking world. Come Almighty, make Yourself known above so many competing views and philosophies: let Christ be proclaimed and responded to, and many flock to follow. In Jesus’ name.

Have mercy on France now, Lord, as it seeks to find a way forward in the aftermath of this election, which has inevitably introduced angry and fractious elements of from both the left and right-wing into the National Assembly. So far as is possible, within the limits of their own choosing Lord, we pray for peace and cooperation between these competing parties to enable You to fulfil Your redemptive purposes in the world for this nation, rather than watching the nation descend into an abyss of paralysis.

A Summary from Operation World, 21st Century Edition, WEC International

Although at least 15 years out of date, this still provides useful pointers for prayer, who would like to take the country more deeply to heart.

1. The nearly 50 million French people who have no link with a Christian church.
2. The many large cities with few evangelical churches – Nancy has 3 and Nantes 8.
3. Of the 38,000 communes, around 35,000 have no resident evangelical witness. Many rural communes are quite traditional and resistant to change.
4. The Basques in the southwest who are virtually without an evangelical witness in their language.
5. The Loire Valley, Brittany, Picardy, Limousine, Champagne-Ardennes and Calais which are particularly lacking in evangelical congregations.
6. The island of Corsica. Birthplace of Napoleon and renowned for its violent nationalism. In the population of 260,000, there are 12 small groups with 250 evangelical believers.

(Operation World, 21st Century Edition, WEC International)