Archives de catégorie : Colloques

CFP International workshop

(Re)Thinking the Role of Religion in Social and Humanitarian Action:

Preaching in a Transnational Approach

Middle East (19th-21rst Centuries)

Research on welfare and humanitarianism in the Middle East has experienced a renewed interest over the past two decades (Watenpaugh, 2015; Ruiz De Elvira, 2019; Naïli, Napolitano, Piraud-Fournet, 2022). They are notably marked by a growing interest in the role of faith-based actors in assisting refugee populations or those considered vulnerable (Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, 2011). Long focused on international actors and the transnational dimensions of aid — Christian missions (Sanchez Summerer & Okkenhaug, 2020), Protestant organizations such as the Near East Relief (Rodogno, 2022; Bourmaud, 2020), or transnational Islamic associations (Bellion-Jourdan, 2002; Benthall, 2016) —, recent studies increasingly turn their attention to the role of local actors. Works on the Red Crescent (Moeller, 2016), Islamic NGOs (Challand, 2008), church-related organizations (Rioli, 2020; Neveu, 2023), and charitable associations (Turiano, 2021; Fallas, 2023) seek to move beyond the Eurocentric approaches that long dominated the history of humanitarianism, showing instead how these structures often constitute the first networks of solidarity and relief on the ground.

This burgeoning historiography highlights the crucial role played by religious institutions and faith-based actors in humanitarian and social action in the Middle East (Paulmann & Moeller, 2023) — whether churches (Chatelard, 2011; Bava, 2018; Neveu, 2022; Levant, 2022), Muslim clerics, faith-based NGOs, or charitable associations (Pierret, 2011; Ruiz de Elvira, 2019). Numerous studies have examined the close links between preaching, charity, and humanitarian action (Bellion-Jourdan, 2002), notably through the analysis of certain Christian organizations for which social engagement constitutes a privileged vehicle for the dissemination of religious discourse. In this regard, Fatiha Kaouès refers, in the case of Protestant organizations in Lebanon, to a form of “social and humanitarian evangelization” (Kaouès, 2011).

However, despite the richness of this body of work, few studies adopt a diachronic approach that would make it possible to analyse these dynamics over the long term and to grasp their reconfigurations. Research often remains segmented by confession or denomination, overlooking dynamics of contact, mimicry, and even competition between religious traditions. Moreover, the material and performative dimension of preaching remains largely underexplored, even though the material turn in the study of religion provides relevant tools for examining it.

By adopting a broad definition of preaching — understood as a device aimed at “(re)making people believe,” embodied in the presence of an individual or a group within a given territory in order to form or strengthen a community of believers — this workshop seeks to explore the links between preaching and socio-humanitarian action in the contemporary Middle East. From a Weberian perspective, preaching develops in a context of religious crisis, which distinguishes it from the mere care of souls. Consequently, contexts of social and humanitarian crises appear as privileged sites for understanding this constitutive device of faith experiences, beyond the sole framework of the sermon or religious discourse. The chosen approach is deliberately cross-cutting: it brings Islam, Judaism, and Christianity into dialogue, while situating the Middle East within a global perspective. Indeed, many of the actors and institutions involved maintain close ties with European, American (Granick, 2021), or other international partners and funders. These non–Middle Eastern actors will therefore also be taken into account.

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International conference-Crises and Preaching: Lexis, framing, timings, 19th‒21st century in the Middle East

*** FRENCH BELOW***

Is preaching inherently linked to crisis? This question serves as the focal point of the upcoming conference, Crises and Preaching: Lexis, Framing, Timings (19th–21st c. Middle East), which will take place on May 26–27, 2025, at the Institut Français in Amman, Jordan.”

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Crises and Preaching: Lexis, framing, timings, 19th‒21st century in the Middle East

Workshop

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26‒27 May 2025

Institut français de Jordanie, Amman

Is preaching consubstantial with crisis? This is what is suggested by Max Weber’s sociology of religious work, which distinguishes between “pastoral care” (religious edification of the individual), characteristic of ordinary situations, and “preaching” (collective religious instruction modelled on the prophetic episode), that takes place in contexts of profound upheaval, when a religious tradition is expanding or, conversely, is being threatened by competing doctrines. This Weberian scheme applies perfectly to the major contemporary Islamic preaching movements (e.g. jama’at al-tabligh, the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafists), all of which present their actions as a solution to the regression into which Muslims were plunged by European colonialism and the secularist political regimes that succeeded it. Similarly, the Coptic revival in Egypt from the late 19th century onwards emerged against a backdrop of British colonialism, political crisis, nationalist effervescence and, later, the rise of political Islam.

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Crises et prédication : Lexiques, cadrages et temporalités, XIXe-XXIe au Moyen-Orient

Journée d’études

 

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26-27 mai 2025

Institut français de Jordanie, Amman

La prédication est-elle consubstantielle à la crise ? C’est ce que suggère la sociologie du travail religieux proposée par Max Weber, qui distingue une “cure des âmes” (édification religieuse des individus), caractéristique des situations routinières, d’une “prédication” (instruction religieuse collective modelée sur l’épisode prophétique) qui se déploierait dans des contextes de bouleversements profonds, lorsqu’une religion se répand ou, à l’inverse, lorsqu’elle est menacée par une doctrine concurrente. Ce schéma wébérien s’applique parfaitement aux grands mouvements de prédication islamique de l’époque contemporaine (jama‘at al-tabligh, Frères Musulmans ou encore salafistes), qui tous présentent leur action comme une solution au marasme dans lequel les musulmans ont été plongés par le colonialisme européen puis par les régimes politiques laïcisants qui lui ont succédé. De la même manière, à partir de la fin du XIXe, le renouveau copte en Égypte émerge dans un contexte de colonialisme britannique, d’une crise du politique, de la poussée de la pensée nationaliste puis, progressivement, en réponse à la montée de l’islam politique (El-Khawaga, 1991 : 115-134).

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