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DOCTOR of PHILOSOPHY an Examination of the Sermons Of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY An examination of the sermons of pastor Jean Medard in the French city and district of Rouen 1939 to 1945 McGurk, Douglas Award date: 2021 Awarding institution: Queen's University Belfast Link to publication Terms of use All those accessing thesis content in Queen’s University Belfast Research Portal are subject to the following terms and conditions of use • Copyright is subject to the Copyright, Designs and Patent Act 1988, or as modified by any successor legislation • Copyright and moral rights for thesis content are retained by the author and/or other copyright owners • A copy of a thesis may be downloaded for personal non-commercial research/study without the need for permission or charge • Distribution or reproduction of thesis content in any format is not permitted without the permission of the copyright holder • When citing this work, full bibliographic details should be supplied, including the author, title, awarding institution and date of thesis Take down policy A thesis can be removed from the Research Portal if there has been a breach of copyright, or a similarly robust reason. If you believe this document breaches copyright, or there is sufficient cause to take down, please contact us, citing details. Email: [email protected] Supplementary materials Where possible, we endeavour to provide supplementary materials to theses. This may include video, audio and other types of files. We endeavour to capture all content and upload as part of the Pure record for each thesis. Note, it may not be possible in all instances to convert analogue formats to usable digital formats for some supplementary materials. We exercise best efforts on our behalf and, in such instances, encourage the individual to consult the physical thesis for further information. Download date: 01. Oct. 2021 An Examination of the Sermons of pastor Jean Médard in the French city and district of Rouen 1939 to 1945. A thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy The Queen`s University of Belfast Institute of Theology Douglas John McGurk BA (Hons). MTH September 2020. 1 Dedication. This thesis is dedicated to the memory of Pierre Médard and to the family of Jean Médard who so willingly gave of their time, personal insights and friendship to make this submission possible and, also, to my wife Fiona and our children Philip, Mark and Sharon for their continuing interest, support and understanding. 2 Acknowledgements The submission of this thesis fulfils a heartfelt desire going back many decades. It would not have been possible without the unending cajoling, help and support of many people, some of whom are listed below: Pastor Pierre Médard, son of Jean Médard, for his invaluable and unreserved advice, encouragement and interest in this thesis, my family and myself. Mme Hélène Fillet, for allowing me unfettered access to her grandfather`s sermons and for her continued support and guidance. Professor Laurence Kirkpatrick, my patient supervisor. Mme Marie-Christine Griffon, bibliothécaire, Institute Protestant de Théologie, Montpellier. Mme Florence Poinsot and Mme Sophie Vié, archives of la Société de l’Histoire du Protestantisme Français. Mme Pat Valette, directrice gérante de la revue causses et cévennes. 3 My son has been arrested by the Gestapo and imprisoned in Drancy and it`s because of your preaching and teaching.1 1 Mr Plard, a member of Médard`s congregation and catechism class in Rouen speaking in April 1942 to pastor Médard of his son Henri who had been arrested in Paris and who would spend three months in Drancy camp for publicly wearing a yellow star to show Christian solidarity with the Jews. Médard, J. Mémoires. p 221. 4 Contents Page. Introduction. 5. Chapter 1. Pastor Jean Médard preaches. 40. Chapter 2. The pastor`s crisis response. 228. Chapter 3. A Confessing Church? 259. Chapter 4. Preaching subversive resistance. 281. Conclusion. Can these bones live? 302. Appendices. 319. Bibliography. 331. 5 Introduction. As the methodology will show, the opportunities to study unresearched sources from WWII in France are becoming less frequent, particularly for a non-native researcher. This study of the war time sermons of the French Protestant Reformed Church in Rouen presents a rare occasion to witness an outspoken, unceasing, contemporaneous counterculture to the deadly nature of the Nazi Occupation and Vichy regime in France during WWII. From the point of view of the Church, the sermons answer a fundamental question about Christian ministry in a time of war: “what to say”? Yet they are also an historical source to which perhaps, as Cabanel states, “historians have not paid sufficient attention”.2 As a response to this, the thesis has a number of objectives: • It will exemplify what a Church needs to say to a traumatised people. • It will demonstrate the erroneousness of accepting as retrospective, a manuscript source directed solely at a micro section of a small part of French society during WWII.3 • It will show that the words of pastor Jean Médard whilst not given from the front lines, or from a Resistance group, were the brave and constant response to the abnormal circumstances of a parish subsumed by war. • It will help determine whether, in being true to a belief in God, the pastor and his colleagues, created a French Confessing Church in the Occupied Zone. 2 Cabanel, P. Résister: voix protestantes. p10. “à laquelle les historiens n`ont peut-être pas suffisamment prêté attention.” 3 “all sources are, to some extent, retrospective, [and] this is especially true of documents concerning the occupation”. 6 • It will present evidence of a distinct contribution to our understanding of the scope of spiritual resistance as the pastor advocated singular obedience from the unconcealed pulpit. • It will provide evidence of repeated motivation behind Resistance and rescue in the Occupied Zone that enabled refugees to pass through to find refuge. This material is significant in two ways. For the Protestant Church in France it substantiates what has been glimpsed in the Occupied Zone previously: that during WWII pastors of the Église Réformée de France regularly and repeatedly guided their congregations as a response to God, an obligation to others, and resistance against totalitarianism. For the Protestant, and particularly the Presbyterian, Church in Ireland it exposes a little known history of a scripturally based response to oppression through love of others as active resistance. Chapter 1 will present the corpus of the sermons together with historical and background information in order to place them in their context. Chapter 2 will examine the rhetoric of pastor Médard through the identification of the principle topics addressed in the sermons. Chapter 3 will take additional specific topics and use them to assist in a search for a Confessing Church in Rouen. Chapter 4 will build on all of this to identify and use topics from the sermons that are relevant to a claim for a declared position of spiritually backed resistance to totalitarian powers. Methodology. Topic and scope of research. The topic for this thesis is an examination of the sermons of pastor Jean Médard, written and preached by him in the northern French city of Rouen and the surrounding area between August 1939 and May 1945. 7 Aim. The aim of the thesis is to ascertain whether, and what, advice was given regarding the proper actions of ordinary Protestants at home in a time of war, defeat and occupation by a foreign power. There are two positions that I will seek to expose: that of Christian obligation to God, others and oneself, whereby silence and inaction were not options and thereby revealing the intimate foundations on which some wartime rescue actions were based; and that of a consequent resistance to totalitarian authority, both spiritual and physical. The sermons will demonstrate that, using God`s Word as the sole source for resistance, pastor Médard attacked a mindset where risk-taking was left to others and denied the congregation any notion of attentisme.4 Indeed, it will become evident that Médard saw the war as an opportunity to serve God, an opportunity that with time became a last chance saloon for the congregation to save themselves from damnation both spiritually and generationally. Research questions. 1. From the extant sermons of pastor Jean Médard, is there evidence that the Reformed churches in Rouen under his guidance formed a French Confessing Church? 2. Was resistance to a foreign power and an unelected government a routinely advocated position from the pulpit? The sermon in the French Protestant faith forms the nucleus towards which the Scripture readings, hymns and prayers gravitate and, following which, those present emerge from the church having received new insights, or confirmation or alteration of opinions, but always with a challenge to future thoughts and actions. So the sermons are examples of crisis rhetoric and the answers to these questions come from a faith- derived, incident driven, viewpoint; but this is unequivocally also the level 4 Attentisme is taken as being an attitude of indefinite, passive waiting, of postponing decisions until the circumstances, and the eventual winning side, become clearer. 8 where the mundane becomes wonderful, where the congregation comes to be nourished. Outline. In chapter one I will present the unpublished sermons of pastor Médard in chronological order. These are examined within their temporal context to “hear” and explain what Jean Médard said to a congregation under threat, shock and bewilderment, who sought not just solace but comprehension and instruction too. God`s Word was the driving force for speaking out, and it is the historical context that gives focus to the pastor`s words. This, however, is not sufficient on its own and in chapter two I will draw out the prevalent themes, or rhetorical imperatives, that exist within the sermons to establish the unremitting issues of pastor, congregation and nation.
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