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Document Details :

Title: Essai de problématisation de la nouvelle évangélisation
Author(s): VILLEPELET, Denis
Journal: Lumen Vitae
Volume: 67    Issue: 2   Date: 2012   
Pages: 143-152
DOI: 10.2143/LV.67.2.2983483

Abstract :
L’Évangile est toujours nouveau et c’est Dieu qui, en son Fils, évangélise, c’est-à-dire rend présent cet Évangile en tout temps et tout lieu. Le contexte actuel, sécularisé, pluraliste et areligieux peut cependant être une chance pour un nouveau christianisme considéré comme force de transformation et d’humanisation, christianisme qui a tout à gagner s’il prend les risques de l’Évangile. La Nouvelle Évangélisation demande alors aux chrétiens de vivre comme des disciples sécularisés, avec pour tâche de rendre crédible la force de transformation de l’Évangile. En montrant notamment comment la perspective chrétienne éclaire de façon inédite les grandes questions de la culture sécularisée.



The Gospel is always new, and it is God who, in his Son, evangelizes. That is, God makes the Gospel present in all times and all places. This was the context that led John Paul II to speak of a ‘new evangelization’, for even if there can be only one Gospel, cultures and societies differ widely from one continent to the other. Yet, as Charles Taylor argues, two secularizing movements have intersected each other: one the one hand, ‘secularity 1’, whereby the public space is free of all religious ties and religion belongs to the private sphere alone, and on the other hand, ‘secularity 2’, where the individual lives perfectly well within God, religion is irrelevant, and morality is purely a morality of action. Christian faith thus becomes one option, recognised as coherent and fruitful but only one among many, to which a believer adheres in a personalised, mobile manner. This secularised, pluralist and non-religious context may, however, present an opportunity for a renewed Christianity, considered as a force for transformation and humanization, a Christianity that stands to gain from taking the risks of the Gospel. The new evangelization thus calls upon Christians to live as secularised disciples, whose task is to give credibility to the transformative power of the Gospel by showing, notably, how the Christian perspective enlightens in an unprecedented way the major questions of a secularised culture.