page_title: Evangelical Missionary Church of Besançon
section_title: Beliefs
hierarchical_section_title: Evangelical Missionary Church of Besançon / Beliefs
caption_attribution_description: English: The Bible
context_page_description: The Evangelical Missionary Church of Besançon, formerly known as the Evangelical Pentecostal Church of Besançon and The Mission, is a Christian movement established in Besançon, France, in December 1963. In close communion with the Protestant Federation of France, this church belongs to the Pentecostal movement and in 1969 founded the Evangelical Missionary Federation to gather the various Pentecostal churches it created. The assemblies, which developed very quickly throughout eastern and northern France, numbered well over 2,000 members.
  The church was founded by Aldo Benzi, who converted to Christianity after being healed from a pleurisy. Subsequent leader René Kennel, a former Mennonite farmer who became pastor of the churches in Saint-Dizier and in Joinville after discovering Pentecostalism through an evangelical Roma mission, has directed the church since 1977. Its main beliefs and practices are nearly identical with those of most Evangelical and Pentecostal groups, with a special focus on miraculous gifts of the Holy Spirit and proselytism. In the late 1990s the church was embroiled in many trials, losing most of them.
context_section_description: About his church Kennel said: "We are situated at the crossroads of the Pentecostal and Mennonite movements". Various explanations were provided by sociologists to define the place of the religious group within Christianity: Danièle Hervieu-Léger wrote that the church was created from "the meeting between a movement of evangelic sensibility inside the Reformed Church of Alsace and Lorraine, and a French Mennonite movement from the tradition of peaceful Anabaptism", Laurent Amiotte-Suchet considered that it "fits into the Assemblies of God", but also "in the history of a second wave of European Pentecostalism which experienced its revival in the 1970s and 1980s", and J. Gordon Melton described it, in his 2005 Encyclopedia of Protestantism, as one of the "newest Protestant groups". Evangelical Protestantism expert Sébastien Fath deemed the church a "non Baptist" group, but "with some common characteristics" and explained that it professed a very high degree of religious activism, embraccing conversionism, biblicism and crucicentrism. According to the Protestant Federation of France, the church displayed a "classical and structured Pentecostalism, with very little contact with other churches." The anti-cult association Centre contre les manipulations mentales said the church "comes from the classical Pentecostal movement which emerged in France in the 1950s and which now includes various groups".
  The church's main beliefs are expressed in a creed, initially composed of twelve articles of faith based on biblical passages and adopted by the church. These beliefs are almost identical to the ones of most evangelical and Pentecostal groups, including biblical authority viewed as the Word of God, literal biblical interpretation and the Trinity, with a special focus on miraculous gifts of the Holy Spirit and proselytism. Later, the number of articles of faith were reduced to eight points, and Amiotte-Suchet noted that they were reworded in 1998 to become less explicit concerning issues that were the subject of public controversies. He also said that the pastors' sermons show an evolution linked to a generation gap; René Kennel continues to advocate healthy living, illustrating his speeches with stories of curses resulting from a non-Christian lifestyle, while his son placed more emphasis on "the discernment of spiritual gifts and the depth of faith". On its website the church defines itself as apolitical; it respects current principles of secularism and freedom of conscience, does not discourage medical treatment, encourages believers to participate in social life and does not claim exclusive salvation.
caption: Like other Pentecostal assemblies, the Evangelical Missionary Church of Besançon considers the Bible as the Word of God and interprets it literally.
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