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The schools seem to have overreacted to these agitations by limiting the freedom of expression of those who do not violate principles of democracy. As a result, University Bible Groups finds it harder to meet on university campuses.

This mutual incompatibility between the secular state and Islam is why Muslim families haven't assimilated well into French culture. Consequently, they have found it hard to get decent jobs. And they have found it hard to make friends with the "French French." This gives rise to discrimination—in which immigrants are both victims and perpetrators. And this, in turn, leads to desperation and stupid ways of dealing with it, like drug trafficking. When you're economically forced to live in cramped quarters with parents and even grandparents, it's easy to feel trapped. And those who feel trapped often feel the need to break out.

L'Église
What can be done about this complex web of stories? Have Christ's followers dared to tread where the government cannot? Have they become the social safety net that catches what the federal bureaucracy disposes?

When asked about it, they're very … French. They offer disclaimers. They minimize their role. They shrug their shoulders and shake their heads.

"I would love French evangelical Christians to be a social safety net, but all too often they are hiding in the woodwork!" says Nogent Bible Institute's lecturer in practical theology André Pownall, who himself socializes and networks with the immigrants, and loves them with Christ's love. "French Christians have joined in the 'white flight' from these troubled suburbs. … With rapid transportation, many of our Paris churches are regional rather than local, and have little contact with the suburb in which they are situated."

A missionary who has worked with Muslims in France for many years and who asked to keep his identity confidential to protect the Muslim converts he ministers to, adds that evangelicals "don't like to live in the cites, to do evangelism there, to locate new churches there, or to engage in social ministries there." Instead, they rely on the government, which "is very active funding federally controlled social work."

But the government, he says, "has no answers for the deeper problems that only the gospel can provide. Meaning: identity and acceptance, values, belonging, goals and objectives for life that have an eternal significance, solidarity, and love experienced in the community of the church."

What the missionary doesn't say is that he himself is the answer to these problems. He is one of the followers of Christ who do care, who do have tea with immigrants, who visit with the poor, who befriend the brown-skinned. He, Pownall, and so many others Christianity Today heard from on the eleventh day of violence.

Pastor Jean-Christophe Bieselaar's idea for quelling the unrest is simple: Churches must become multicultural. Notice how he speaks of "becoming" churches, not "building" them. "If a church lives the unity that Christ called us to live," he says, "we will be healing communities of ethnic and religious tensions … the church that Jesus prayed for."

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November (Web-only) 2005, Vol. 49