A Brief Book Notice from Books At a Glance
by Fred G. Zaspel
Historian of French Protestantism and our good friend Steve Davis is at it yet again! This time he focuses on the life and ministry of the French Reformer Antoine Court (1695–1760).
Court was barely twenty when he began riding the back roads of the Vivarais to gather outlawed Protestants for worship. Thirty years after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes had stripped French Calvinism of its pastors, its synods, and its right to assemble, Court set about rebuilding it—convening clandestine synods, restoring church discipline, confronting the Camisard “prophets” and their claims to extrabiblical revelation, and founding the Seminary of Lausanne to train a generation of pastors, many of whom died for their faith.
Here Davis draws on thousands of pages of French sources largely untouched by English-speaking scholars to offer the first biography in English of the man whose own countrymen named the Restaurateur of French Protestantism. This book opens a neglected chapter of the “Forgotten Reformation.”
“If it has pleased God to use us as vile instruments to lead many to righteousness, may we shine one day, according to his divine promises, as the stars of the firmament.”
~ Antoine Court
Endorsements
Michael Haykin (from the Foreword)
“This latest book by Davis has to be one of my favourites.”
Joel Beeke
Through the work of such scholars as Stephen Davis, the French Reformation and post-Reformation eras are finally receiving more attention in Reformed historical-theological scholarship. With the release of this groundbreaking monograph, this trend is also true of eighteenth-century French church history, long overshadowed by two significant historical “bookends”—the Edict of Fontainebleau (1685) and the French Revolution (1789). In these pages, you will learn about the life and writings of a much-neglected theologian (Antoine Court) who ministered in a much-neglected era of French Reformed history (post-Revocation, pre- revolution France). Court’s story and ideas have been unleashed through the scholarly work of Dr. Davis, who has scoured thousands of pages of French material to make Court accessible to English speakers. A towering figure in the Church of the Desert (L’Église du Désert), Court helped reinvent and reorganize the post-Huguenot French Reformed movement by establishing a theological seminary, challenging the Camisard “prophets” who claimed to receive extrabiblical revelation, and leading a reform of the post-Revocation church in its polity, organization, and worship. This book is a meaningful contribution to Reformed scholarship on one of the least known but most significant successors of the Huguenots.
Yannick Imbert
“There are many ways to serve the Church of Christ. One of them is to keep alive the memory of our ancestors in the faith so that it helps us live faithfully today. This is what Stephen Davis is giving us in this first biography in English of a French pastor mostly unknown even in his own country. By following the life of Antoine Court, Davis writes a vivid account of the struggles to rebuild the Protestant churches in the eighteenth century in the midst of persecution, controversies, and schisms. Beyond Court’s ministry itself, this is a tale of God’s providential care of the Reformed Church in France and an exhortation to seek his guidance in troubled times.”
Buy the books
ANTOINE COURT (1695-1760): HISTORY OF THE RESTORATION OF FRENCH PROTESTANTISM IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY, by Stephen Davis