“If that’s true then maybe French faith will bounce back. The people in France who were bothering to be Christians, whether they went to a Roman Catholic congregation or a Protestant one, certainly were not doing it to please their neighbors.”
Absolutely. I don’t see France ever returning to the Catholic power that it once was; like the US, I see a smaller, resolute Church instead.
The earlier joint ventures of the churches with governments didn’t pan out all that well in the end, and again this goes equally for all the arms of Christendom that have been thus involved. I am an equal opportunity critic of this as regards Roman Catholics, Protestants, and Orthodox. It was simply way too tempting to ask to be part of the church because there was a secular axe to grind where someone wanted better access to Caesar and/or a position of prestige or power. And churches didn’t want to be in the business of turning possibly saveable souls from their door, and well it just became a big mess.