The evangelicals in France who meet locally as ‘assemblies’ and are
sometimes referred to as ‘les frères larges’ have already been
described in substance by the historian Sébastien Fath with a trio of
characteristics, namely ‘a pronounced and total rejection of all
clergy, an emphasis on Biblical holiness and distrust of any
institutional ecumenism’. The Brethren movement, however, as a
whole has remained ‘the most under-studied sector of France’s
nebulous evangelicalism’.