During Indochina War, the first French decolonization war, Christian intellectuals were absorbed in discussing the subject and gave their different opinions. Some blamed the solutions of the government including the military one, and others resisted what was considered to be giving up the French mission. However, the majority of Christian intellectuals were convinced that the colonial should be ended by the negotiation with Vietnam and by the withdrawal of French army. They considered Indochina War as an insoluble economic and financial burden as well as an ethical one caused by the victims of the war and by some military way against the terrorism and the revolutionary war. However, at the beginning of the war, some progressive Christians and the ‘serious’ magazines for intellectuals such Esprit and the moignage chretien didn’t change public opinion. Despite the thirst for peace being increased, there were few who doubted the necessity of sustaining French Union and believed that the colonial business was based on the violence, exploit, and the forced civilization. At the end of the war, especially after the defeat at Dien Bien Phu, the French finally experienced the feeling of “rage, humiliation, shock, grudge, kind of regret and bitterness” and welcomed the treaty of truce with relief. Nevertheless, it can be said that the attentive attitude of the Christian church and the intellectuals played an important role in awakening many Christians as well as those who support the maintaining the colonialization. While the majority of the French sticked to the myth of colonialism without understanding irresistible power of national liberation and didn’t respond to its effect and result, Christian intellectuals supported the resistance movement of the colonies, changed public perception, and made Frenches accept decolonization. Although they could not overthrow the colonial ideology which was dominant in French society at that time, their behaviorism played an important role in providing the basis for decolonization by making the public aware the cultural relativism that resist the tradition belief for western civilization and by revealing the sense of guilt about what is called ‘the sin of colonialism’.
Le debat indochinois preoccupait et divisait les intellectuels chretiens en France. D’un cote, on deonocait le choix d’une solution militaire et certaines des methodes qui furent parfois utilisees. De l’autre, on protestait contre ce qui apparaissait comme le risque d’un abandon de la mission emancipatrice de la France. Les intellectuels chretiens etaient pourtant persuades, leur majorite, que la fin du colonialismen en Indochine passait par une negociation avec le Vietminh et le retrait du corps expeditionnaire. Ils pensaient que la guerre d’Indochine etaient pour la France non seulement une charge morale par les morts qu’elle entrainait, les methodes auxquelles s’habituait une partie de l’armee face au terrorisme et a la guerre revolutioninnaire, mais aussi une charge economique et financiere qui n’etaient pas a la mesure de ses moyens. Mais au debut de la guerre d’Indochine, quelques chretiens progressistes et de ‘serieuses’ re vues pour intellectuels, comme Esprit, Temoignage chretiens, ne pouvaient transformer l’opinion publique. Mene su les voix s’elevaient pour la paix, ils etaient peu nombreux qui doutaient la necessite de maintenir l’Union francaise et jugeait que l’oeuvre colonial etaient fondee sur la violence, l’exploitation ou la volonte d’imposer sa civilisation. Ce fut seulement lors de la defaite de Dien Bien Phu que les Francais se laisserent envahir par un “sentiment amer ou se cotoient l’irritation, l’humiliation, la surprise, l’accumulation des rancoeurs, en meme temps qu’un certain remords”, et accueillit avec soulagement les conditions du cessez-le-feu. Cependant les attitudes plus engagees des Eglises et des intellectuels avaient joue un role important dans la prise de conscience de beaucop de chreriens francais, jusque-la partisans du statu qup colonial. Quand la majorite des Francais attacherent aux mythes coloniaux de la tradition republicaine, ne surent pas comprendre a temps la force irrepressible des mouvements nationaux de liberation, ni agir ou reagir en consequence, intellectuels chretiens supporterent le mouvement de resistance dans les colonies, transformerent peu a peu les esprits, conduisirent la mjorite des Francais a accepter la decolonisation.