The Theological Institute of Nîmes (also named ITN) is a French college and seminary created in Uchaud, Gard, in 1989 by Louis DeMeo, a Baptist pastor of the American Greater Grace World Outreach Church, whose heartquarters are located in Baltimore, Maryland. The college was later closed on the ground of "illegal operation of a private school", and moved to Montpellier where it took another name.

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  • 1989-01-01 00:00:00 (xsd:date)
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  • The Theological Institute of Nîmes (also named ITN) is a French college and seminary created in Uchaud, Gard, in 1989 by Louis DeMeo, a Baptist pastor of the American Greater Grace World Outreach Church, whose heartquarters are located in Baltimore, Maryland. The college was later closed on the ground of "illegal operation of a private school", and moved to Montpellier where it took another name. This institute was meanly known for its inclusion on the list of dangerous cults established by the Parliamentary Commission on Cults in France in the 1995 report, and its responses to criticisms. Louis DeMeo testified before the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, in Washington, DC, citing violations of religious freedom by the French government. DeMeo said that his institute underwent an alleged "persecution" just after the publication of the parliamentary report. He mentioned as examples an explosion and four burned cars by a stranger, problems of bank accounts for several ITN students, a refusal of a building permit for a church and the fact that two members were fired from their jobs. He said that the inclusion of ITN on the cults list was "extremely unjust, given the fact [they] have never been given an official hearing or explanation for [their] inclusion on this list", and generated discriminatory behaviors. The Rutherford Institute, an international civil liberties and human rights legal defense organization, even wrote to Alain Vivien, then member of the MILS, to ask him to remove the ITN from the list of cults. Willy Fautré, a member of Human Rights Without Frontiers, noticed that the ITN was presented in the media as "a disturbing tentacular organisation" and the pastor as a "guru" in the media. However, DeMeo's church, the Greater Grace World Outreach, was accused in the media of being "a fellow traveler of the Church of Scientology". The Mission interministérielle de lutte contre les sectes pointed out that complaints for the cars destroyed were the subject of police investigations which were unable to attribute the origin of this incident to external responsibilities, because of a lack of evidence. In the press, former ITN followers criticized the institute for important calls for donation, pressures exerted on the followers, interventions in private life, family breakdowns and demonization of the world. Expert of evangelical Protestantism Sébastien Fath said that the ITN was "originally characterized by voluntary isolation from all French evangelical existing networks", a "very pronounced anti-social speech, almost self-sufficient practices". He also said that it was in "considerable out of phase with its environment, coupled with a propensity for a victimizing reading of its situation (though more due to its wanted isolation than its religious identity)", but he also said that the situation would have changed since.
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  • Theological Institute of Nîmes
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  • Louis DeMeo
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  • The Theological Institute of Nîmes (also named ITN) is a French college and seminary created in Uchaud, Gard, in 1989 by Louis DeMeo, a Baptist pastor of the American Greater Grace World Outreach Church, whose heartquarters are located in Baltimore, Maryland. The college was later closed on the ground of "illegal operation of a private school", and moved to Montpellier where it took another name.
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  • Theological Institute of Nîmes
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  • Theological Institute of Nîmes
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