Jean Lasserre

Jean Lasserre (28 October 1908 in Geneva, Switzerland, † 22 November 1983 in Lyon, France) was a pastor of the Reformed Church of France, a peace theologian, the travel secretary of the French branch of the International Fellowship of Reconciliation and the editor of the Cahiers de la Réconciliation, a French-language magazine. His book, The War and the Gospel (French original 1953) made him internationally known. Lasserre's father, Henri Lasserre (born 4 July 1875 in Geneva, Switzerland, died 26 May 1945 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada) was, by nationality Swiss. His family came as Huguenots from Pont de Camarès (France) and emigrated to Switzerland in 1749. Early in his life, Henri Lasserre was interested in Tolstoy and life in communities and later immigrated to Canada. Jean Lasserre dedicated his book War and the Gospel to the memory of his father. His mother, Marie Schnurr (born 12 January 1878 in Lyon, France, died 19 February 1960 in Lyon) was an artist and botanist. After the divorce of his parents in 1909 Jean Lasserre lived in Lyon. In 1930, he became a French citizen. From 1926 to 1930 Jean Lasserre studied theology in Paris and from September 1930 to 1931, Lasserre was a seminarian at Union Theological Seminary in New York. There he met two other European scholars, Erwin Sutz and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Despite the inter-War tensions between France and Germany, Bonhoeffer and Lasserre became friends. Following the academic year Jean Lasserre and Dietrich Bonhoeffer traveled around the United States and Mexico. In the following years, there were various reunions: 1931 at an ecumenical conference in Cambridge, in 1932 in Les Houches in the valley of Chamonix, 1934 at the World Youth Conference of the World Association for Friendship through the Churches and in the same year in Bruay en-Artois. Eventually, Lasserre was only able to correspond with Dietrich Bonhoeffer via letter until he was arrested in April 1943. Jean Lasserre burned their letters during the German occupation of France out of concern for his family and himself.