La Proue, Jean-Marc's bookstore in Lausanne
Jean-Marc Berthoud
(1939 - )
Jean-Marc Berthoud
Libraire La Proue
Escaliers du Marche 17
CH 1003 Lausanne, Switzerland
Email: jmberthoud@gmx.ch
Jean-Marc Berthoud (behr–tū) was born in 1939 in South Africa from Swiss missionary parents and lives in Lausanne, Switzerland. He is married to Rose-Marie, and they are the parents of five children and six grandchildren. He holds Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Arts with Honours degrees in History and English literature from the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg in the Republic of South Africa. Between 1960 and 1964 he undertook research in Colonial History (on the first modern genocide of five million Africans killed in the Congo basin between 1880 and 1914) at the Sorbonne and the University of London.
Jean-Marc was stopped abruptly by God on the platform of the Neuchâtel Railway Station in the Spring of 1966, and came to Christ as a direct result of reading The Treatise on Scandals by John Calvin, out of an enthusiastic interest in the great Reformer’s French style! His conversion led to the immediate abandonment of a promising academic career. To earn his living and raise a large family, Jean-Marc worked first as a gardener (for five years), then as a railroad porter (for ten years), and finally as a part time manual postal employee (for twenty-three years). Since 2004 he is professionally retired.
He is the editor of the review Résister et Construire and of Documentation Chrétienne, is the president of the Association Vaudoise de Parents Chrétiens and of the Association Création, Bible et Science, director of a collection of books, Messages, for the Éditions L’Age d’Homme, and runs a Christian bookshop, La Proue. Together with others he is currently working on the first republication since the sixteenth century of the works of the great French Swiss Reformer, Pierre Viret. He is currently working on a new publication: The Government of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Books by Jean-Marc
Une Religion sans Dieu - Les Droits de l’Homme contre l’Evangile
(Religion Without God - Human Rights Against the Gospel)
Calvin et la France - Geneve et le Deploiement de la Reforme au XVIe Siecle
(Calvin and France - Geneva and the Development of the Reformation in the Sixteenth Century)
Des Actes de l’Eglise - Le Christianisme en Suisse Romande
(The Acts of the Church - Christianity in French-speaking Switzerland)
Apologie pour la Loi de Dieu
(In Defense of God’s Law)
L’Ecole et Famille contre l’Utopie
(School and Family Against Utopia)
L’Alliance de Dieu
(The Covenant of God)
Creation, Bible et Science
(Creation, Bible and Science)
Journals
Revolution et Christianisme - Une Appreciation Chretienne de la Revolution Francaise
(Revolution and Christianity - A Christian Approach to the French Revolution)
Jean Calvin: apres. 500 ans.
(John Calvin: After 500 years)
Market steps in front of La Proue bookstore.
Present Work
Jean-Marc is currently engaged in two major projects. The first is a detailed exposition in the form of regular sermons on the Ten Commandments. The second is a lecture series on the theme of the development of God’s covenant throughout Scripture and its manifestation throughout the history of the Christian Church, with particular regard to the relation of God’s covenantal people to the life of the nations.