The exhibition presents the life and work of Raoul Allier, his critical analyses of the society of his time and his involvement in the Dreyfus affair and in the discussions on secularism that led to the 1905 law.
"A former student of the Ecole Normale Supérieure de la rue d'Ulm, who graduated in philosophy in 1885, he was appointed professor of philosophy at the Lycée de Montauban and, a few months later, lecturer at the Protestant theological faculty of that city.
In 1889, he was lecturer at the Faculty of Theology of Paris, where he became titular in 1902 (thesis on the Cabal of the Devotees). Deeply marked by the personality and social Christian preaching of Tommy Fallot, he took part in the work of the Société d'aide fraternelle et d'études sociales that he founded. He was one of the founders and first president of the French Federation of Christian Student Associations, and developed the influence of the Association des étudiants protestants de Paris (rue Vaugirard), which he chaired from 1920.
Convinced of the innocence of Captain Dreyfus, he published a transparent study on Voltaire and Calas, then a series of articles in the newspaper Le siècle. This deeply patriotic reformer establishes beneficial contacts, both on the left with members of the League of Human Rights, and on the right with members of a Catholic Committee for the Defense of the Right.
During the preparation of the law of separation of the Church and the State, he strongly advocated in Le Siècle and among parliamentarians for a liberal conception of the new organization, that is to say, for a complete and definitive separation of the Churches and the State.
Member of the Board of Directors of the Society of Evangelical Missions of Paris, he defends forcefully in The Century the freedom of worship threatened in Madagascar by the policy of secularization led by the Governor General, Victor Augagneur, and directed especially against the Protestant missions. The 1914-1918 war, during which he lost his eldest son, killed in August 1914, deeply marked him and he took part in the fight against «defeatism» through a great activity of lay preacher and lecturer. The eighty-one war conferences that Raoul Allier, a patriot and believer, gave in the four largest temples in Paris from Tuesday to Tuesday, had a great impact.
He became dean of the Faculty of Theology in Paris in 1920 and adopted an ambitious policy of welcoming foreign students and contacts with students from Central and Eastern Europe." [source:http://www.museeprotestant.org/notice/raoul-allier-1862-1939/].