Reformed and Presbyterian churches
Reformed and Presbyterian churches, name given to various Protestant churches that share a common origin in the Reformation in 16th-century Switzerland. Reformed is the term identifying churches regarded as essentially Calvinistic in doctrine. The term presbyterian designates a collegial type of church government by pastors and by lay leaders called elders, or presbyters, from the New Testament term presbyteroi. Presbyters govern through a series of representative consistories, from the local congregation to area and national organizations, commonly termed sessions, presbyteries, synods, and assemblies.
A slogan for the Lutheran Reformation was “by faith alone.” Reformed Christians added the principle “to God alone the glory.” Reformed Christians taught that God’s word alone and no mere human opinion should be the norm for faith. “To God alone the glory” determined attitudes toward church government and worship, the design and furnishing of church buildings, and even secular authority. Reformed churches are confessional in nature, and during the 16th and early 17th centuries a number of manifestos of faith were written. Some of these confessions were theses for debate, such as Huldrych Zwingli’s Sixty-Seven Articles of 1523. Others, such as the Zurich Consensus of 1549, sought unity between groups on controversial doctrines. This consensus, which bridged the theological gap between Zwinglian and Calvinist thought, proved important for the increasing use of the term Reformed. The very names of the Geneva, Helvetic, French, Belgic, and Scots confessions indicate the relationship of Reformed churches to the rising sense of nationhood in 16th-century Europe. A harmony of confessions prepared in 1581 shows the agreement among national churches as well as between Reformed confessions and the Lutheran Augsburg Confession. Some national confessions had international significance. The Second Helvetic Confession became standard for churches in countries east of Switzerland. The Heidelberg Catechism had great importance in the churches of the Netherlands and wherever the Dutch settled. The Westminster Confession of Faith, produced in 1648 by a committee appointed by the English Parliament, had its greatest influence among Presbyterian and Congregational churches outside of England.
History
This section treats developments within the Reformed and Presbyterian churches after the Reformation. For a discussion of the emergence of these churches, see Protestantism, history of.
After the Reformation in Europe
Reformed churches in eastern Europe
Reformed Christianity in eastern Europe had great strength among Hungarians. By 1576 the government of the Hungarian Reformed Church emerged with superintending bishops chosen by church councils of pastors and elders. In 1606 István (Stephan) Bocskay, prince of Transylvania, secured recognition of the rights of Hungarian Reformed churches in territories under both Habsburg and Turkish rule, and Reformed faith was identified with Hungarian nationalism. The Transylvanian town of Debrecen became known as the Calvinist Rome. Transylvania, a sovereign state at the Peace of Westphalia ending the Thirty Years’ War in 1648, fell under Habsburg domination later in the century. This resulted in a Counter-Reformation against Protestants, which was lightened by toleration in 1781 and equality under the law in 1881. Partitioning of Hungary in 1919 and 1945 left a significant number of Hungarian Reformed churches in Romania, Czechoslovakia, the Soviet Union, and Yugoslavia as well as in the present state of Hungary.
The Thirty Years’ War was devastating to the Hussite Unity of Brethren in Bohemia, who had identified with the Reformed tradition during the Reformation. Protestantism survived underground until limited toleration came in 1781. Two Czech Brethren churches exist in the current Czech Republic. A Christian Peace Movement, which gained international significance, developed from these churches in Prague during the 1950s.
Though Poland produced an influential Reformed theologian in Jan Łaski (d. 1560), the Counter-Reformation reduced Reformed churches to the status of a small sect in Poland by the 17th century. In 1648 there were still more than 200 Reformed congregations, but by the late 20th century there were only eight congregations in Poland, five in Lithuania, and one in Latvia.
Congregational churches in Bulgaria and Evangelical churches in Greece are members of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches.
Reformed churches in France
French Calvinists, or Huguenots, set the pattern for presbyterian organization on a national level at a synod of the Reformed Church of France in 1559. During the religious wars of the next decades they sought to gain official recognition, a goal partially achieved with the Edict of Nantes in 1598. Huguenots remained as a weakened, tolerated minority in France. On Oct. 18, 1685, Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes. At least 250,000 French Protestants immigrated to Prussia, Holland, England, and America. After the suppression of the Camisard (French Protestant peasant) revolt in 1715, Louis XIV announced the end of the toleration of Protestantism in France. Yet that very year a group met in Nîmes to plan restoration of the Reformed Church. With the 1789 French Revolution equality under the law came to Protestants. Napoleon placed Reformed congregations under state control, with pastors on state salary.
A national synod did not meet again until 1848. At that time a free Evangelical Synod was organized, separating from the state-recognized church over the issue of state support. In 1905 state support of the old synod was withdrawn, and the two synods were united in 1938.
When Alsace was annexed to France in 1648, a number of Reformed Christians were brought into the French nation. But the Reformed Church in Alsace-Lorraine, whose history has been different from that of the Reformed Church of France, remained a separate organization. Outside of French-speaking Switzerland, French Reformed churches are the largest Protestant group in the Latin countries of Europe, each having a Reformed Church. French Reformed Christians have played a role in the World Council of Churches, in liturgical and theological renewal, in relating the church to technology and urbanization, and in Catholic–Protestant and Communist–Christian dialogue.
Reformed churches in Germany
The Peace of Westphalia in 1648 established the legality of Reformed churches in German states, according to the pleasure of the ruling prince. At the end of the 17th century Reformed worship in the Palatinate was prohibited. As a result, many Reformed Christians immigrated to the Netherlands, America, and Prussia, where they established Reformed churches. The Elector of Brandenburg-Prussia was converted to Calvinism in 1609. He and his successors permitted the establishment of Reformed churches among refugees and also continued Reformed churches in territories that came under Prussian rule.
Frederick William III of Prussia in 1817 proposed a union of Reformed and Lutheran churches. The eminent Reformed theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher led ministers in support of this union but shared with them a concern for the loss of Reformed systems of self-government to monarchial absolutism. The union became a pattern for a majority of Protestants in Germany. Distinctively Reformed territorial churches are still to be found in northwestern Germany. The Reformed Church of Anhalt joined in the Union Evangelical Church in 1981.
A Reformed Alliance was organized in Germany in 1884 to preserve the Reformed heritage. A synod held in Altona in January 1934 drew up a confessional statement in opposition to the German Christians’ corruption of the Gospel. This led to the Barmen Synod of May 1934, in which Christians of Lutheran, Union, and Reformed background joined in the Barmen Confession of Faith. This confession was the basis for resistance to the German Christians’ racist understanding of Christianity, which enjoyed the support of the Nazi government. The Reformed Alliance remains active in unified Germany.
Reformed churches in England and Wales
The failure of the Puritans both to complete establishment of a presbyterian system during the Westminster Assembly in 1648 and to continue a looser arrangement of independent churches under Cromwell opened the way in 1660 to an episcopal restoration in the Church of England. Those Reformed Christians who could not accept this became persecuted Nonconformists. The Glorious Revolution of 1688–89, which expelled the Roman Catholic sovereign James II, gave English Presbyterians, Independents, and Baptists limited toleration outside the established church. Many Presbyterian congregations became Unitarian during the next century. This movement was checked by the Evangelical Awakening of the 18th century, which reinvigorated the Nonconformist groups.
In 1972 the United Reformed Church was formed out of the Congregational Union of England and Wales and the Presbyterian Church of England. The Presbyterian (Calvinistic/Methodist) Church of Wales, formed in the 18th century, has a substantial membership.
Reformed churches in Scotland and Ireland
The refusal of the Episcopal bishops of the Church of Scotland to accept the legitimacy of William and Mary in 1688 resulted in presbyterian government for the Scottish church. State interference in the appointment of pastors along with evangelicalism gave rise to secessionist movements in the 18th century, culminating in 1843 in a major schism and the formation of the Free Church of Scotland under Thomas Chalmers. In 1900 secession and free churches became the United Free Church, which in turn reunited with the Church of Scotland in 1929.
In Ireland the Presbyterian Church has roots both among Scottish settlers and also among English Puritans of the early 17th century. Although the church is represented in all of Ireland, most of its membership resides in Northern Ireland, where Irish nationalism is a crucial issue.
Reformed churches in the Netherlands and Switzerland
The Peace of Westphalia in 1648 ended the Eighty Years’ War for the independence of the Netherlands. The Reformed Church, which was identified with Dutch nationalism, constituted the majority church within a nation that had remarkable tolerance for religious minorities.
Closer state control of the church followed the Napoleonic era. This and an enervated theology prompted two secessions from the Dutch Reformed Church, the first in the 1830s and the second in the 1880s. These secession churches united as the Gereformeerde Kerken in the Netherlands, which exist alongside the traditional Hervormde Kerk. Abraham Kuyper, the scholarly neo-Calvinist leader of the second of these secessions, served as prime minister of the Netherlands with a conservative coalition in Parliament from 1901 to 1905. The two main bodies of Reformed Protestantism in the Netherlands cooperate on many levels.
Nineteenth-century evangelical secession and 20th-century reunion occurred in Swiss Reformed churches, which continue to be organized along cantonal lines. A Christian Socialist movement was developed in the early 20th century. Karl Barth and Emil Brunner, whose theological influence went far beyond Switzerland and the Reformed tradition, emerged from that movement with less utopian political realism.
