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Reformed Confessionalisation in Germany and Upper Germany

of the basic course, the beginnings of the Reformed Reformation in Switzerland and Geneva were discussed (with a brief look at France). This lesson shall deal with the question of how the Reformation of Reformed character became established in individual parts of Germany. It will be seen that this was not a uniform occurrence. For one, there was the phenomenon that individual regions, which had turned in the first place to the Lutheran Reformation, became Reformed in the course of the sixteenth Century, e.g. the counties of Bentheim and Lippe or the Electoral Palatinate. Besides this, there were also regions that experienced a reformation of a Reformed character from the beginning, e.g. Upper Germany, or that initially existed as much under Lutheran as Reformed influence, e.g. the Palatinate. And there were in Germany numerous congregations of refugees (above all Huguenots and Waldenses). All this makes it difficult to grasp the entire occurrence in one concept. The suggestion, discussed a great deal around 1985, to name the whole occurrence a “second Reformation” after a first Lutheran Reformation, must be viewed as a failure. For it makes into a rule a sequence which was present in only some areas, of first Lutheran and then Reformed confessionalisation. It is therefore more fitting, with regard to Germany, to speak somewhat more diffusely of the “Reformed confessionalisation” and the history of Reformed churches and congregations in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Therefore, because of the very different ways in which the Reformed congregations originated in Germany, there are relatively many sections in this lesson standing independently of each other. They reflect the diversity but also demonstrate the complexity of the historical developments.

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