Evangelical Reformed Church in Bavaria

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Basic data
Surface: Municipalities in Bavaria, Saxony + Stuttgart
Management: President Simon Froben
Membership: Evangelical Reformed Church (regional church)
Parishes : 13
Parishioners: approx.12,000 (as of 2010)
Official Website: www.reformiert-bayern.de

The Evangelical Reformed Church in Bavaria was an independent Protestant church until 1989. At that time, it joined the Evangelical Reformed Church in northwest Germany as the 11th Synodal Association with its seat in Leer (East Friesland) , which is one of twenty member churches of the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD).

The enlarged Reformed regional church in Northwest Germany was therefore called the Evangelical Reformed Church (Synod of Evangelical Reformed Churches in Bavaria and Northwest Germany) until the end of 2009 , today only the Evangelical Reformed Church .

Territory of the regional church

The Evangelical Reformed Church in Bavaria comprised the state of Bavaria . Since the Protestant congregations here are mostly Lutheran and therefore belong to the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Bavaria , the Reformed Church of Bavaria only comprised ten individual congregations, namely Bayreuth, Erlangen, Bad Grönenbach, Herbishofen, Marienheim, Munich I, II and III, Nuremberg and Schwabach.

history

The Reformed churches in Bavaria have very different histories and traditions. Most of them came about through immigration of Reformed church members.

When the old Catholic heartland of Bavaria between 1806 and 1810 as the "Kingdom of Bavaria" was expanded to include numerous rulers to its current extent, there were from then on many Protestant areas within the state, mainly parts of Franconia (margraviate Brandenburg-Ansbach and Brandenburg-Bayreuth ) and some free imperial cities (Nuremberg, Nördlingen, Memmingen, Kempten, Weißenburg and Windsheim) Protestant. There were mostly Lutheran, but occasionally also Reformed congregations. They were all united in one church in 1806 (administrative union). This also included the areas "left of the Rhine" (the so-called Rheinpfalz, see Palatinate (region) ). Here, in 1817, the Lutheran and Reformed congregations united to form a uniate church (“Confessional Union”), which became legally independent in 1848 (see Evangelical Church of the Palatinate ).

In the areas "to the right of the Rhine", ie in the main area of ​​the Kingdom of Bavaria, a "general community" was set up in Munich in 1817 under a state "upper consistory ". The congregations, however, remained true to their previous confession. In 1853, an independent synod and its own church leadership (the “ Moderamen ”) were set up for the Reformed parishes on the right side of the Rhine . The head of the "Evangelical Church in Bavaria" was the King of Bavaria as "summus episcopus".

In 1918 the Reformed parishes formally left the Bavarian State Church and became an independent Evangelical Reformed Church in Bavaria .

In 1928 the Evangelical Reformed Church in Bavaria joined the newly founded Federation of Evangelical Reformed Churches in Germany , a loose association of independent Reformed congregations scattered all over Germany. This “federation” still exists today with three member communities.

In 1989 the Evangelical Reformed Church in Bavaria sought to get closer to the regional churches. She therefore resigned from the "Bund" and joined the Evangelical Reformed Church in northwest Germany on February 1, 1989.

Since then it has formed the Synodal Association XI of the now Evangelical Reformed Church called regional church. The Reformed Congregation Stuttgart, which had been part of the Evangelical Reformed Church in northwest Germany since 1951, was affiliated to this Synodal Association XI. In addition, the Reformed congregations in Leipzig that joined in 1993 and the Chemnitz branch congregation, which had since been established and became an independent congregation as the Chemnitz-Zwickau congregation, were affiliated to Synodal Association XI. Since then this has comprised 13 communities. The " Walloon-Dutch community Hanau", which has been associated since 1996 , left in 2008.

Parishes of the Synodal Association XI

Head of the Synodal Association XI

The leadership structure of Synodal Association XI (as well as the former Evangelical Reformed Church in Bavaria) essentially corresponds to the leadership structure of the entire Evangelical Reformed Church.

It is chaired by a synod that meets once a year and whose collegial permanent board is the moderamen . The President is in charge of this. The seat of the Synodal Administration is in Nuremberg.

Hymn books

The parishes of the Evangelical Reformed Church in Bavaria sang from the following hymn books in the last few decades:

  • Evangelical hymn book - edition for the Evangelical Reformed Church in Bavaria; Special edition of the Evangelical Hymnbook for Rhineland and Westphalia with the "Songs of the German Evangelical Hymnal"
  • Evangelical hymn book - edition for the Evangelical Reformed Church (Synod of Evangelical Reformed Churches in Bavaria and Northwest Germany), the Evangelical Old Reformed Church in Lower Saxony, in community with the Evangelical Church in the Rhineland, the Evangelical Church of Westphalia, the Lippe Regional Church, in Also used in parishes of the Federation of Evangelical Reformed Churches in the Federal Republic of Germany, Gütersloh / Bielefeld / Neukirchen-Vluyn, introduced on the 1st of Advent 1996
  • Swiss hymn book - the hymn book of the Evangelical Reformed Church in German-speaking Switzerland is in use in the communities of Bad Grönenbach and Herbishofen

literature

Karl Eduard Haas: The Evangelical Reformed Church in Bavaria. Their essence and their history . Schmidt, Neustadt ad Aisch 1970.

Internet addresses