United Protestant Church of France
The United Protestant Church of France (French: Église protestante unie de France , EPUdF ) is an amalgamation of the two classic Protestant churches in the country (except for the Moselle and Alsace departments). In May 2012, the Synods of the Reformed Church of France and the Evangelical Lutheran Church of France in Belfort decided that their churches would form a union and adopted the constitution of the common church. The two churches had already worked together in the French Evangelical Church Federation.
The union came into force on January 1, 2013. The newly founded uniate church has around 272,000 members, around 250,000 of whom come from the Reformed tradition. This corresponds to 0.4% of the total population in France. 424 Reformed and 32 Lutheran pastors work in the new church. The majority of Lutherans live in the greater Paris area and in the Montbéliard (Mömpelgard) area.
Like the two previous churches , the new united church is a member of the Community of Evangelical Churches in Europe (CPCE).
For reasons of concordat law, the association does not include the Lutheran and Reformed Churches in Alsace-Lorraine (departments of Haut-Rhin , Bas-Rhin and Moselle ), which have an independent status. In 2006 they had already joined forces to form the Union of Protestant Churches of Alsace and Lorraine . Men and women are ordained in the Church . Since May 2015, same-sex couples have been allowed to marry under canon law.
Organizational structure
The United Protestant Church of France is organizationally divided into nine regions, the borders of which are predominantly, but not exclusively, the departmental borders:
- Center-Alpes-Rhône
- Cevennes-Languedoc-Roussillon
- Est-Montbéliard
- North Normandy
- Ouest
- Provence-Alpes-Corse-Côte-d'Azur
- Région parisienne reformée
- Inspection luthérienne de Paris
- Sud-Ouest
Church presidents
- Laurent Schlumberger , 2013–2017
- Emmanuelle Seyboldt , since 2017
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b List des régions. Eglise protestante unie de France, accessed on August 28, 2016 (French).
- ↑ All information according to: France: Reformed and Lutherans united ( Memento of the original of July 12, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Report from the denominational institute Bensheim, dated December 18, 2012.
- ↑ Radio France International: French Protestant church authorises gay marriages ( Memento of the original of July 24, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ National Council. Eglise protestante unie de France, accessed on August 28, 2016 (French).
