Swiss Reformed Church - History

History

After the early death of Zwingli in 1531, his work was continued by Heinrich Bullinger, the author of the Second Helvetic Confession. The French-speaking cities Neuchâtel, Geneva and Lausanne changed to the Reformation ten years later under William Farel and John Calvin coming from France. The Zwingli and Calvin branches had each their theological distinctions, but in 1549 under the lead of Bullinger and Calvin they came to a common agreement in the Consensus Tigurinus (Zürich Consent), and 1566 in the Second Helvetic Confession.

A distinctive feature of the Swiss Reformed churches in the Zwinglian tradition is their historically almost symbiotic link to the state (cantons), which is only loosening gradually in the present.

In 1920 the Federation of Swiss Protestant Churches (Schweizerischer Evangelischer Kirchenbund, Fédération des Eglises protestantes de Suisse, Federazione delle Chiese evangeliche della Svizzera - SEK-FEPS), with 22 member churches — 20 cantonal churches and 2 free churches (Free Church of Geneva and the Evangelical-Methodist Church of Switzerland), was formed to serve as a legal umbrella before the federal government and represent the church in International relations.

Read more about this topic:  Swiss Reformed Church

Famous quotes containing the word history:

    The history of progress is written in the blood of men and women who have dared to espouse an unpopular cause, as, for instance, the black man’s right to his body, or woman’s right to her soul.
    Emma Goldman (1869–1940)

    No event in American history is more misunderstood than the Vietnam War. It was misreported then, and it is misremembered now.
    Richard M. Nixon (b. 1913)

    History ... is, indeed, little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind.
    But what experience and history teach is this—that peoples and governments have never learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it.
    Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)