The Protestant Reformed Church of Alsace and Lorraine ( (EPRAL); ; ) is a Calvinist denomination in Alsace and northeastern Lorraine (the Département of Moselle), France. As a church body, it enjoys the status as an établissement public du culte (public establishment of cult).
Creeds and memberships The EPRAL adheres to the Apostles Creed, Nicene Creed, Heidelberg Catechism and the Second Helvetic Confession. The EPRAL has approximately 33,000 members in 52 congregations served by 50 pastors. Congregations holding services in German and use the current German Protestant hymnal issued by the Protestant church bodies in Austria, France (Alsace-Moselle), Germany and Luxembourg (1993–1996), in a regional edition (Ausgabe Baden / Elsass-Lothringen) including traditional hymns from Alsace, Baden and Moselle.
In 2006, the EPRAL formed with the EPCAAL the Union of Protestant Churches of Alsace and Lorraine. This is no united body, but it provides common decision making structure and single body of pastors. However, the two churches maintain their own organisation. The EPRAL is member of the Protestant Federation of France and of the World Communion of Reformed Churches, and the World Council of Churches. The EPRAL was a founding member of the Conference of Churches on the Rhine in 1961, which now functions as a regional group of the Community of Protestant Churches in Europe (CPCE). The EPRAL has close fellowship with the Reformed Church of France.
History The first Calvinist congregation in the area was founded by John Calvin in Strasbourg in Alsace. It has its origin in the very early times of the Reformation. In the 16th and 17th centuries, the populations in a number of small imperial estates or free imperial cities including their governments (princes or city councils) had adopted the Calvinist confession; in other such territories, the ruling princes introduced the Calvinist faith using their privilege of Cuius regio, eius religio. Calvinist confessions spread in the northern and eastern part of the area with concentrations in Mulhouse and Metz. In Strasbourg, some enclaves in northern Alsace and the Vosges, Calvinists form only small minority communities but the Republic in Mulhouse was Calvinist at the time of the French Revolution, when all of their land had become a part of France.
After the conclusion of the Concordat of 1801 with the Vatican applying to French Catholicism, in 1802 Napoleon I decreed the organic articles which constituted also the other -existing major religious groups in France, the Calvinists, Jews and Lutherans, as recognised public religious bodies (établissements publics du culte). These bodies all followed a similar model with semigovernmental leading bodies, such as the Reformed Central Council (Conseil central; est. on 26 March 1852) in Paris, the Lutheran General Consistory (renamed as supreme consistory as of 1852) in Strasbourg and the Israelite Central Consistory in Paris. Subordinate to the chief bodies there were regional consistories each comprising several congregations altogether counting at least 6,000 souls. The organic articles shaped the constitution of the pre-1905 Reformed Church of France.N. N., "The French Concordat", on: Musée virtuel du Protestantisme français (Virtual museum of the French Protestantism), retrieved on 29 April 2013.
The representatives of the Calvinist church accepted the governmentally imposed structure, since it did not put the Calvinist church in a worse position than the other creeds. However, Napoleon's model of hierarchical parastatal governance was a harsh breach with many crucial Reformed presbyterial and synodal traditions. Pastors were not employed and paid by the church people, constituted in the congregations, but were chosen and paid by the government and subordinate to the government-appointed members of the consistories.
Napoleon's law did not provide for a general synod, the only body relevant in taking decisions in matters of doctrine and teaching for all the church, and while the law de jure provided for regional synods combining representatives of at least five consistorial ambits the government de facto never allowed their convocation.Anthony Steinhoff, The gods of the city: Protestantism and religious culture in Strasbourg, 1870-1914, Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2008, p. 212. . Lacking a general synod, last convened in 1659, and with no provincial synods convoked, the Calvinist congregations formed the only decision-taking body, though restricted to local church matters, legitimised by the Calvinist doctrine. Until 1852 the law did not even recognise Calvinist congregations but considered them as legally indistinct local outposts of the parastatal consistories.
On 26 March 1852 Napoleon III signed a decree, influenced by Charles Read, which still did not provide for a general synod, but at least made the Reformed congregations distinct legal entities, whose governing bodies (called presbyteries) - according to then Reformed doctrine - were elected by the male adult members.N. N., "Times of disagreement", on: Musée virtuel du Protestantisme français (Virtual museum of the French Protestantism), retrieved on 29 April 2013. The new Central Council established in 1852, the supreme executive body of the Reformed Church of France, was staffed with incumbents appointed by the government, a practice clearly contradicting the presbyterial and synodal doctrine of Calvinism.N. N., "Alsace from 1871 to 1918", on: Musée virtuel du Protestantisme français (Virtual museum of the French Protestantism), retrieved on 29 April 2013.
In the course of the 19th century, Calvinists in France clung to different theological movements, such as traditionalist Calvinism, rationalist theology, Christian revival and liberal Christianity. So, the pre-1905 Reformed Church of France entered into heavy controversies on doctrinal and teaching matters which could not be resolved due to the lacking general synod. Many Calvinists were adherents of the Christian revival movement (in France, they were then called évangéliques), colliding with proponents of religious liberalism. The congregations still could not employ the pastors, since the advowson was with the parastatal consistories. When the consistories appointed pastors of a particular theological leaning to a congregation whose members and elected bodies clung to another opinion, it often created hefty quarrels.
Two pastoral conferences were convened each by proponents of one of the two main currents in French Calvinism; the liberals met in Nîmes and the revivalists in Paris. They had no mandate for binding decisions, since elected laymen were not represented. Revivalists demanded a general synod, in order to conclude a binding confession of faith, while moderate liberals agreed but radical liberals denied that a general synod decision would at all be binding in matters of teaching and doctrine. Only in June and July 1872 the French government finally allowed the gathering of a general synod.
However, the Calvinist congregations in Alsace and the Lorraine department could not benefit from this any more. After France had waged war on Prussia (then a member of the North German Confederation) the former was defeated by the latter and its allies. By the Treaty of Frankfurt France ceded Alsace and parts of two northeastern départements of Lorraine to the newly united Germany. The Reformed congregations there with approximately 39,000 parishioners were separated from the Reformed Church of France in May 1871. Unlike the Lutheran Church of the Confession of Augsburg of France (Église de la Confession d’Augsbourg de France) whose directory (directoire) and supreme consistory (consistoire supérieur) were located in Strasbourg in Alsace, with the vast majority of its members also residing in Alsace-Lorraine and subsequently transforming into the Protestant Church of Augsburg Confession of Alsace and Lorraine (Église protestante de la Confession d'Augsbourg d'Alsace et de Lorraine; EPCAAL) territorially confined to the new German state of Alsace-Lorraine, the central governing body of the French Calvinists, the Central Council, was based in Paris. Evading from the subordination to the non-elected Central Council, which was mostly staffed with proponents of liberal Christianity, whom the French government preferred,N. N., "Athanase Coquerel (1795-1868)", on: Musée virtuel du Protestantisme français (Virtual museum of the French Protestantism), retrieved on 29 April 2013. was rather welcome to the Calvinists in Alsace-Lorraine.
Whereas the Alsatian Reformed consistories comprised all the Calvinist congregations in Alsace, the Calvinist congregations in the new German Lorraine department used to be part of the Nancy consistorial ambit since 1850, so that a Reformed consistory of Metz was refounded in 1871, however, competent only for the Calvinists in German Lorraine.Jean Colnat, 43 J Archives du Temple neuf(retrieved on 28 February 2013), Saint-Julien-lès-Metz: Service départemental d'Archives de la Moselle, 2002. Already in 1822 the French government had established a Reformed consistory in Metz, which, however, had been moved to Nancy in 1850. The then five Reformed consistorial ambits in Alsace-Lorraine existed side by side without any umbrella organisation.
In this, their situation was similar to that of the three Israelite consistories in the area which had been cut off from the Paris-based Central Consistory. Proponents of Calvinism and Judaism then took the endeavour to form new statewide umbrella organisations.Anthony Steinhoff, The gods of the city: Protestantism and religious culture in Strasbourg, 1870-1914, Leiden und Boston: Brill, 2008, p. 80. . According to Calvinist doctrine, the new central body needed the mandate of an elected synod rather than being a parastatal authority. In 1872, Upper President Eduard von Moeller rejected the Calvinist and Jewish proposals, arguing he would interfere as little as possible in the current state of legal affairs of Alsace-Lorraine as long as no Alsace-Lorrainese legislative body were established.Anthony Steinhoff, The gods of the city: Protestantism and religious culture in Strasbourg, 1870-1914, Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2008, p. 81. . At the same time, Moeller forbade the Calvinist consistories to send delegates to the 1872 (Eisenacher Kirchenkonferenz).Anthony Steinhoff, The gods of the city: Protestantism and religious culture in Strasbourg, 1870-1914, Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2008, p. 206. . When in 1882 the five Reformed consistories were invited to send a delegate to the Eisenach Church Conference, the consistories lacking any joint body long quarrelled about whom to send.Anthony Steinhoff, The gods of the city: Protestantism and religious culture in Strasbourg, 1870-1914, Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2008, p. 209. .