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. 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. 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. 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. 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. was rather welcome to the Calvinists in Alsace-Lorraine. Already in 1822 the French government had established a Reformed consistory in Metz, which, however, had been moved to Nancy in 1850. 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. At the same time, Moeller forbade the Calvinist consistories to send delegates to the 1872 (Eisenacher Kirchenkonferenz). 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. In 1885, the state administration proposed that the Calvinist consistory of Metz apply to merge into EPCAAL. So the Alsatian Reformed consistories felt the need to establish a statewide Calvinist church and started a new initiative to that end. By mid-1892 the four Alsatian consistorial delegates formed a committee in order to prepare a constitutive synod, while Metz refused to participate. Now, the Alsatian Calvinists took the administration up on its proposal postponing any decisions of the Calvinist consistories as to new examination rules for Strasbourg University graduates of Protestant theology, arguing these can only effectively be taken, once a Calvinist church body be established. Now the consistory of Metz threw a spanner into the preparatory works by demanding its merger into the EPCAAL. However, the Department of Justice and Religious Affairs of the state administration now "determined that the law required only that there be five consistories available for the synod, not that all five consent to form the body." This was because by French law the government convened regional synods for the ambits of at least five consistories, whereas the concerned consistories had no say in this matter. French law contradicted itself in how to choose delegates for a Calvinist regional synod, either the consistories would send delegates (Organic articles), or the parishes would elect representatives (1852 decree). So only on 16 and 17 April 1895, representatives of the four Alsatian Reformed consistorial ambits, with Metz boycotting, formed their synod, thus formally constituting today's Protestant Reformed Church of Alsace and Lorraine (EPRAL). Since then the synodals elect the Synodal Council (Conseil Synodal, Synodalvorstand), as central governing body of the church representing the synod when not convened. In 1901, the Lutheran Supreme Consistory of the EPCAAL had definitely rejected the Metz consistory to be accepted into the EPCAAL as a united Protestant consistorial ambit and the Lorrain department president
Hans von Hammerstein-Loxten, favouring the union of Calvinists and Lutherans, terminated his presidency term. In November 1902 the Calvinist Consistory of Metz gave itself up to fate and agreed to be part of the EPRAL and started participating in the statewide Calvinist bodies established seven years earlier. So Metz set some conditions, which the Reformed synodals willingly fulfilled in 1903. The special united Protestant character of several congregations in the Metz consistorial ambit was to be maintained and congregations were to be entitled to officially use, if they wished so, the brand
Protestant (evangelisch) instead of Reformed as part of the parish name. So Protestant officials from interior Germany delegated to posts in Alsace-Lorraine often had no routine with a Calvinist and a Lutheran church existing side by side. This caused their expectation for the Reformed and the Lutheran churches in Alsace-Lorraine to unite, promoted by the administration of Alsace-Lorraine, especially since the head of state of Alsace-Lorraine, the German Emperor himself, in personal union king of Prussia was as such the supreme governor of the united old-Prussian church body. However, the Lutheran Supreme Consistory in Strasbourg asserted its continued existence as recognised public-law religious body in 1872, although reconfined to Alsace-Lorraine only, so that thereafter any merger with the – by membership – smaller Calvinist consistories turned unlikely and did not materialise in the end. Nevertheless, the recognition of an all Alsatian-Lorrain Reformed church umbrella was protracted by the authorities. Only on 21 June 1905 did the Alsatian-Lorrain state committee (Landesausschuss, between 1874 and 1911 the indirectly elected parliament), passing the first law altering the French legal situation as to religious bodies, recognised the Synodal Council as governing body of the Reformed Church of Alsace and Lorraine. By the new Constitution of Alsace-Lorraine, enacted in 1911, the president of the Synodal Council as a representative of one of the two
Protestant regional churches in Alsace-Lorraine, like one representative of each public-law religious body in Alsace-Lorraine, became an
ex officio member of the first chamber of the (the Landtag). , president of the Synodal Council from 1898 to 1913, represented the church in the Landtag, then followed by
Albert Kuntz. Whereas in metropolitan France, the
1905 French law on the Separation of the Churches and the State did away with the Concordat of 1801 and the organic articles; these provisions remained valid law in Alsace-Lorraine also after its return to France as part of the
Local law in Alsace-Moselle. Only during the German occupation (1940–1944/1945) the organic articles had been abolished in 1941 as part of the Nazi
Weltanschauung policy doing away with public funding of religious bodies and
religious instruction in all schools. But with the reestablishment of French law, the pre-1940 legal status was reconstituted. Therefore, the EPRAL cannot merge with the new
Reformed Church of France, a
religious association established in 1938 by merging four religious bodies, unless the EPRAL would waive its concordatory status, which also provides for the clergy being paid by the government and Calvinist pupils in public schools entitled to participate in religious instruction classes following EPRAL guidelines. ==Organisation==