, which laid the legal groundwork for two co-existing religious confessions (
Catholicism and
Lutheranism) in the German-speaking states of the Holy Roman Empire. From the
Peace of Augsburg in 1555 to the end of the
First World War and the collapse of the
German Empire, some Protestant churches were
state churches. Each (state or regional church) was the official church of one of the
states of Germany, while the respective ruler was the church's formal head (e.g. the
King of Prussia headed the
Evangelical Church of Prussia's older Provinces as supreme governor), similar to the
British monarch's role as the
Supreme Governor of the Church of England. This changed somewhat with growing religious freedom in the 19th century, especially in the
republican states of
Bremen,
Frankfurt (1857),
Lübeck, and
Hamburg (1860). The greatest change came after the
German revolution of 1918–1919, with the formation of the
Weimar Republic and the abdication of the
princes of the German states. The system of state churches disappeared with the
Weimar Constitution (1919), which brought about
disestablishment by the
separation of church and state, and there was a desire for the Protestant churches to merge. In fact, a merger was permanently under discussion but never materialised due to strong regional self-confidence and traditions as well as the denominational fragmentation into
Lutheran,
Reformed, and
United and uniting churches. During the Revolution, when the old church governments lost power, the People's Church Union () was formed and advocated unification without respect to theological tradition and also increasing input from
laymen. However, the People's Church Union quickly split along territorial lines after the churches' relationship with the new governments improved. It was realised that one mainstream Protestant church for all of Germany was impossible and that any union would need a federal model. The churches met in
Dresden in 1919 and created a plan for federation, and this plan was adopted in 1921 at
Stuttgart. Then in 1922 the then 28 territorially defined Protestant churches founded the
German Evangelical Church Confederation (, DEK). At the time, the federation was the largest Protestant church federation in Europe with around 40 million members. broke away from the EKD and formed the
League of Evangelical Churches in the German Democratic Republic (, BEK), in 1970 also joined by the
Moravian Herrnhut District. In June 1991, following
German reunification, the BEK merged with the EKD. While the members are no longer state churches, they enjoy constitutional protection as
statutory corporations, and they are still called , and some have this term in their official names. A modern English translation, however, would be
regional church. Apart from some minor changes, the territories of the member churches today reflect Germany's political organisation in the year 1848, with regional churches for states or provinces that often no longer exist or whose borders changed since. For example, between 1945 and 1948, the remaining six ecclesiastical provinces (), each territorially comprising one of the
Old Prussia provinces, within the
Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union assumed independence as a consequence of the estrangement among them during the Nazi
struggle of the churches. This turned the Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union into a mere umbrella, being itself a member of EKD (and the BEK, 1969–1991) but covering some regional church bodies, which were again themselves members of EKD (and the BEK, 1969–1991). Since 1973, when many Protestant churches in Europe, including the EKD members, concluded the
Leuenberg Agreement, also the then 21 EKD members introduced
full communion for their parishioners and ministry among each other. Since also the regional Protestant churches in East Germany had signed the Leuenberg Agreement, thus the then ten members of the Federation of Protestant Churches in the German Democratic Republic practised full communion with the EKD members too.
Ordination of women is practised in all 20 member churches with many women having been ordained in recent years. There are also several women serving as bishops.
Margot Käßmann, former bishop of the
Evangelical Lutheran Church of Hanover and Chairperson of the Council of the EKD from 2009 until February 2010, was the first woman to head the EKD.
Blessings of same-sex marriages is practised and allowed in 14 of 20 and
blessing of same-sex unions are allowed in all other member churches. The EKD opposes abortion in most situations but believes it should remain legal. The EKD has undergone a split in the 20th century and lost a bulk of its adherents in
East Germany due to
state atheist policies of the former East German government. After 1990, membership was counted and amounted to around the same number as the Roman Catholic Church. In the 21st century, membership in both the Evangelical Church and the Roman Catholic Church stagnates as more people are becoming religious nones. A 2019 study estimated that there were 114,000 unreported victims of sexual abuse in the EKD and the
Catholic Church in Germany combined. The 95%
confidence interval comprises 28,000 to 280,000 victims. According to a study published in 2024, pedophilic members of the EKD have sexually abused at least 9,355 minors since 1946. Putting this figure into context, the coordinator of the study clarified that this number of cases was only the tip of the iceberg. The average age of the victims is 11 years. ==Membership==