During the
Protestant Reformation, Bavaria (consisting at that point only of what is today called
Altbayern) remained predominantly Catholic. In the early 19th century, the largely Protestant
Palatinate and
Franconia were annexed to the
Kingdom of Bavaria, and all Protestant churches in the kingdom were administratively subordinated in 1817 to an upper
consistory in Munich. These congregations consisted of Lutheran and
Calvinist congregations in today's Bavaria and congregations of
united Protestant confession in the then Bavarian
Governorate of the Palatinate on the left bank of the river Rhine. In 1822, an umbrella organization, the
Protestant Church in the Kingdom of Bavaria (), was founded. Since 1848 the Palatine congregations formed a separate church body (
United Protestant Evangelical Christian Church of the Palatinate (Palatine State Church)). Thus the remaining church body was renamed the
Protestant State Church in the Kingdom of Bavaria right of the Rhine (). In 1918 the Calvinist congregations seceded and formed their own church, the
Evangelical Reformed Church in Bavaria (which merged with the Evangelical Reformed Church in Northwest Germany in 1989 to form the
Evangelical Reformed Church – Synod of Reformed Churches in Bavaria and Northwestern Germany). In 1921 the Protestant state church renamed into
Evangelical Lutheran Church in Bavaria right of the Rhine when the new
church constitution accounted for the Kingdom having become a
republic and the Reformed congregations having formed their separate church body. On 1 April 1921 the
Evangelical Lutheran State Church of Saxe-Coburg merged into the Bavarian church body, consistent with the
Free State of Coburg's referendum on which emerging state to join. The number of parishioners amounted to 1,575,000 in 1925. During the
struggle of the churches under the Nazi dictatorship the Bavarian Lutheran church body remained an intact church (), since the Nazi-submissive
German Christians fraction remained a minority in the synod after the unconstitutional election imposed by Hitler on 23 July 1933. Nazi opponents, forming the
Confessing Church, could act within the official bodies of the church. The prior name extension
right of the Rhine was removed in 1948, after Bavaria left of the Rhine, i.e. the Palatinate, had been separated from Bavaria by the Allies in 1945. == Presidents and bishops==