The Polish Reformed Church, officially called the Evangelical Reformed Church in the Republic of Poland (Polish: Kościół Ewangelicko-Reformowany w RP) is a historic Calvinistic Protestant church in Poland established in the 16th century, still in existence today.
Structure and organisation
According to Poland's Central Statistical Office, the Polish Reformed Church has 3,461 members (2015). The majority of church members live in central Poland; in 2014 out of a total number of 3464 adherents, 1800 lived in Łódź Voivodeship and 1000 in the city of Warsaw. There are eight congregations in Poland: Warsaw Łódź Zelów Bełchatów Kleszczów Żychlin Strzelin Pstrążna (part of the town of Kudowa-Zdrój)
Furthermore, emerging congregations exist in some other cities, including Poznań, Wrocław, and Gdańsk. In 2003, the Church ordained its first female minister and two more female students are in training. The Polish Reformed Church is a minority church in Poland, where roughly 71% of the people were Catholics in 2021.Statista website, Poland: Religious Affiliation, retrieved 2023-12-12European Commission website, Eurydice section, Poland, retrieved 2023-12-19
History 16th-18th centuries The Polish Reformed movement goes back to the half of the 16th century when the teachings of Swiss Reformers like Zwingli and Calvin began to make their way to Poland. Earlier, Lutheranism had made way to Poland, especially in the cities. A great boost to the Calvinist Reformation movement happened when in 1525, the devout Catholic king Sigismund I the Old (1506–48) accepted as his vassal in Ducal Prussia, the Lutheran prince Albert I, Duke of Prussia, thus creating the first Protestant country in the World. Though the king opposed "new thought", humanists all across the Polish-Lithuanian union began studying Calvinist theology. The most celebrated and influential group was found in the country's capital Kraków, where they flocked around the book printer and vendor Jan Trzecielski grouping nobles, burghers, professors, priests. The first Calvinist church service was held in 1550 in Pińczów a little town nearby Kraków, where the local noble owner converted to the Reformed Faith, expelled the monks, ’purging’ the city church. Other nobles soon followed suit and the first Calvinist synod in Lesser Poland was held in 1554 in Słomniki, close to Kraków. Thus, the Lesser Poland Brethren (Jednota Małopolska) was formed.
In the meantime, in the North of Poland, another Calvinist church was formed. The Czech Brethren, persecuted by the Czech king Ferdinand I Habsburg fled to Greater Poland (1548), where they settled in the estates of the local aristocrats whom they very quickly converted to their faith. The number of their congregations quickly swelled from 20 in 1555 to 64 in 1570. Their main centre was the city of Leszno, where they were settled under the patronage of the devotedly Reformed Leszczyński family. Thus the Czech Brethren, also called the Greater Poland Brethren (Jednota Wielkopolska), was formed. The Greater Poland and the Lesser Poland Brethren did try to cooperate more closely and even signed in 1555 a Union agreement but the Lesser Poland's Reformed nobles who formed the bulwark of the church members found the Czechs to be too hierarchical and undemocratic, and in the end the Lesser Poland Brethren became a strongly synodal structure, while the Greater Poland church became more Presbyterian.
The Reformation in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (today's Lithuania, Belarus, and Ukraine) date to 1552 when the local aristocrat Mikołaj "the Black" Radziwiłł received a Reformed preacher, although some of Reformation ideas were known in Sigismund II Augustus palace because of returned educated Lithuanian Abraomas Kulvietis, who had founded school and taught children in Lutheran manner. He was generally unpopular among the Catholic hierarchy because of his Lutheran beliefs, and when the queen was away in 1542 Abraomas was forced to leave the country. Soon he (Radziwiłł "The Black") was followed by his cousin Mikołaj "the Red" Radziwiłł Mid-America Reformed Seminary website, A Reformation Without Deep Roots, by Peter Y. De Jong (1992), page 45 and other aristocrats. The reformer Jan Łaski worked for King Sigismund II from 1556 onwards. The first synod was held in 1557, and two years later the Lithuanians signed a Union agreement with the Lesser Poland Brethren. A huge number of converts were attracted from Orthodox nobility. While the nobles used Polish in church services, an effort was made to convert the Lithuanian-speaking peasants and serfs, but since Lithuanian did not have a written form till the second half of the 19th century, Polish stayed as the official church language. Thus, the Lithuanian Brethren (Jednota Litewska) came into being.
In 1556, John a Lasco (Jan Łaski) returned from Western Europe to help with the organisation of the Polish Reformed church. Seeing that the new king Sigismund II Augustus was sympathetic to the Calvinist cause,Polish Culture website, Yes! There are Polish Protestants, article by Zachary Mazur, dated February 25, 2021 he tried to write a confession that would be agreeable not only to all the three Calvinist churches but to the Lutherans as well. Unfortunately, exhausted from overwork, he died in 1560, having achieved only the consolidation of the Lesser Reformed Brethren, which shortly afterwards was weakened by the split of the Unitarians (1563). In the same year, the Second Helvetic Confession was translated to Polish and was adopted by the Lithuanian and Lesser Poland Brethren. Łaski has been called the ‘Father of the Polish Reformed Church’.Bible Studies UK website, Polish Protestants: Ecumenism in a Dual Diaspora by Paul Keim, page 301
In a posthumous tribute to John a Lasco, the Czech Brethren, the two Calvinist and Lutheran churches in Poland agreed in 1570 to the Confession of Sandomir (Konfesja Sandomierska), which was an irenic translation of the Second Helvetic Confession and in theory formed one, united, Protestant church. The strength of the Polish Protestants was shown when in 1573 a law was passed foreboding any persecution based on religion, an act unprecedented in Europe of that time. The Protestants formed also over 65% members of the Lower and just about a half of the Upper Houses of Parliament.
The Calvinists opened schools in Pińczów, Leszno, Kraków, Vilnius, Kėdainiai and Słuck. They also printed the first complete Bible in Polish, commissioned by Mikołaj "the Black" Radziwiłł in 1563 in Brest-Litovsk.and translated by Jan Łaski.Place For Truth website, Jan Laski - The Polish Reformer, article by Simonetta Carr, dated January 28, 2020 Radziwiłł also worked to change state laws to bring equal rights for reformers, as well as creating several churches in his estates.Visuotine Lietuviu Enciklopedia website, Mikalojus Radvila Rudasis Though grouping mainly nobles and aristocrats, it managed to have some following among the peasantry as well. In some regions the number of Reformed parishes completely outnumbered the Roman Catholic ones, though in proportion the movement probably never exceeded 20% of the total population and 45% of nobility. At the same time the movement was rising in strength, there were signs of Catholic revival. Jesuits were invited to Poland by the clergy in 1565, and these friars soon advocated more stringent methods of combating ‘heresy’. Religious riots followed, which managed to expel Protestants from the main cities of Poland (Kraków, Poznań, Lublin) with the important exception of Wilno. The Unitarian split seriously weakened the church, and in 1595, the Calvinist-Lutheran Union fell apart.
The new staunchly Catholic king, Sigismund III Vasa, refused to promote any Protestants and from the beginning of the 17th century the church found itself in a serious defensive, with all three Brethren losing churches and followers. The brief respite they got during the reign of king Wladyslaw IV Vasa (1632–48) was followed by civil wars, wars with Sweden, Russia and Turkey which ravaged the country for latter half of the century. By then, only a handful of faithful remained in all three Brethren, with the Lithuanian one now leading the other three. Nearly all the aristocrats converted to Catholicism, and the last Protestant in the Senate (a Lutheran) died in 1668. The rise of intolerance began in 1658, when Unitarians were expelled from the country,Unitarian website, The Story and Significance of the Unitarian Movement by W. G. Tarrant (195=47), page 64Polish Culture website, The Polish Brethren: The First Reformed Peace Church & Poland’s First Banned Religion, article by Adrian Sobolewski, dated September 10, 2021 and conversion from Catholic Christianity was punishable by death. Finally, in 1717 the Protestant nobility were stripped of all their political rights,JStor website, Protestant Solidarity in the Eighteenth Century: Relief Efforts of the Walloons for the Polish Reformed Churches by Kazimierz Bem, page 93, published in Church History, Vol. 73, No. 1 (March 2004) which were only reinstated to them in 1768. Though a small number of Huguenots settled in Poland at the end of the 17th century (Gdańsk, Warsaw), the numbers dwindled. By 1768, the number of Reformed churches has dwindled to 40 from 500 by 1591.
In 1768, under pressure from Orthodox Russia and Protestant Prussia, the Polish Diet reluctantly reinstated political rights to the Polish nobility, as well as granting nearly full freedom of worship and religion - only the prohibition of abjuring from Catholicism was maintained. Under the enlightened king Stanisław August Poniatowski (1764–95), the Calvinists quickly began to rebuild themselves from ruins. New churches in Poznań, Piaski etc. were constructed. In the capital Warsaw, a new congregation organised itself and erected a new church (1776). This congregation had a multicultural outlook, as apart from Polish nobles it consisted of merchants of Scottish, English, Swiss, Huguenot, Dutch and German origin. Services were held in Polish, German and French.
Church organisation also consolidated and in 1777, in the Lesser Poland's congregation of Sielec, a union was signed between the Polish Reformed and Lutherans, and the Union of Sandomir was once again reaffirmed. A common consistory was established with six members, in equal number from the Calvinists and Lutherans, two being clergy, two being burghers and two being nobles. Though this union was short-lived (dissolved in 1782), the Protestants in Poland continued to grow and expand, especially in Warsaw, whose congregation soon overshadowed any other church centre. This optimistic period was cut short by the three Partitions of Poland by Prussia, Russia and Austria (1772, 1793, 1795) which led to the disappearance of Poland for over a century from the map of Europe.Harvard University website, Russia in Global Perspective section, Partitions of Poland (part 2)
The Polish Reformed without Poland (1795–1918) The beginnings were not easy. The Greater Poland Brethren was incorporated in 1817 to the Prussian Evangelical Union Church as a separate district (Kirchenprovinz Posen, i.e. ecclesiastical province of Posen) but without any autonomy. Between 1829 and 1853, Bishop Carl Andreas Wilhelm Freymark (1785–1855) led the Posen ecclesiastical province as general superintendent."Freymark, Karl", on: Baza osób polskich - polnische Personendatenbank, retrieved on 6 May 2012. Under constant pressure from the Prussian government by the mid-19th century, the United Church abandoned Polish in its liturgy and most of the old Calvinist nobles chose to convert to Catholicism rather than to become Germans. In Austria too, the parishes were incorporated to the Evangelical Church of Augsburg and Helvetian Confession in Austria, but forming a seniorate of its own separate from those for the Lutherans.