The Protestant Church of the Augsburg Confession of Alsace and Lorraine (, EPCAAL; , Kirche A.B. von Elsass und Lothringen; ) is a Lutheran church of public-law corporation status (établissement public du culte) in France. The ambit of the EPCAAL comprises congregations in Alsace and the Lorrain Moselle department.
Creeds and memberships The EPCAAL adheres to the Apostles Creed, Nicene Creed, Luther's Small and Large Catechisms, the Formula of Concord, and the Tetrapolitan Confession. The EPCAAL has approximately 210,000 members (as of 2010Lutheran World Federation, 2010 World Lutheran Membership Details ; Lutheran World Information 1/2011, p. 9.) in 208 congregations. Congregations holding services in German language use the current German Protestant hymnal (EG) in a regional edition (Ausgabe Baden / Elsass-Lothringen) that includes traditional hymns from Alsace, Baden, and the Moselle.
In 1961 the EPCAAL was a founding member of the Conference of Churches on the Rhine, which now functions as a regional group of the Community of Protestant Churches in Europe (CPCE). The first conference took place in EPCAAL's conference centre, the former convent of Liebfrauenberg near Gœrsdorf. Since 2006, the EPCAAL has been a member of the Union of Protestant Churches of Alsace and Lorraine, an administrative umbrella with the Protestant Reformed Church of Alsace and Lorraine (EPRAL). This is not a united body, but it provides a common decision-making structure and a common body of pastors. However, the two churches maintain their own organization. The EPCAAL is also a member of the Fédération protestante de France (FPF, Protestant Federation of France) and of the Lutheran World Federation, and the World Council of Churches. The EPCAAL had close fellowship with the Evangelical Lutheran Church of France.
History
Reformation in Alsace and northeastern Lorraine In the early 16th century Alsace and northeastern Lorraine were part of the Holy Roman Empire with the region being partitioned into many different imperial states. Most were monarchies (Duchy of Lorraine, County of Saarwerden, Landgraviate of Upper Alsace, County of Salm), but also several republics (ten free imperial cities federated in the Décapole) and portions of certain ecclesiastical principalities (prince-bishoprics of Metz, Speyer, and Strasbourg).
While the prince-bishops tried to suppress any change towards the Reformation, the monarchies either adopted it or fought it, depending on the positions of their lords. The free imperial cities went through a process of discussion and conflict, winning over a majority of the burghers for the Reformation or not. The Free Imperial City of Mulhouse adopted Calvinism and joined the Swiss Confederation until the French blockade forced the city to accept French supremacy in 1795.
In 1523 and 1524, the Free Imperial City of Strasbourg became the next state in Alsace to adopt Lutheranism.Annie Noblesse-Rocher, "The Reformation in Alsace", on: Musée virtuel du Protestantisme français (Virtual museum of the French Protestantism), retrieved on 29 April 2013. Most publishers in Strasbourg agreed to diffuse new ideas by issuing Reformers' tracts and numerous pamphlets. This allowed well-known preachers such as Matthäus Zell, a priest at the Strasbourg Cathedral, to propagate Reformatory theses to a large, enthusiastic community. In the same year theologians and exegetes including Wolfgang Capito, Caspar Hedio, and Martin Bucer, strengthened and built up the Reformatory movement amongst craftsmen and the moderately well to do of Strasbourg. In 1524, St. Aurelia, the market gardeners' parish, asked Bucer to become its pastor and preacher.
Bucer had met Martin Luther in 1518 and adopted his ideas."Martin Bucer (1491-1551)", on: Musée virtuel du Protestantisme français (Virtual museum of the French Protestantism), retrieved on 29 April 2013. He then helped implement the Reformation in the Free Imperial City of Wissembourg in Alsace, which resulted in his excommunication by George of the Palatinate, the bishop of Speyer, and his conviction as outlaw. In 1523 he found asylum in Strasbourg, where he set up Bible reading classes and later, in 1529, presented the Reformation. He received John Calvin, who had been expelled from Geneva in 1538. Bucer tried to safeguard the unity of the Church, but failed in reconciling Luther and Zwingli, or bringing Catholics and Protestants to agree at least on some points. At his urging, the city of Strasbourg granted asylum to the persecuted anabaptists. By 1525 the Reformation was gradually spreading not only into the countryside possessions of Strasbourg, but also into territories of other overlords.
Although most capitular canons in the Great Chapter, the chapters of Strasbourg's Old St. Peter's and Young St. Peter's, like much of the traditional clergy, rejected the Reformation, the prince-bishop of Strasbourg, , failed to satisfy the demand for change. Already before the start of the Reformation, adherents of the Bundschuh movement in Alsace had demanded the right to elect their pastors on their own.
The Lutheran church was the state church in the Free Imperial City of Strasbourg, administered by the city government (Magistrate). The city government passed laws on preaching and appropriated the Strasbourg Cathedral for the Lutheran state church in 1524. It granted the Lutheran church the right to induct pastors in the seven parishes in the town and took the responsibility, normally attributed to deacons, of supporting the poor. In 1529 the city government, supported by a large part of the population, decided that the Holy Mass should be abolished. Violent iconoclasm spread – notably among craftsmen – destroying many religious images. The Church of Strasbourg built up its liturgical, doctrinal, and ecclesiastical structures. The church authorities instituted a bimonthly meeting of the pastors and three representatives of the Magistrate (Kirchenpfleger), in order to deal with all matters concerning teaching and doctrine.
Later, upon more reflection, some liturgical aspects of iconographic nature as well as other previously abolished traditions of church life were reintroduced (such as the Christmas Feast Day). On the occasion of the Diet of Augsburg in 1530, where Luther's followers presented the Augsburg Confession, theologians from Strasbourg, Bucer and Capito, authored the Tetrapolitan Confession, adopted by the cities of Constance, Lindau, Memmingen, and Strasbourg. The Church of Strasbourg adopted this confession and developed a theology midway between Zwinglian symbolism and the Lutheran conception of Holy Communion. This midway position was of a moderate and diaconal nature, and quite characteristic of the Reformation along the Rhine.
In the beginning, church discipline was not too strict. Various religious groups were tolerated within the parishes until 1534, when the Magistrate, for fear of dissent, put an end to the toleration. A decree of that year emphasised the importance of the study of the Bible and of inner piety. The educational level of the pastors enabled the development of a catechism and the improvement of the quality of instruction given to future pastors. In 1538 a Great School was opened, now known as the Gymnase Jean-Sturm, which is still run by the EPCAAL today. It was directed by the humanist Johannes Sturm and educated the elite of Lower Alsace.
The Augsburg Interim (1548), demanding the re-institution of Catholicism, had little effect in Alsace and northeastern Lorraine, so that most Protestant states were able to maintain their faith until the Treaty of Augsburg granted the to the regnant princes or magistrates ruling the respective imperial states. Summepiscopate included the cuius regio, eius religio privilege to impose the faith of the inhabitants of one's state.
At the end of the 16th century, under the guidance of Johann Marbach, Alsace adopted the orthodox Lutheran ideas contained in the Formula of Concord of 1577. Even within the cathedral chapter of the Strasbourg diocese, Lutheran capitular canons formed the majority (Strasbourg Chapter Strife, 1583–1604). In 1592 this majority elected John George of Brandenburg as the first Lutheran prince-bishop of Strasbourg.
After the Catholic counts of the House of Nassau-Saarbrücken, ruling the County of Saarwerden, became extinct in the male line in 1574, the Lutheran House of Nassau-Weilburg inherited the county and Philip IV, Count of Nassau-Weilburg introduced the Reformation there. The territory of the former county in the environs of Sarrewerden still shows a high Lutheran share among the overall population.
Since the French annexation of Alsace and northeastern Lorraine In the course of the 16th to 19th centuries during its eastward expansion France gradually annexed more and more territories of the Holy Roman Empire. Unlike in France proper (or interior France) Protestants in the Alsatian and Lorrain territories annexed by France after 1648 enjoyed a certain protection by the Treaty of Westphalia, of which France was a signatory. The treaty guaranteed to maintain the religious status quo as given in the reference year of 1624 in all the territories acquired since.
So Alsatian and Lorrain Protestants were spared from the worst persecutions such as compulsory reconversion, galley slavery or religious child abduction. But other restrictions were imposed. The Lutheran Strasbourg Minster was expropriated and Prince-Bishop Franz Egon of Fürstenberg reconsecrated it as Catholic Cathedral on 30 September 1681. In 1684 Louis XIV decreed that all Lutheran and Reformed congregations have to leave the quires of their church buildings for celebrating Holy Masses if there was no Catholic church at the place but at least seven Roman Catholic families. Thus hundreds of church buildings owned by Protestant congregations became de facto simultaneums.
In 1800 220,000 Lutherans in Alsace and the territory of Belfort accounted for one third of the population, and lived mostly in ancient free cities such as Munster, Colmar in Alsace, and Wissembourg, but mainly in Strasbourg where 25,000 out of the 38,000 inhabitants were Protestants, mostly Lutherans.N. N., "Protestantism in Alsace", on: Musée virtuel du Protestantisme français (Virtual museum of the French Protestantism), retrieved on 29 April 2013.The Calvinists amounted to 25,000 with 16 pastors, mainly in Mulhouse – with 14,000 alone – which was exclusively Reformed until 1798. Cf. N. N., "Protestantism in Alsace", on: Musée virtuel du Protestantisme français (Virtual museum of the French Protestantism), retrieved on 29 April 2013. There were 160 Lutheran parishes and over 200 active pastors.
The Protestant churches in France experienced a restructuring under Napoléon I. After he had concluded the Concordat of 1801 with the Vatican he decreed the organic articles also concerning the non-Catholic communities of religion (Calvinists, Jews, Lutherans) imposing on them parastatal executive bodies (consistories), constituting and recognising these communities as établissements publics du culte (public bodies of cult) and subjecting them to state control. On 8 April 1802 Napoleon decreed the establishment of 27 Lutheran consistories, with their ambits comprising several congregations with parishioners amounting to at least 6,000 souls altogether. The chief spiritual board, the General Consistory (Consistoire générale) was established in Strasbourg in Alsace, the region with the biggest share of Lutherans among the overall population. Thus the Église de la Confession d’Augsbourg de France (under this name until 1906) received the basics of its constitution.François-George Dreyfus, "The organisation of the Protestant community", on: Musée virtuel du Protestantisme français (Virtual museum of the French Protestantism), retrieved on 29 April 2013. The chief executive body, the directory (directoire) was also seated in Strasbourg.