The Reformed churches are a group of Protestant denominations connected by a common Calvinist system of doctrine.
Currently there are at least nine existing denominations, including (between brackets the Dutch abbreviation): Since the Reformation, the Netherlands, as one of the few countries in the world, could be characterised as a mainly Calvinist state.
The Swiss Reformed Churches were started in Zurich by Huldrych Zwingli and spread within a few years to Basle (Johannes Oecolampadius), Berne (Berchtold Haller and Niklaus Manuel), St. Gall (Joachim Vadian), to cities in Southern Germany and via Alsace (Martin Bucer) to France.
The French-speaking cities Neuchatel, Geneva and Lausanne changed to the Reformation ten years later under William Farel and John Calvin coming from France.
They are governed synodically and their relation to the respective canton (in Switzerland, there are no church-state regulations on country-level) ranges from independent to close collaboration, depending on historical developments.
A distinctive of the Swiss Reformed churches in Zwingli tradition is their historically almost symbiotic link to the state (cantons) which is only loosening gradually in the present.
The Reformed Church in Hungary, Transylvania and southern Slovakia is one of the largest branches of the Calvinist movement.
The Hungarians organised the Calvinist church in 1557 in the Synod of Csenger and adopted the Second Helvetic Confession in 1567 in Debrecen.
[3] There is the more theologically conservative Reformed Presbyterian Church of Central and Eastern Europe, which has approximately 25 congregations in Hungary, Slovakia, Romania and Ukraine.
[4][5] The Reformed Presbyterian Church of Central and Eastern Europe maintains the Károlyi Gáspár Institute of Theology and Missions, located in Miskolc, Hungary.
Partium (today partially Crișana) used to be a separated geographical area from Transylvania, also ruled by Hungarian/Transylvanian princes.
The German Reformed Church, unusually, does not trace its origins back to Zwingli or Calvin, but rather to Philipp Melanchthon, Luther's best friend and closest ally.
Some states saw unions of Reformed and Lutherans to a united confession, such as Anhalt (1820 in Anhalt-Bernburg, 1827 in Anhalt-Dessau, and 1880 in Anhalt-Köthen), Baden (1821), Nassau (1817) and Bavarian Palatinate (1848), while Lutherans in other states (Bavaria proper, Hamburg, Hanover, Lübeck, the Mecklenburgs, Oldenburg, Saxon Duchies, Saxony, Schaumburg-Lippe, Schleswig-Holstein, and Württemberg) did not followed suit.
The Reformed Church of France survived under persecution from 1559 until the Edict of Nantes (1598), the effect of which was to establish regions in which Protestants could live unmolested.
A free (meaning, not state controlled) synod of the Reformed Church emerged in 1848 and survives in small numbers to the present time.
The churches with Presbyterian traditions in the United Kingdom have the Westminster Confession of Faith as one of their important confessional documents.
In Scotland, presbyterianism was established in 1560 by John Knox who studied in Geneva and planted Calvinism in his home country.
The presbyterian churches in the Canada, Australia, New Zealand trace their origin back primarily from Scotland.
[11] Several continental Calvinist theologians moved to England to aid with the doctrinal and liturgical developments there, including Martin Bucer, Peter Martyr, and Jan Łaski.
The Church of England so took part in the Synod of Dort, and monarchs since the Glorious Revolution have sworn in the coronation oath to protect the “true profession of the Gospel, and the Protestant Reformed religion established by law.” However, the ascendency of William Laud to the archbishopric saw a periodic suppression of pro-Calvinist clergymen under Charles I, and the Oxford Movement of the 19th century sought to further distance the Church of England from its Calvinistic ties.
Because of the political success of Anglo-Catholicism there have been a few conservative Reformed movements which have left the Church of England: It is an Italian historical Protestant denomination.
As a member of the World Reformed Fellowship, this network of churches recover the Calvinist tradition of Pietro Martire Vermigli and Girolamo Zanchi.