Protestant Church of the Augsburg Confession of Alsace and 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.
[4] 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.
[5] 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.
[5] 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.
[4] 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.
[4] 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.
[4] 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).
[4] The Church of Strasbourg adopted this confession and developed a theology midway between Zwinglian symbolism and the Lutheran conception of Holy Communion.
[4] 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.
So Alsatian and Lorrain Protestants were spared from the worst persecutions such as compulsory reconversion, galley slavery or religious child abduction.
The Lutheran Strasbourg Minster was expropriated and Prince-Bishop Franz Egon of Fürstenberg reconsecrated it as Catholic Cathedral on 30 September 1681.
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.
The strong parastatalism within consistorial system proved in March 1848, when after overthrowing the monarchy the royalist Lutheran directory was forced into resignation under the accusation of antirepublicanism.
Catholics formed the majority in Alsace-Lorraine but Lutherans, a religious minority, came second before the Calvinists, whereas in interior France this ranking among the Protestants was reversed.
[10] But in 1872 Upper President Eduard von Moeller [de] rejected the Calvinist and Jewish proposals, arguing he would interfere as little as possible in the current state of legal affairs of Alsace-Lorraine as long as no Alsace-Lorrainese legislative body were established.
[13] However, the Protestant Church of Augsburg Confession perpetuated its existence with the ambit of its supreme consistory and directory restrained to the congregations in Alsace and the new German Department of Lorraine only.
Between 1918 and 1920, the year when the Treaty of Versailles by which Germany ceded Alsace-Lorraine to France became effective, the autonomy continued before the French law was implemented in the reannexed territory.
After much of debate and complaints over the uniformity by which existing law and practice in Alsace-Lorraine would be levelled to French standards, a compromise was found.
Other laws, also newer regulations enacted by the Alsace-Lorrain legislation or the Reichstag, would persist if they were doomed better or without adequate French counterpart replacing them.
After France – in the scope of French centralism – had abolished the parliament of Alsace-Lorraine and many other features of regional autonomous administration the religious communities and the droit local form elements establishing Alsatian and Lorrain identity.
In 1927 - after substantial doctrinal quarrels – some congregations split from EPCAAL and form today's Evangelical Lutheran Church – Synod of France and Belgium.
[16] The remaining pastors tried to compensate the shortage of clergy by copying preaches then read by laymen from the pulpits (so-called Lesepredigten) and pupils got religious instruction in newly formed Sunday school courses.
[16] Collegial bodies, like the Alsatian Lutheran consistories, were replaced by deaneries (Dekanate) supervised by one-man hierarchies following the Führerprinzip.
[16] In order to escape the supervision by the Gestapo, important items were not discussed anymore in the official church bodies but in spontaneously formed unofficial circles (such as the Pfarrkonvente, pastors' conventions).
Since 1905 strict laïcité is the organising principle in most of France, whereas the previously recognised religious communities of the Calvinists, Catholics, Jews, and Lutherans in Alsace-Moselle preserved their concordatary status of the period between 1802 and 1904 including the Organic Articles.
According to the Organic Articles the 208 congregations (paroisses, literally parishes) of the EPCAAL (as of 2005) are grouped in 40 consistories, terming the board and its district alike.
[18] The consistories are établissements publics des cultes too, each disposing of property of its own and receiving contributions by the member parishes.
