Political consequences of independence from the Catholic Church
The fact that Catholics and Protestants were now split into two separate faiths led to many conflicts between the two groups. XVIth century France was divided into two parts and...
Religious consequences of the break from the Catholic Church
With the Calvinist and Lutheran beliefs, resulting from the Reform Movement, new Christian Churches began to evolve which were independent from the Catholic Church; they developed in different ways according...
Who was Jean Calvin?
Jean Calvin was a lawyer, a humanist who agreed with Martin Luther’s new ideas and became a great theologian. He was obliged to leave France for Geneva where he designed...
Who was Martin Luther?
Luther was a monk, a professor of theology. He criticised the customs of the Catholic Church such as selling indulgences, which he deemed contrary to Bible teachings. He was excommunicated...
Jean Calvin’s ideas
Calvin extended Luther’s ideas. He helped French-speaking Protestant Churches develop. He insisted on predestination that liberated people from worrying about what was going to happen after death so that they...
Martin Luther’s ideas
Martin Luther was a preacher, a theologian and a translator.
Events around the rupture
Several events illustrate the split that the Protestant Reformation provoked with the former religious order imposed by the Catholic Church.
Pastor Louis Dallière (1897-1976), Reformed-Pentecostal
Louis Dallière, a pastor in the Evangelical Reformed Church (ERE), influenced by Pentecostal ideas in the 1930s, became the leader of this spiritual movement in Ardèche. He led the parishes...
Adelaïde Haas Hautval (1906-1988)
A physician, she was deported to Auschwitz for standing up for Jews. She refused to take part in the medical “experiments” on Jewish women; she was declared “Righteous among the...
The Protestant Faculty of Theology in Strasbourg
The Protestant Faculty of Theology in Strasbourg, successor to the School founded in 1538, is one of the oldest sites offering training for a variety of ministries within the church....
Johannes Oekolampad (1482-1531)
Oekolampad was one of the first Reformers. He brought the Protestant Reformation to Basel and then spread it in Southern Germany. Like Zwingli, he belonged to the Reform Movement.
Heinrich Bullinger (1504-1575)
Heinrich Bullinger was a theologian and a Reformer who supported the Reform Movement in Zurich after Zwingli’s death in 1531. He also played a key role in spreading the Protestant...
Protestants and economic life
Business and banking, though perfectly secular activities, have retained a durably specific connotation when carried out by Protestants.
The rise of Protestantism in France (1520-1562)
Luther’s ideas began to spread in France from 1520 onwards. The authorities did their best to oppose them. From 1540, under Jean Calvin’s influence, a new Church took shape, but...
Theology in the 20th century
Theological thought and research in the 20th century can be divided into three periods: up until the late 1920s, from the 1930s to the 1970s, and since the 1970s.
The Protestants under the French Revolution
In late 1791 in France the Revolution had answered the majority of Protestant expectations. Several Protestants were involved in the unfolding of events and took part in the different political...
