Evangelical Church of Bremen

The Evangelical Church of Bremen (German: Bremische Evangelische Kirche) is a United Protestant member church of the Evangelical Church in Germany in the Free Hanseatic City of Bremen.

The seat of the church is in Bremen. It is a full member of the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD), and is a United church combining both Lutheran and Reformed traditions. Brigitte Boehme became the church's first female president in 2001. The church had 204,057 members as of December 2015 in 68 parishes. Laic presidency is one of the special characteristics of the Evangelical Church of Bremen. It has no theological headmaster. The parishes have a high degree of autonomy, and there is a great variety between liberal and conservative ones. Each member of the church has the free choice, which parish he wants to join. Bremen Cathedral is the most prominent place of worship, but it has no higher status than any other parish. The Evangelical Church of Bremen is a member of the UEK and of the Community of Protestant Churches in Europe. In Bremen the church has its own evangelical academy. The church has allowed the ordination of women and the blessing of same-sex unions.

The area covered by the Evangelical Church of Bremen (BEK) is essentially equivalent to the city of Bremen. In the city of Bremerhaven, which forms with Bremen the state Free Hanseatic City of Bremen, only the most important Protestant church, the united Protestant Bürgermeister-Smidt-Gedächtniskirche, belongs to the BEK. The bulk of the other Protestant church parishes in Bremerhaven is Lutheran and they belong to the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Hanover, some form part of other not regionally-delineated Protestant denominations. The area covered by these parishes belonged to the former Province of Hanover before 1947.

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