Polish Reformed Church
| Evangelical Reformed Church in the Republic of Poland | |
|---|---|
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| Classification | Protestant |
| Orientation | Mainline Reformed |
| Origin | 16th century |
| Congregations | 8 |
| Members | ca. 2,000 (2007) |
The Polish Reformed Church, officially called the Evangelical Reformed Church in the republic of Poland (Polish: Kościół Ewangelicko-Reformowany w RP) is a historic Protestant church in Poland established in the 16th century, still in existence today.
An internal census showed that in 2004 the Polish Reformed Church had about 3,500 members. These were spread over eight congregations in Poland:
Furthermore, emerging congregations exist in some other cities, including Poznań, Wrocław, and Gdańsk. In 2003 the Church ordained its first woman minister and two more female students are in training. The Polish Reformed Church is a minority church in Poland, where roughly 90% of the people are Roman Catholics.
One of Poland's other religious minorities is the larger Evangelical-Augsburg Church in Poland, a Lutheran Protestant church with around 80,000 members. The church is administered by a consistory elected every three years, and chaired by a layperson. The official representative of the church is its Bishop, elected for a ten-year term. The highest ecclesiastical governing body is the synod, which convenes every year and has lay and clergy delegates from all of its congregations.
The Polish Reformed movement goes back to the half of the 16th century when the teachings of Swiss Reformers like Zwingli and Calvin began to make their way to Poland. Earlier, Lutheranism had made way to Poland, especially in the cities. A great boost to the Reformation movement happened when in 1525 the devotedly Roman Catholic king Sigismund I the Old (1506–48) accepted as his vassal in Prussia, the Lutheran prince Albert I, Duke of Prussia, thus creating the first Protestant country in the World. Though the king opposed "new thought", humanists all across Poland and Lithuania began studying Reformed theology. The most celebrated and influential group was found in the country's capital Kraków, where they flocked around the book printer and vendor Jan Trzecielski grouping nobles, burghers, professors, priests. The first Reformed church service was held in 1550 in Pińczów, a little town nearby Kraków, where the local noble owner converted to the Reformed Faith, expelled the monks, ’purging’ the city church. Other nobles soon followed suit and the first Reformed synod in Lesser Poland was held in 1564 in Słomniki, close to Kraków. Thus the Lesser Poland Brethren (Jednota Małopolska) was formed.
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