The Evangelical Church of Bremen (German: Bremische Evangelische Kirche, literally Bremian Evangelical Church) is the most important Protestant denomination in the German state 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 Lutheran and Reformed traditions. The leader of the church is Brigitte Boehme (2006). The church has approx. 243,000 members (in December 2005) in 68 parishes. The main church of the Evangelical Church of Bremen is Bremen Cathedral.
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 Ordination of women and the blessing of same-sex unions[1] has been allowed.
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The area covered by the Evangelical Church of Bremen is essentially equivalent to the city of Bremen, the state of Bremen comprising the cities of Bremen and Bremerhaven. Only the most important Protestant church in Bremerhaven, the Bürgermeister-Smidt-Gedächtniskirche belongs to the Bremen church. The remaining church parishes in the city of Bremerhaven are Lutheran and belong to the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Hanover. The area covered by these parishes belonged to the former Province of Hanover until 1947.
The election of the synod is for six years. The elected leader of the "Kirchentag" is also leader of the church.
When the Protestant Reformation swept through Northern Germany, Bremen's first Protestant prayer took place in one of its churches on 9 November 1522. Since that year Bremen was a prevailingly Protestant city. St Peter's Cathedral then belonged to the cathedral immunity district (German: Domfreiheit), an extraterritorial enclave of the neighbouring Prince-Archbishopric of Bremen. The then still Catholic cathedral chapter closed St Peter's after in 1532 a mob of Bremen's burghers had forcefully interrupted a Catholic mass and prompted a pastor to hold a Lutheran preach there.
Roman Catholic Church was condemned as a symbol of the abuses of a long Catholic past by most local burghers. In 1547 the chapter, meanwhile prevailingly Lutheran, appointed the Dutch Albert Rizaeus, called Hardenberg, as the first Cathedral preacher of Protestant affiliation. Rizaeus turned out to be a partisan of the rather Zwinglian understanding of the Lord's Supper, which was rejected by the then Lutheran majority of burghers, city council, and chapter. So in 1561 - after tremendous quarrels - Rizaeus was dismissed and banned from the city and the cathedral shut again its doors.
However, as a consequence of that controversy the majority of Bremen's burghers and city council adopted Calvinism until the 1590s, while the chapter, being simultaneously the body of secular government in the neighbouring Prince-Archbishopric, clung to Lutheranism. This antagonism between a Calvinistic majority and a Lutheran minority, though of a powerful position in its immunity district (belonging since 1648 to Bremen-Verden and annexed to the Free Hanseatic City of Bremen in 1803), remained determinant until in 1873 the Calvinist and Lutheran congregations in Bremen reconciled and founded a united administrative umbrella, the still existing Bremian Evangelical Church, comprising the bulk of Bremen's burghers.
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