Protestantism in Italy

Protestant church in Bordighera, Liguria

Italy is home to a significant minority of Protestants, even if the Catholic Church is by far the largest Christian denomination in the country. While the Center for Studies on New religions asserts that there are 442,377 Protestants in Italy, due to the difficulty of keeping accurate records regarding the proclaimed religion of migrants into the nation, this sum likely reflects, at best, only an approximation of the actual number of Protestants in the country.^[1]

The oldest of Italy's Protestant churches, the Waldensian Evangelical Church, is a pre-Lutheran Protestant denomination, which then adopted Calvinist theology. Their traditional stronghold is a cluster of Alpine valleys in Western Piedmont. Since 1975 the Waldensians form a united church with the Italian Methodist Church, who have traditionally had a non-episcopal polity.^[2]

The Protestant Reformation in Italy began at the end of the 15th century, and quickly collapsed at the beginning of the 17th century. Its development was hindered by stern repression by the Papal Inquisition.^[3]

Groups of Protestant Italians had more comfortable lives in Switzerland, particularly in the Graubunden region.

On 17 February 1848, Charles Albert, king of Piedmont-Sardinia, granted religious freedom and civic emancipation to the Waldenses. Freedom of worship, and equality of civic and political rights were later extended to Jews, and to the other Italian states that were progressively annexed to Piedmont-Sardinia during the process of unification of Italy. Newer Waldensian congregation sprang up as well as the Italian Christian Free Churches (which lasted from 1852 to 1904) and the Italian Church of the Brethren.^[4] Meanwhile British and American missionaries began to preach and plant Anglican, Baptists, and Methodist churches.

In the early twentieth century, lay missionaries spread the Pentecostal religion throughout the country. Nowadays, most of those resulting Pentecostal congregations belongs to the Assemblies of God in Italy, the Pentecostal Christian Congregations, the Italian Pentecostal Christian Churches, the Apostolic Church in Italy, and other smaller groups.

The Federation of Evangelical Churches in Italy (FCEI), formed in 1967, comprises all the historical Protestant churches of Italy (including the Waldensians and Methodists, the Lutheran Evangelical Church in Italy, the Baptist Evangelical Christian Union of Italy, and some minor churches), plus two observer members with a large following (the Federation of Pentecostal Churches and the Italian Union of Seventh-Day Adventist Christian Churches).^[5][6]

See also

• Religion in Italy
• Christianity in Italy
• List of Italian religious minority politicians
• Conference of Protestant Churches in Latin Countries of Europe

References

Religion in Italy Christianity in Italy Roman Catholicism Protestantism Orthodoxy Other religions Bahá'í Faith Buddhism Hinduism Islam Judaism Sikhism Related Eight per thousand Freedom of religion in Italy