page_title: Protestant Church in Baden
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Protestant Church in Baden / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Seat of the "Evangelische Landeskirche in Baden" (Protestant church in Baden) in Karlsruhe Deutsch: Sitz des Oberkirchenrats der Evangelischen Landeskirche in Baden (Karlsruhe)
context_page_description: The Protestant Church in Baden is a United Protestant member church of the Evangelical Church in Germany, and member of the Conference of Churches on the Rhine, which now functions as a regional group of the Community of Protestant Churches in Europe. The Evangelical Church in Baden is a united Protestant church. Its headquarter, the Evangelical Superior Church Council is located in Karlsruhe.
  The church is not confused with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Baden, based in Freiburg im Breisgau.
context_section_description: In 1821 the Evangelical Church in Baden was founded by uniting Lutheran and Reformed churches in the Grand Duchy of Baden, thus its then name United Evangelical Protestant Church of the Grand Duchy of Baden. The church body comprises only congregations of united Protestant confession. After the grand duchy had become the Republic of Baden in 1918 and after the separation of religion and state by the Weimar Constitution in 1919 the church adopted a new constitution in December 1919 accounting for these changes, renaming as the United Evangelical Protestant Regional Church of Baden (Vereinigte Evangelisch-protestantische Landeskirche Badens). In 1922 the church counted 821,000 parishioners.
  Nazi-aligned Protestant activists, emerging from the 1931-founded Nazi Federation of pastors of Baden (NS-Pfarrbund, Gau Baden), candidated for the nominating group called the German Christians and some won already in the ordinary election for synodals and presbyters in late 1932. They still formed a minority in the legislating assembly of the church, the Landessynode. After the Nazi takeover the synodals standing for the nominating group of the Ecclesiastical Liberal Union (Kirchlich-Liberale Vereinigung, KLV) jumped ship and joined the German Christians' faction. 
  On 1 June 1933, together with the votes of further other sympathisers of the Nazi takeover among the synodals a new majority led by the German Christians voted in a new episcopal church constitution, doing away with most of the say of the Landessynode for the future. Instead the new office of the Landesbischof (i.e. regional bishop) was formed bundling the spiritual, legislative and executive church leadership (before the first was with the prelate, the second with the Landessynode, and the third with the EOK) in the hands of one single man, as typical for the concept of the Führerprinzip, in harsh contradiction to the Protestant tradition of synodal legislation and collegiality in the consistorial executive. 
   This adulteration of Protestant church governance started the Kirchenkampf (1933–1945; i.e. struggle of the churches) in Baden. On 24 June 1933 the Landessynode elected the incumbent Prelate Julius Kühlewein the new powerful Landesbischof regnant, being ex officio the head of the EOK, downsized in members.
  On 23 July 1933, the day of the unconstitutional premature reelection of synodals and presbyters imposed by Hitler, the Nazi-submissive German Christians then gained a majority of 32 seats against the only remaining opposition of 25 members of the conservative Ecclesiastical Positive Association (Kirchlich-Positive Vereinigung, KPV, another nominating group not to be confused with the proponents of the so-called Positive Christianity) in the widely self-disenfranchised Landessynode. 
  On 5 April 1934 the various opposing church groups merged in the Badischer Bekennerbund (i.e. Baden Covenant of Confessors), the Confessing Church branch in Baden, considering the official church body as a destroyed church (German: zerstörte Kirche), since it had been taken over by Nazi-submissive leaders. Representatives of the Baden Covenant of Confessors participated in the first Reich's Synod of Confession (Reichsbekenntnissynode) and voted in, with others, the Barmen Declaration. On 19 June 1934 the Baden Covenant of Confessors and more intra-church opponents formed the Regional Brethren Council (Landesbruderrat), considered the new parallel church leadership in opposition to the official church led by Kühlewein.
  After polling the pastors of the Church of Baden, resulting in a majority of supporters for a merger of the church into the new Protestant Reich Church (478 yeas, against 92 nays, with 18 abstentions and 32 pastors not having answered), on 13 July Kühlewein declared the merger of his church into the new streamlined Reich church. The Baden Confessors protested that self-aggrandising act of Kühlewein. By the end of 1934 Kühlewein changed his mind, and reversed the merger, after the biggest destroyed regional Protestant church in Germany, the Evangelical Church of the old-Pru
caption: The Evangelical Superior Church Council (EOK) in Karlsruhe.
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