The Reformed churches follow Zwingli and Calvin, who reformed the churches of Switzerland in the 1500s.
Reformed1519-1536grew out of Catholic Church, with Lutheran
Huldrych Zwingli began preaching straight through Matthew in Zurich in 1519, and always insisted he had begun preaching reform before he had read Luther; John Calvin's Institutes (1536) and his Geneva gave the movement its theology and its model. A parallel reformation, then, not a branch of the Lutheran one: the two failed to agree on the Lord's Supper at Marburg in 1529 and have kept separate names since. The Reformed churches of Switzerland, the Netherlands, Hungary, France (the Huguenots) and Scotland, and their Korean, African and American descendants.
The Reformed churches began in Switzerland in the 1500s, with Huldrych Zwingli in Zurich and John Calvin in Geneva. They are a separate reformation from the Lutheran one, not a branch of it, and their descendants are the Reformed, Presbyterian and Congregational churches.
Zwingli began preaching straight through the Gospel of Matthew in the Great Minster at Zurich in 1519, and he always said he had begun the work of reform before he had read anything of Luther's 9,8. The city adopted his reform after public disputations in 1523, stripping the churches of images and ending the mass 9,17. The two reformations tried to unite and could not. At Marburg in 1529 Luther and Zwingli agreed on fourteen articles and parted over the fifteenth, the Lord's Supper: Luther held that Christ's body is truly present, Zwingli that the bread and wine are signs of a body now in heaven, and the churches have carried separate names ever since 18,9,10.
John Calvin, a French lawyer turned exile, published the first edition of the Institutes of the Christian Religion in 1536 and spent most of his life in Geneva, revising the book until 1559 and turning the city into a school for the movement 1,10. Refugees came, learned and went home: to France as the Huguenots, to the Netherlands, to Hungary, to Scotland, to England 15,8. Their confessions followed, the Belgic Confession of 1561, the Heidelberg Catechism of 1563 and the Second Helvetic Confession of 1566, and when the churches of the Netherlands divided over predestination, the Synod of Dort of 1618 and 1619 answered with the canons that later generations remembered as five points 3,2,13. Reformed Christians have gone on writing confessions in emergencies since: the Barmen Declaration in Germany in 1934, against a church remade to fit the state, and Belhar in South Africa in 1986, against apartheid 25,19,5.
The Reformed cities used the power of the state, and people died for it. In Zurich in 1527 Felix Manz, who had been Zwingli's student and then rejected infant baptism, was drowned in the Limmat by order of the council 20,9. In Geneva in 1553 Michael Servetus, who denied the Trinity, was arrested and burned 11,10. Reformed Christians were also on the receiving end: thousands of Huguenots were killed in France from the massacre of Saint Bartholomew's Day in 1572, and hundreds of thousands left the country after 1685 15,8.
Reformed Christians teach that God is sovereign over everything, that salvation is entirely God's gift and not something earned, and that Scripture alone settles what the church believes and how it worships. Life is lived for God's glory in ordinary work, not only in church.
Calvin's Institutes begins with the knowledge of God and of ourselves, and the whole system follows from God's freedom: election is God's choosing, not human deserving, and faith itself is a gift 1,10. The Canons of Dort put that in five heads of doctrine against the Arminian objection, and the Heidelberg Catechism puts the same faith as comfort, opening with the question of what your only comfort in life and in death is, and answering that I am not my own, but belong to my faithful Saviour Jesus Christ 4,2,26. The Belgic Confession sets out the Scriptures, the Trinity, the church and the sacraments in thirty-seven articles 3.
Two things mark Reformed practice off from other Protestants. The first is the rule that worship contains what Scripture commands and no more, which is why the older Reformed churches sang psalms without instruments and kept their walls bare 8,17. The second is covenant: God deals with people in covenants, so the children of believers are baptised as members of the covenant community, and the Supper is a real communion with Christ by the Holy Spirit rather than a presence in the bread 1,3,8. The Reformed have also insisted that no part of life falls outside God's rule, an idea Abraham Kuyper pressed into politics, schooling and the press 29,8.
One recent confession has been added to the older ones. The Belhar Confession, drafted in 1982 and adopted in 1986 by the Dutch Reformed Mission Church in South Africa 32, puts unity, reconciliation and justice at the centre of the gospel, and it is now confessional in several Reformed churches beyond the one that wrote it 19,5.
Worship and practice
Reformed worship is plain and centred on preaching. The sermon is long, the room is usually simple, and for centuries the only singing was the psalms, set to metre so a congregation could sing them together.
Calvin's Geneva produced a psalter, completed in 1562, that put the whole book of Psalms into French metre with tunes written to carry them, and Reformed congregations across Europe sang from its descendants for three hundred years 24,10. A service is built around the reading and preaching of Scripture, with prayers of confession and intercession, and the Lord's Supper less often than in Catholic or Lutheran practice but with careful preparation 8,3. Children are baptised, and young people are taught by catechism, question and answer learned by heart, which is why the Heidelberg Catechism is divided into fifty-two Lord's Days, one for each Sunday of the year 2,14. Church government is by elders rather than bishops, and the same pattern gave the Presbyterian churches their name 8,16.
Scripture and Bible translations
The Reformed gave the English-speaking world its first study Bible. The Geneva Bible of 1560, made by exiles in Calvin's city, was the Bible of Shakespeare and the Pilgrims, and the first with verse numbers, maps and notes in the margin.
It was printed in readable roman type in a size people could afford, and its marginal notes explained the text as the reformers read it, which is why James I disliked it and why it kept selling for decades after 1611 12,8. The Dutch churches commissioned their own translation from the original languages, the Statenvertaling, published in 1637, which did for Dutch much what the King James did for English 23,17. Read here: the Geneva Bible of 1599, in its own spelling, the Dutch Bible of 1917, the Korean Bible of 1910, for churches that are now among the largest Reformed bodies anywhere, and the NET Bible with its translators' notes. The versions guide sets out what Reformed churches read today.
Documented use
The PC(USA) store publishes and sells NRSV pew and study Bibles, evidence of institutional availability rather than a universal rule. The PCA, OPC and other conservative Reformed bodies generally prescribe no single version; the ESV, NIV, NKJV and NASB are encountered in their congregations. Dutch Reformed churches historically read the Statenvertaling of 1637.
Heritage
The Geneva Bible of 1560, made in Calvin's Geneva, was the Bible of the Scottish Reformation and of the Pilgrims.
Waldensian
Italy's Waldensian church, Reformed since 1532 and older than the Reformation itself, reads the Nuova Riveduta, the current revision of Diodati's Italian Bible; the Riveduta of 1927, made under the Waldensian scholar Giovanni Luzzi, is here.
These passages illustrate themes discussed in this profile; they are not a survey of members' favorite verses. Each is quoted from the Geneva Bible 1599 and links to its chapter. You can explore the text for study or personal reflection; memorization is optional.
As hee hath chosen vs in him, before the foundation of the worlde, that we should be holy, and without blame before him in loue: Who hath predestinate vs, to be adopted through Iesus Christ in him selfe, according to the good pleasure of his will,
Chosen before the foundation of the world. The verse behind the Reformed teaching on election, which the Canons of Dort set out in 1619.
Knowe yee not, that your body is the temple of the holy Ghost, which is in you, whom ye haue of God? and yee are not your owne. For yee are bought for a price: therefore glorifie God in your bodie, and in your spirit: for they are Gods.
Ye are not your own. The Heidelberg Catechism opens with that thought and calls it a person's only comfort in life and in death.
Whether therefore ye eate, or drinke, or whatsoeuer ye doe, doe all to the glory of God.
Do all to the glory of God. The reason Reformed Christians have treated ordinary work, study and politics as places where God is served.
People
Huldrych Zwingli1484 to 1531 The preacher of Zurich who began the Swiss reformation in 1519 and died on a battlefield at Kappel twelve years later.9
John Calvin1509 to 1564 The exiled French lawyer whose Institutes gave the movement its theology and whose Geneva trained a generation of pastors for the rest of Europe.10
Guido de Brès1522 to 1567 Wrote the Belgic Confession and threw a copy over the wall of a castle to show the authorities what his people believed; he was hanged five years later.27
Jeanne d'Albret1528 to 1572 Queen of Navarre, who made her small kingdom Protestant and led the Huguenot cause through the French wars of religion.28
Abraham Kuyper1837 to 1920 Dutch pastor, newspaper editor, founder of a university and prime minister, who said there is not one square inch of human life over which Christ does not call out Mine.29
Karl Barth1886 to 1968 Swiss theologian who wrote the Barmen Declaration of 1934 against the German church's accommodation with the Nazi state, and whose Church Dogmatics reshaped Protestant theology.30
Allan Boesakborn 1946 South African pastor who led the World Alliance of Reformed Churches when it called apartheid a heresy in 1982, and helped draft the Belhar Confession.19
Today
The World Communion of Reformed Churches reports about a hundred million Christians in its member churches, not a census of all Reformed Christians 6. The largest are now in Korea, Africa and Indonesia rather than Europe. Presbyterian and Congregational churches grew from the same root and have their own pages.
The World Communion of Reformed Churches describes itself as a hundred million Christians in more than two hundred and thirty member churches across a hundred and nine countries 6,22. The old European churches, Swiss, Dutch, Hungarian and French, are much smaller than they were, while Reformed churches in Korea, Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya and Indonesia are large and growing 22,16. Reformed bodies differ among themselves over how binding the old confessions are, over the ordination of women, and over sexuality, and those differences have produced separate denominations in several countries 17,8. In 2004 the World Alliance of Reformed Churches, a predecessor of the communion formed in 2010, adopted the Accra Confession 31, which reads economic injustice and ecological damage as matters of faith rather than politics, and it remains debated within the family 7,6.
Words to know
confession
In the Reformation churches, a written statement of what a church believes, such as the Augsburg Confession. In Catholic and Orthodox use, also the sacrament of telling one's sins to a priest.
justification
How a person is made right with God. Luther's teaching that this happens by faith alone, as a gift, was the heart of the Reformation.
sacrament
A sacred act Christians believe carries God's grace, such as baptism and communion. Traditions count and understand them differently.
canon
The list of books a community counts as Scripture. Jewish, Protestant, Catholic and Orthodox canons overlap almost entirely and differ at the edges.
Reformation
The movement that began with Martin Luther in 1517 to reform the Western Church, and that produced the Protestant churches.
creed
A short statement of belief said together in worship. The Nicene Creed is shared by nearly every Christian tradition.
council
A gathering of bishops to settle what the Church teaches. The first, at Nicaea in 325, gave the Church its creed.
covenant
A solemn agreement that binds two parties. In the Bible, God's covenant with Israel at Sinai, and later covenants, shape the whole story.
Questions people ask
Is Reformed the same as Calvinist?
Nearly, and Reformed is the older and wider word. The movement began with Zwingli in Zurich before Calvin arrived in Geneva, and it includes churches and confessions that owe as much to Zurich, Heidelberg and the Netherlands as to Calvin 9,8. Calvinist is often used more narrowly for the teaching about election set out at Dort in 1619 13,4.
What are the five points of Calvinism?
A later summary of the Canons of Dort, which the Synod of Dort issued in 1619 to answer the Arminian party in the Dutch churches. They concern human inability, God's unconditional choosing, the purpose of Christ's death, the effectiveness of grace and the perseverance of believers 4,13. The canons themselves are pastoral documents, and the Reformed confessions cover far more ground than these five heads.
How is Reformed different from Lutheran?
The two reformations began separately and failed to unite at Marburg in 1529. The clearest differences are the Lord's Supper, where Lutherans confess Christ's body truly present and the Reformed a communion with Christ by the Holy Spirit, and worship, where Lutherans kept what Scripture does not forbid and the Reformed kept what Scripture commands 18,8,10.
Why did Reformed churches sing only psalms?
Because of the rule that worship should contain what God has commanded. Since God gave the church a book of songs, many Reformed churches sang that and nothing else, in metre and often without instruments. Calvin's Geneva completed a metrical psalter in 1562, and its tunes are still sung 24,8.
What is the Belhar Confession?
A confession written in South Africa in 1982 and adopted in 1986 by the Dutch Reformed Mission Church, the church of people classified as coloured under apartheid. It confesses unity, reconciliation and justice as belonging to the gospel itself, and it was written against fellow Reformed Christians who taught otherwise. Several Reformed churches have since adopted it as one of their confessions 19,5,21.
Sources
Numbered references link the account above to its sources. These include the tradition's own documents and outside reference works. The review status below distinguishes source checking from completed member and scholarly review.
BibleVerse. “Reformed (Zwingli, Calvin): where they came from, what they hold, and the Bible they read.” bibleverse.site, version 2026-09-09, https://bibleverse.site/denominations/reformed/
Awaiting review by a member of the tradition. First published 2026-09-07; last changed 2026-09-09. Years before the common era are written BC, and later years plainly, as the site's Christian pages do.
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