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Religion in Switzerland , confessions

798 views · Published 21 October 2018 · 0:52 · Indexed 29 September 2026

Channel: Cities of the World · 2018 · Travel & Events

The country was historically about evenly balanced between Catholic and Protestant, with a complex patchwork of majorities over most of the country. Switzerland played an exceptional role during the Reformation as it became home to many reformers. Geneva converted to Protestantism in 1536, just before John Calvin arrived there. In 1541, he founded the Republic of Geneva on his own ideals. It became known internationally as the Protestant Rome, and housed such reformers as Theodore Beza, William Farel or Pierre Viret. Zürich became another stronghold around the same time, with Huldrych Zwingli and Heinrich Bullinger taking the lead there. Anabaptists Felix Manz and Conrad Grebel also operated there. They were later joined by the fleeing Peter Martyr Vermigli and Hans Denck. Other centres included Basel (Andreas Karlstadt and Johannes Oecolampadius), Berne (Berchtold Haller and Niklaus Manuel), and St. Gallen (Joachim Vadian). One canton, Appenzell, was officially divided into Catholic and Protestant sections in 1597. The larger cities and their cantons (Bern, Geneva, Lausanne, Zürich and Basel) used to be predominantly Protestant. Central Switzerland, the Valais, the Ticino, Appenzell Innerrhodes, the Jura, and Fribourg are traditionally Catholic. The Swiss Constitution of 1848, under the recent impression of the clashes of Catholic vs. Protestant cantons that culminated in the Sonderbundskrieg, consciously defines a consociational state, allowing the peaceful co-existence of Catholics and Protestants. A

Religion in Switzerland , confessions

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