ABSTRACT
Though a near total lack of cooperation between the Reformed movement and the monarchical state in France militated against confessionalization as scholars have commonly characterized the process,1 the French Reformed Churches worked tirelessly to inculcate a strong sense of confessional identity among the faithful. To this end, the local church and its consistory operated much as counterparts in Geneva, the Netherlands, Scotland, various Swiss city states, and some German principalities. The pastors, elders and deacons, who assembled for the weekly consistory meetings, promoted regular attendance at worship and catechism, disciplined sinners of most every hue and stripe, supervised the details of poor relief, and generally sought to fashion a Protestant religious culture. Ironically, while French Protestants’ status as a religious minority with ever diminishing political influence worked against confessionalization in the usual sense, it did contribute forcefully to the construction of a distinctly Protestant religious identity.
